Shouldn't Changelings be entirely genderless?

And, assuming that's true, how is it that one goes about choosing a gender to imitate?

 

It depends on how you define "gender," doesn't it? You're assuming that the only role for two (or more, I guess) sexes is reproduction, but that isn't necessarily so. That's the biological role, but couldn't there be sociological roles as well? There are on Earth, but of course we may not be the norm.

I am just working my way through DS9 now, after not watching it (particularly the final seasons) for many years, so I could be misremembering, but...do Changlings have gender? I mean, are they born with one? Odo chose to be male, of course, but then Odo was deeply affected by the solids around him, so he isn't necessarily typical.

 

Indeed, we have never heard of a Changeling having anything as Solid as sex/gender. The designation of Jens Salome's character as "Female Changeling" is not a native one, used by the Changeling and its cohorts themselves. Heck, AFAIK, it isn't even a canonical one (mentioned in dialogue by any character)!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Perhaps not, but they definitely refer to her as "she."

 

Makes you wonder what she put on the peace treaty when she signed it...

She was called the Female Changeling on screen by non-Dominion characters.

As for why she was female it is possible that Founders who deal with Solids often develop a preference that leaks into their Changeling humanoid form for whatever reason. Or it might just be that she/it/the Great Link decided on the spot to appear obviously female because Odo was identifying himself as a male to better the odds of getting him to leave his old life behind and just used it from then on.

 

Changelings can assume any gender they want. As said above, the term "gender" is actually more of a cultural connotation, a state of mind, while someone's "sex" is comprised of the physically male or female attributes. Thus, a biological/physical male can have a female "gender" and vice versa (transexualism). With changelings, I imagine sex/gender is more of a conscious choice, since they can be literally anything they want. I think Odo probably took the form of a male humanoid as opposed to a female because Dr. Mora, the humanoid he had the most contact with in his early life, was male (he did admit to copying his hairstyle, after all).

As for how changelings reproduce without having a physical sex, it hasn't been explained. They could be hermaphrodites in their "natural" state or they could have some form of asexual reproduction.

As to the "female" changeling, I think she assumed that gender/sex role because she sensed it would be easier to manipulate Odo that way.

 

Since Changelings are all a part of the Great Link, it seems most likely that it's a type of asexual reproduction in which another part of the Great Link is produced and becomes self-aware. They're liquid in their natural state and they change shapes, it's obvious that no sexual reproduction (which includes being hermaphrodites; two hermaphrodites are still going to have sexual reproduction, and hermaphrodites do have sexual characteristics, they just have both sexes, while Changelings have none).

Because they have to refer to her as something and "it" would be strange and offensive to human ears, since it's normally used for things rather than people. They refer to her (sic) as she because she looks female, but that doesn't mean anything.

 

...We don't even know whether the Bajoran or Klingon or Trill languages have genders in the first place; perhaps it's an artifact of the Universal Translator?

I stand corrected. Could you give examples?

The jury is still out on whether the Changelings are even biological creatures at all. Yeah, Odo has DNA - but is that for real, or mere pretense, something Odo instinctively learned from the Bajorans? Adult Changelings can easily transform into things that cannot be biological, such as fire. Even the young Odo can shift some of his mass "elsewhere", and hide his real, physical commbadge "elsewhere" as well while becoming what appears to be a pile of tiny shards of glass; these feats cannot be achieved by biology, or indeed by a truly physical creature of any sort.

We may speculate that the orange goo is the "natural" state of Changeling existence, rather than yet another illusion - but even in that case, we lack data on whether that goo contains DNA or is just a weird physical manifestation of a fundamentally abiological, aphysical, supernatural lifeform. In these circumstances, asking whether Changelings reproduce sexually or asexually is probably just about as meaningful as asking whether God begat Christ (or, say, Adam) through sexual or asexual reproduction.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Just because something looks like glass, or an iron sculpture, rock or fire doesn't mean it isn't organic. Sole mimic the pebbles they rest on but nobody thinks they're made of pebbles.

 

The specific examples above are in a completely different category, though - there's no way fire could be biological and still have the effects demonstrated in "Chimera". Unless it's a telepathic illusion instead of a physical one, and based on mass delusion. But that wouldn't explain half of the tricks Odo pulls off elsewhere.

Odo can certainly be biological on occasion. But there are occasions where he simply can't. And everybody's tricorder keeps telling as much as well. If biology is occasional and optional, then it stands to reason that it's just one facet of this whole pretending-to-be-things issue - that a biological appearance is just one form of pretense, easily achieved by somebody whose skills extend to all those abiological feats.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Why can't fire be organic? Do you know what fire actually is? Does anyone?

 

An odd question. Let's see if I understand it correctly.

1) What fire is ITRW ain't a mystery - a flame is just gas ionized into plasma by heat, a process that in itself ceases all biological processes. A biological creature all aflame is no longer a biological creature.

2) What a phenomenon with the observed properties of a flame is, if it isn't really a flame... Well, that can be nailed down pretty nicely as well. It has to be partially transparent, fluid, and emitting heat and light. Swarms of small biological lifeforms (say, bacteria) might manage the partial transparency, fluidity, and emission of light at moderate intensity. Emission of heat at levels one might mistake for those of a flame is another game entirely, though; biological life would self-immolate if attempting that, and this is already assuming it possessed the required energy source, which it probably wouldn't. Arguably, combustion would provide the energy, but then we're back to a simple non-biological flame.

