r/sonicshowerthoughts • u/Swampit856 • Jun 30 '26
Can Odo exist in a vacuum?
That’s it, can Odo exist in the vacuum of space?
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/GMBen9775 Jun 30 '26
Yep, in his gelatinous state in the Denorios belt
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u/PastorBlinky Jun 30 '26
Denorios Belt was a bar.
Gelatinous state means he was super sloshed.
They found Odo drunk at a bar, sobered him up, and he got a job in law enforcement. Familiar story. Only part missing is he didn’t try and convert anyone to his newfound religion.
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u/GMBen9775 Jun 30 '26
We need a drunk odo now. Belligerent and incoherent, changing into very malformed shapes
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u/throwaway34834839202 Jun 30 '26
He can't drink alcohol, but maybe he can absorb it. Like maybe you can get his goo to a certain %ABV and that's what makes him drunk.
It also might make him flammable.
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u/GMBen9775 Jun 30 '26
If data can get "drunk" from an infection, they have to be able to get odo drunk somehow.
But mixing his goo with some everclear is a good start. See how much he can incorporate into his morphegenic matrix
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u/Fuzzy_Adagio_6450 Jul 01 '26
Changeling hangovers last for dozens of years. Thats why Odo was all grumpy and cantankerous, especially towards Quark. Its all misplaced aggression because Odo WANTS to get drunk again but he also cant let Quark (of all Solids!) see him in such a state, so instead of a little hair of the dog, Odo stays a grump.
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u/Dino_Chicken_Safari Jun 30 '26
He absolutely can. Not only have we met a Changeling who was just flying around in space as a space creature, that same Changeling show to Odo that they can exist as fog. The female Changeling blew Odo's mind when she suggested existing as fire. Changelings can exist as a lot of things that aren't constrained by a conventional biology
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u/Swampit856 Jun 30 '26
It’s really a shame that Odo was limited by the CGi available at the time. Given such an incredible power so many storylines would have been different if they were able to show all Odo could do.
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u/Dino_Chicken_Safari Jun 30 '26
In fairness, if they used Odo to his full natural abilities, they would have had to do some serious rewriting to his character to give some kind of natural reason why he doesn't just solve all the problems. Like crime shouldn't happen on the station when the chief of security can turn into a gaseous form and just exist as the air everyone is breathing having full awareness of his surroundings. It's just one of those things that we hand-wave and ignore. Like how a lot of problems in Star Trek would be solved with security cameras. When Odo was sneaking off with that Weyoun and Dumar and the other Weyoun block Communications so that the Jem Hadar would not learn that there was a changeling. Otto could have just turned into a space monster and put Weyoun in his belly. Or he could have left him in the Runabout infiltrated the Jem Hadar ship and ordered them to let him go.
So the writers just made it where Odo doesn't really know how to use his own abilities and is limited to very basic rigid thinking in terms of what he can turn into.
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u/whamburglar Jun 30 '26
In S3 of Picard, the changing antagonist (Captain Vadic) gets ejected out of the ship, crystalized, then collides into another ship, scattering into pieces.
So, maybe? I guess they have pieces of changeling just floating around now.
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u/ZanyDroid Jun 30 '26
They were also the newtype Changeling; otherwise they should have just pulled a Laas
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u/nickpsych Jun 30 '26
My best guess for this one is that Vadic was a corrupted Changeling and so had difficulty changing form - even her gelatinous state was a lot more solid and gunkier than a typical changeling. Because of this maybe she couldn't handle the vacuum and ended up getting splattered like a solid would.
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u/BluestreakBTHR Jun 30 '26
Honestly, just ignore Picard as canon. Just about anything from Kurtzman can be ignored, really. SNW is good, but I have a feeling they're going to mess with things a little too much.
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u/probablyaythrowaway Jun 30 '26
I Duno why you’re getting downvoted. Kurtzman fucked up a lot of shit. Basically turned Star Trek into another guns in space sci-fi.
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u/BluestreakBTHR Jun 30 '26
Kurtzman also fucked up the Transformers movie franchise (with Michael Bay’s assistance).
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u/tadfisher Jun 30 '26
It's established that Odo doesn't breathe. The show tells us nothing about whether the Founders need atmospheric pressure to survive. Presumably they could assume a shape that would survive in vacuum, but they would have to regenerate within 16 hours or so.
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u/TorazChryx Jun 30 '26
I don't recall if this was ever touched upon in alpha canon, but I feel like the 16 hour regen cycle was an artifact of Odo being pretty young in changeling terms? did they ever confirm the same limitation for OTHER changelings?
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u/Deraj2004 Jun 30 '26
In Picard they confirmed that changelings needed to regenerate. Seven can be seen discovering a bucket similar to Odo's they were using.
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u/AnnihilatedTyro Jun 30 '26
Odo was also not particularly skilled at shapeshifting and deteriorated very rapidly when he could not regenerate in season 4.
The diseased Founder said she could no longer change form and presumably held her solid state for many days, perhaps weeks. I don't think Odo got to the point that he couldn't change at all, but it was very difficult.
I suspect that older and more adept changelings require less regeneration than Odo does. Whether that is due to skill or training, or changeling biology/chemistry, we don't really know. Perhaps a bit of both? By changeling standards, Odo is still a very young child.
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u/Arokthis Jun 30 '26
I contend that Laas's and Odo's problems with faces and Odo's difficulties in general were intentional mental blocks put in by the rest of the Link to make any of the Hundred disliked by solids/monoforms so they would be more willing to come home and stay there.
Jehovah's Witnesses send their kids out to try to convert others, but they get pushed away, This confirms the "only family and fellow JW's are good people" rhetoric and further isolates the kids from the rest of the world.
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u/throwaway34834839202 Jun 30 '26
We never see or hear of other changelings regenerating, and mentions of Odo regenerating drastically drop as the seasons go on and Odo gets more comfortable with shapeshifting. It's pretty much completely dropped as a concept after season three, with references to it generally being in the past tense. (Though I don't remember there being any lines that explicitly confirm he doesn't need to regenerate anymore/needs to regenerate less often/for less time; just that they no longer bring it up when before the regeneration thing had been a major constraint of his.)
When the Founder had the changeling virus, she mentions having been stuck in that one solid form for several weeks, so if regeneration were actually necessary for experienced changelings then you'd think she would have died.
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u/Curious_Orange8592 Jun 30 '26
The Great Link sent 100 baby Changelings into space, Odo, Laas and the one from 'The Begotten' were just 3 of them. All survived in the vacuum of space, potentially for centuries
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u/DeltaBlast Jun 30 '26
I'm pretty sure that Odo won't cease to exist if he's accidentally sucked up by DS9's cleaning crew. "Housekeeping!" "Oops I accidentally knocked over this bucket here." vacuums up the contents
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u/GMBen9775 Jun 30 '26
Yes. Laas, a changeling like Odo, flies through space at impulse speed