i’ve only seen scattered episodes of ds9 so i decided to start it from the top and many thoughts head full but the biggest one right now is does anyone like odo. that is a genuine question do we as a society like odo
Odo being a cop is Problematic but the show does eventually sort of adress his guilt over what he did during the occupation and also someone must keep an eye on Quark so I’m usually pro Odo.
Odo allows for a lot of very interesting discussion in the plots. He’s so proud of his neutrality, and of just “doing his job” and handling crime without being partisan or getting involved in politics… and over the course of the show we see so many ways in which that’s just not possible. He “stays neutral” during the Cardassian occupation, and people die. He investigates crimes without regard to wider context, and damage is done. So a lot of the later part of the show is the show and Odo himself grappling with that. With the conflict between the need for neutrality and the need to take a stand against bad things. The need to prevent crime, and the issue of punishing people who are already in a bad situation.
On balance I like Odo, both as a plot point and a character, because he’s someone who absolutely wants to do the right thing, starts out believing that he is doing the right thing, and when challenged by circumstance and the people he trusts, loses that certainty and realizes he has to re-evaluate both his attitudes and his approaches. Which is interesting to watch, and also… a good thing for people to know is an option.
Throughout it all though, the one thing that stays constant to him, to the extent that it’s almost a comfortable hobby, is: “Quark is up to something”.
I definitely agree with the points this makes about how Odo isn’t a static character and that like a lot of characters in the show he can make both good and bad decisions and that he isn’t just living out a Problem of the Week existence but does actually change and grow. I think one of the strongest things about DS9 as both a Trek show and a sci fi show in general is that for better or for worse I don’t think any character in it is the same person at the end of the series as they were at the start..,be it better, worse or just different I think that pretty much every character who has a decent amount of screen time on the show goes through some kind of development and change. This definitely happened to other characters in other Trek shows to some degree or another but I think DS9 really did the best job of giving characters an arc and development that felt natural for them on the whole
But also
Can I just say I love the post here that is like “On the one hand ACAB there is no denying that, but on the other hand Quark Must Be Stopped”
Odo is my fave character in all of the Star Trek franchises for all the reasons listed above and also for being the most alien of aliens on the show. I know the feeling of always being an outsider looking in and that’s Odo too.
