Daystrom Institute

3444 readers

5 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why does Odo shapeshift less as the series goes on? (startrek.website)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Back in the day on TrekBBS (alas, I cannot find the original post), someone pointed out that Odo shapeshifts less and less often as the series goes on. It was never a super frequent thing, but it occurred more often in the earlier seasons, but, even accounting for his time as a solid in Season 5, he seems to shapeshift less and less in later seasons.

What reasons (in-universe and real-world) might there be for this? Was it just a budget thing? Were the writers using it as a "trick" (writing crutch) earlier on? Are we supposed to believe that Odo is trying to assimilate, or reject his Changeling heritage?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My in universe reasoning is that he doesn't shift less, he just does it privately. I don't think he likes to remind people how different he is and he wants to distance himself from the founders who are known for taking different shapes.

My memory isn't perfect but I think after visiting his people he gets a room for the first time, fills it with things to mimic and stops sleeping in a bucket. He has later episodes where he gushes to Lwaxana Troi about taking the different shapes and how fun it is so he's definitely shifting. After he gets his abilities back and starts his relationship with Kira we see him have that crazy sex scene in Chimera, so that's happening off screen a lot.

Also in the episode Chimera he explains to Laas, the other changeling, about humanoids fear of their shape-shifting abilities. It seems like he's keenly aware how different he is and takes steps to cover it up.

Saying that he is still obsessed with the Great Link and yearns to go back so I can see him practicing his abilities in private to keep them up to par for his return. A wish he can't say out loud because of the whole 'evil empire at war with their way of life' thing.