Day 21 - Least Favourite Character

[lizbee]

The first time I saw nostalgia refer to Odo as a fascist, I was like, "Hang on, that's a bit unfair."

Then I watched DS9 again, and frankly, with each successive rewatch, it becomes increasingly obvious just how fair it is.

(I'm not technically rewatching right now, but between The Greatest Generation: Deep Space 9, sohotrightnow's blog posts and nostalgia doing a rewatch, I may as well be.)

"Character is biologically determined to seek order; is naturally authoritarian as a result" is an interesting premise, but DS9 doesn't really consider the logical next questions, ie, "Is that a good thing?" and "Can he change?" Worse, much of the time they don't seem to realise what it is they're depicting: harassment by law enforcement as comedy; straight-up collaboration.

That's the nadir: the bit in ... season 6? When the station is under Dominion control, and we cut from Quark saying, "Odo would never collaborate" to ... Odo collaborating.

["My Odo is not a collaborator. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a collaborator...but he is NOT a porn star."]

But he's forgiven in the end, even by Kira, and then we all move on as if nothing happened.

Then we come to the worst thing about Odo: his relationship with Kira diminishes her. Admittedly, none of her love interests are much good, but with Odo, she basically becomes an object to be nice guyed into submission.

Runner up: Vic Fontaine, Odo's PUA trainer. Aside from the fact that I find his personality irritating and resent that he takes up so much screentime which could, for example, be dedicated to developing Ezri, it's just kind of obnoxious how DS9 is suddenly doing stories about the personhood of holograms without, for example, doublechecking that Voyager hasn't been covering this exact ground for years.




Day 22 - Favorite Trek Film
Day 23 - Best Trek Tech
Day 24 - Best Overall Space Vessel
Day 25 - Favorite Discovery Episode
Day 26 - Planet You Would Most Like To Visit
Day 27 - Character You Would Date
Day 28 - Name Your Own Starship
Day 29 - Favorite Trek Quote
Day 30 - Favorite Trek Series

Comments

[muccamukk]

There was that one terrible mirror universe episode that seemed to premise the entire thing on tee hee lesbians. But Vic got shot in the chest. So it wasn't all bad.

[lizbee]

I skipped that episode and have no regrets whatsoever.

[muccamukk]

Good choice. You can probably just find a gif of Vic getting shot.

[sabotabby]

Entirely fair. I like the character but definitely would not want to know him IRL.

[nostalgia]

I am liking Odo more this time round but he's still a fascist. He loves order rather than justice and that's... genetic, somehow. Which is suspect. I think we're supposed to assume he was somehow protecting people from worse when he was a cop for the Cardassians but that doesn't seem that likely given that they're Space Nazis and working for them can't possibly be good. I could understand if he simply didn't know any better or had no alternative but it's never presented as something he regrets.

[skygiants]

I love Odo, but some of the reasons I find him fascinating to watch are the same reasons I find Inspector Javert fascinating to watch; it's a demonstration of all the ways in which Lawful Neutral is not Good, and honestly one of my greatest disappointments with seasons 6 and 7 is the way the show fails to follow through on that.

(All that said, my important personal headcanon about Odo is that he's an extremely young person who's been using his shapechanging powers to cosplay a gruff older man his entire life, and if anyone else had ever actually called him on this I think a lot of his arc might have turned out differently....)

[starlady]

I've just started a rewatch, and I feel like the secret trick to DS9 is that a lot of the characters are actually pretty terrible people. But they are mostly great characters, and Sisko and the show manage to weld them into an ensemble that does some pretty great things, even if some of those things are not actually Good.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it does the thing that's really quite difficult to pull off, where almost all of the characters genuinely believe they're good or at least ethical people making the best decisions they can under the circumstances, and it's ... not actually true a lot of the time ..... and there are enough conflicting viewpoints that whatever it is they're doing, the show gives you room to sympathize and also disagree.