3) Yes, we might be mistaken about the nature of the fire-like phenomenon we see - we might not "know" what it is. But if we observe the above characteristics, then we are either correctly observing fire, or then being subjected to an intense telepathic attack that renders all our observational powers null and void. I don't really think Changelings work in that latter fashion.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Luckily I rewatched an episode where it happened 3 days ago. When Kira and Quark go to talk to Odo about Rom's arrest in "Favor the Bold" the Bajoran guard outside his quarters calls her the "Female Changeling".

As I was trying to hunt this down I came across a bit in "Behind the Lines" where Odo and the Female Changeling talk about her name and she states she has no name because she doesn't need one as the Founders don't feel the need to differentiate themselves from each other.

 

Their reproduction is established, right? That's what Odo was. Likely some form of parthenogenesis. I would guess they can reproduce a sort of clone if they're alone but for genetic/cellular diversity still reproduce sexually combining cell halves of their DNA-equivalents from gametes while all mixed together in the Link. Possible they're really strange and combine in three's or even greater multiples but probably unlikely.

Speculating about the Great Link and the ability for smaller groups individuals to Link together (as we saw Odo and the Female do several times), it's interesting to hypothesize that there could have been opposing Links in their ancient past. Given the way Odo was influenced and sort of brainwashed after Linking, it's easy enough to see them some wanting to avoid Linking with foreign groups and maintaining their own ideas/subgroups and the Great Link merely destroyed or assimilated competing Links... at least until they experienced that the solids were a greater and perpetual existential threat (or Solid friendly Links were driven extinct).

 

The Founders used to be solids, didn't they? Perhaps gender is a vestigial trait to them. They kept it even though they don't "need" it.

Or perhaps they've been imitating gendered species for so long that they can't help but assume traits like that.

 

Assuming that "child" means the same for Founders as it does for humans. Earth's own biology is full of examples of misused terminology.

I don't think we ever heard anything to suggest this in an episode...

Some have tried to draw a connection between the Female Founder and Jens Salome's other appearance in Trek, as the echo of an ancient humanoid from four billion years in the past. That humanoid species supposedly is responsible for (most of) today's life all over the galaxy. We didn't hear the specifics of how they did it, so we could speculate that these old folks were Founders who ensured their immortality by leaving bits of themselves behind. To keep things simple, they made those bits less versatile than they themselves had been, though, resulting in Solids.

Or perhaps they saw that diversity is good, and "froze" parts of the original Link into diverse Solid forms the way they once froze Odo?

Timo Saloniemi

 

When Odo first meet his people in "The Search" they stated that he was "unfinished" or something like that when he and the others of the Hundred had been sent away. That implies some kind of child or undeveloped offspring.

But later, in the early 6th season, when Odo and the female Changeling hang out together on Terok Nor, we also learn from her that the changelings don't really differentiate between each other. And, in fact, there may not even be a real distinction between any particular "pile of goo" and another. That sorta makes sense in a logical sense. Maybe the Great Link is really one big creature. It only seems like different entities when it sends off parts of itself, which then have different experiences, and develop a different personality for a while. But once that detatched part of goo comes back and re-attaches with the rest of the creature its experiences and memories are fully integrated back into the whole.

So, if the changelings are really just one big creature, then the idea of having children really doesn't have any meaning. Really, the Great Link as a whole just grows new goo as it gets older. And when necessary it can send off parts of itself for short (or long) times which act autonomously, but are not really a different entity per see.

And if this was the case, just how many autonomous units or beings could the Great Link break into? Could Odo break himself apart into 2 or more independent Odos, initially having the exact same personality, but each being able to go off and have independent lives and result in divergent beings?

This idea makes sense. And it's an interesting sci-fi concept. But really it doesn't hold up in the show. At no time did we get the sense that Odo's sub-parts could operate independently (at least nothing more than moving to come together to form the whole Odo again). And when Odo entered and left the Great Link there was no evidence to support the idea that his personality had changed at all to be more like the general changeling personality.

The two different representations of changeling "procreation" shown in the series don't really jive with each other. There was actually a book written by David R. George III called Worlds of DS9 Vol 3 The Dominion: Olympus Descending that tried to explain these different desperate facts from the show. But DRGIII basically went a different way with it and stated that both those references from the show were partially lies. In the book we learn that the Great Link is actually made up of different distinct beings, but that they are incapable of reproducing. That's why it's such a big thing that no Changeling has ever harmed another. The book also proposes that the Great Link sent out the hundred as a desperate attempt to find their own "god", who could allow them to procreate, or produce more Changelings.

 

Fire is a mixture of mainly heat energy, partially broken particles of the fuel or material (used for the fire to consume), and a small amount of plasma. The colours of the fire depends on the materials burnt.

 

From "Behind The Lines"

ODO:
And have our people always been Shape-shifters, or was there a time when we were like the Solids?

FEMALE SHAPE-SHIFTER:
Eons ago, we were like them -- limited to one form. But we evolved.

Now, I suppose there's room to argue how much like humanoids the "one form" to which they were limited might have been. But here's another point to consider...

True, but ultimately the socio-cultural roles stem from the biological ones. Sexual reproduction is at the evolutionary root of sexuality, the expression of which is what the concept of gender is based upon. So unless the Founders reproduced sexually at some point in the past and gender is a vestigial holdover from that time, they shouldn't possess it inherently. This may indicate that the similarity of their previous form to humanoids went beyond simply a lack of ability to shapeshift. (i.e., the "one form" they were once limited to was proabably not parthenogenetic goo.)

However, it's also at least as possible that assuming a "gender" is simply an acquired behavioral adaptation to aid in interacting with other species. According to "The Search, