Odo was found adrift in his gelatinous state in the Denorios Belt by Bajoran scientist Doctor Mora Pol. In 2356 he was taken to Cardassian occupied Bajor for extensive study and testing, his sentience unknown until he shape-shifted to duplicate a Krokian Petri beaker. This caught the attention of Doctor Mora and he increased tests while working with Odo on skills needed for social integration. However, even after gaining intelligence, communication skills and a refined morphing ability he could not really feel comfortable in a social setting. His name "Odo'Ital" is the Cardassian word for "nothing" - the literal translation of "Odo'Ital," which Dr. Mora's Cardassian overseer took as the meaning of his intended specimen label "Unknown Sample" that was affixed to his container.
After the discovery that he was sentient, the native scientists as a joke "Bajorized" it into "Odo Ital," and later just "Odo." The irony of the name "Nothing" was not lost on the homeless, friendless alien then, but he discarded his sense of inferiority after the coming of Kira and the Starfleet crew to DS9.
Conscientious of his role as the clown and freak, his humiliation culminated to his coerced performance in 2363 of a mocking "neck trick" for visiting Cardassian Central Command members, in which Gul Dukat was one, and he left Mora and the lab soon after. Even so, he kept his hair style, maintained after much practice to mimic Pol's hair, and the retreat from mocking solids reinforced his self-reliance as well as nurtured his tattered self-respect.
Odo built for himself a reputation as a neutral arbiter settling simple squabbles among Bajorans, and he was coerced by Dukat into solving a murder on Terok Nor, where he met Quark and a mysterious resistance-fighter Kira for the first time. The case went unsolved for five years, but he eventually realized the murderer was indeed Kira, taking vengeance on a Bajoran traitor.
The good work he did resolving the mystery prompted Dukat to keep him on as a security chief as long as Odo's own sense of justice would permit. Odo was less open and decisive, an outsider without status, but had no fear about sounding off on Cardassian injustice on Bajor. Years later, during the accidental activation of Terok Nor's old counter-insurgency system, he realized how much Dukat and the occupying Cardassians distrusted their security chief as an "honorable man": his force fields were powered by a separate supply from the rest of the station, neatly shutting him off should he side with the workers. His old Cardassian access codes were still valid, but the Level 6 clearance level wasn't enough to disable the program when it ran the anti-riot programming in 2371.
By 2367 he had been designated an officer of the Cardassian court to testify in a criminal case for Miles O'Brien - a title never revoked even after he worked for the Federation. He knew Cardassian occupation liaison and collaborator Kubus well and he had known Prylar Bek in passing as well and thought him a good man before his public suicide for a role in the Kendra Valley Massacre.
When Sisko came to oversee the station as the commanding officer, he found Odo to be invaluable and invited him to stay on as chief of security. Odo had speculated that 500 people would want to blame him for murders committed during the Cardassian Occupation. Although he was soon cleared after a temporary resignation when accused of such crimes, Sisko has often had to defend him to a suspicious Starfleet who did not take too well to his solitary working habits and lack of respect for bureaucracy. Odo zealously guards the independence of his office and methods when the two are in disagreement, but eventually he and Sisko reached a bilateral understanding. Even so, Odo has threatened his resignation at least three times, each when he felt his job was threatened by Starfleet officers: Lt. George Primmin in 2369, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Eddington in 2371, and most notably when Starfleet posted Lt. Cmdr. Worf in security in 2372.
Odo is referred to as "Constable" by most senior officers and even Quark, but his preference is the title of "Chief of Security;"
In early 2371, when the Dominions sent a clear warning to Starfleet to desist from using the Wormhole to "invade their territory" he finally met his own people when the Defiant was sent to the Gamma Quadrant for a test run. He discovered he was one of the changeling Founders, and experienced the exhilaration of "The Great Link". The yearning to join his people was great, but ultimately, the differences in ethics and values that separate him from the other Founders were too great for him to reconcile with. The Founders control the Dominion, and this stifling control has killed millions. He refused their way of life and chose to return to live with the "Solids" of DS9.
Odo was captured later that year by Enabran Tain and the Romulan-Cardassian strike force attacking the Founders homeworld. He was interrogated by Garak about his people while held by force against regenerating, and with no information to divulge, he could not crack, only admitting he wanted to go home eventually - an idea he later revoked.
On the Changeling homeworld, he had disagreed with his female mentor Changeling that what he's lived his life for is not justice but "order." She made several more attempts to woo him over, but he later became the first changeling to ever harm another when scuffling with an infiltrator aboard the U.S.S. Defiant. Previously, even as a security officer he had never taken a life or used any kind of weapon other than his own body.
Odo's social integration problems still persist, and, not surprisingly, he hates parties and socializing, although after his new identity with the Federation officers and Major Kira, he began to practice changing into a draining drink glass for the sake of socializing. He sees no purpose in the humanoids' need for material gain, and never bothered to learn the rules to dabo - though he once played Kalevian Montar with Gul Dukat. He's taken to reading Earth's police mysteries, borrowing some novels from O'Brien. The chief had also talked him into joining him twice for holosuite kayaking in late 2371.
As a changeling who chooses to retain solid form most of the time, he must return to his gelatinous natural state every 16 hours of the 26-hour Bajoran day to regenerate, and appears to need no more than an hour's rest. The cycle rarely varies, and he feels no need to stay gelatinous any longer than needed. He originally poured himself into a bucket kept in the back of his office to regenerate until discovering his true roots, and now uses formal quarters filled with a wide array of forms and textures to explore his shapeshifter nature. Except for Dr. Pol, he says no one until Lwaxana Troi, circa SD 46925, had seen him in his transitional form, but others followed as off station missions increased. Verad's gang forced him into gelatinous-state confinement in a small stasis box secured with a Delgorian lock.
In their mistrust of each other, he and Quark have had a long-running duel of wits. Quark and Odo have had to turn to each other in a pinch, and even though both would never give voice to the notion, they actually respect each other and have betrayed some affection for the other at times. He stops by Quark's three or four times a day usually, but keeps a full-time watch during the Gratitude Festival.
The Constable worked to make the large station safe and free of seedy business while keeping Quark in check. His presence in the Promenade was enough to chill any criminal's heart, or at least keep them lying low. With the coming and going of so many species and traders, station security is a job that only Odo could manage so well.
During the Dominion war, one in which he was the only one destined to lose, Odo chose to side with the Federation, despite the Female Founder's entreaties for him to rejoin the link. He helped the Cardassian Resistance along with Colonel Kira and did what he could to help their cause. Towards the end of the war, the entire population of Founders was infected with a fatal disease which slowly drained them of the ability to metamorphose, and to finally die as a solid. Odo appeared to have escaped the plague, but later the disease began to manifest itself on him too. Some detective work on Dr. Bashir's part unearthed the truth about the disease: it was planted by Section 31 into Odo so he would be carrier and spread it to the rest of the Changelings. To prevent the horror of genocide, the doctor went to great lengths to wrench the cure from operative Sloan's mind seconds before Sloan's death, and with it cured Odo. When the war ended, Odo kept his promise to heal the other Changelings suffering from the disease and rejoined his people in the Gamma Quadrant.
[Changelings] [Dominion] [Quark's Bar]
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