[lizbee]

I love this headcanon that Odo is essentially the First Doctor.

[skygiants]

IT'S TRUE. I hope eventually he'll cameo in one of the new Star Trek show, but now played by Christopher Eccleston. Or Jodie Whittaker.

[archangelbeth]

Odo is that he's an extremely young person who's been using his shapechanging powers to cosplay a gruff older man his entire life

Honestly, I think this is implicit canon, from all the information I can recall?

Which is something I really should have in mind while watching, because that's fascinating.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's implicit canon if you put the timeline together but nobody ever engages with it. All I want is Sisko badly attempting to parent Odo! Even just once!

[archangelbeth]

Dadgum, that would have been hilarious!

Sent from my iPhone

[selenak]

my important personal headcanon about Odo is that he's an extremely young person who's been using his shapechanging powers to cosplay a gruff older man his entire life

Isn't that also canon? I mean, we know a) the Founders sent out baby changelings, b) Odo was found by Dr. Mora & Co. without any previous memories, which argues he was still in baby form, was experimented on till Mora figured out he was sentient (and also after but with different intent), and then modelled his looks on Mora. (As we find out in the episode where Mora actually comes to the Station.) This was all within ten years of the DS9 pilot, given that when Dukat asks Odo to do his first murder investigation in the Necessary Evil flashbacks, he refers to having seen Odo at Mora's lab just a short while ago, and going by Kira's age in said flashbacks, it can't have been more than a few years pre-show. So basically: Odo is canonically quite young, despite his chosen appearance signalling something else. Given his pre-Terok Nor life as he remembers it consisted of being a lab rat for Bajorans who themselves were subjugated under Cardassian rule, he arguably also hasn't got any reason to champion either species. (Or any sense of democracy, as it were.)

This being said? The fact that his s6 collaboriation is just handwaved by everyone, Kira reconciles with ihm literally off screen, and later on displays a spectacular double standard in not forgiving her mother for not hating every minute of being Dukat's sex slave while never having had any problems with Odo (whom nobody could have stopped from leaving the station, and who agreed to the take the job when Dukat offered it) serving the Cardassians in the past: it never stops irritating me. (Hence me letting Quark bring up the whole "Rom would have died!" part of it to Odo in my "Quark's Day" fanfic.) Also, it's telling that the Odo in "Children of Time", who had threehundred additional years to grow up, is still willing to wipe out an entire population (all of whom he's known for all their lives) to save Kira. Remember, Odo at the end of the second occupation arc changes sides again not for the cause but because Kira is under immediate threat. That at the end of the show he's willing to forsake Kira in order to save the Founders and end the war is the most grown up mature thing he ever did in either time line.

[skygiants]

Yeah, and Odo's choice to decide to take a job at Terok Nor looks quite different when you realize it's the choice of, like, a ten-year-old who watched a lot of Humphrey Bogart movies and decided that was what he wanted to do with his life, but then, unlike most ten-year-olds, had the power to immediately make himself and sound look more or less like Humphrey Bogart so people actually allowed him to investigate murders ....

But yes, a hundred percent agreed on your entire second paragraph - the handwaving of his S6 collaboration and the sheer absurdity of the offscreen reconciliation is .... not good. There are a lot of interesting things to explore in why and how Odo acts the way he does in S6, and we don't actually get at any of them.

[havocthecat]

This is making me feel like I didn't miss much by not watching later years of DS9.

[lizbee]

Eh, it has lots of (very vocal) fans. I just don't like it enough to do the heavy lifting when it fails.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU for so eloquently expressing all the reasons I dislike Odo's character, and especially Kira/Odo.

I never could understand why she forgave him for collaborating. Or why she fell in love with him when they so clearly had completely different morals and ideologies - something that was very important to her. And I'll never forgive the show for pushing Kira, that amazing and complex woman with power who totally OWNED herself and made no apologies - into the role of Girlfriend/Symbol Of Male-Identifying Character's Emotional Dilemma.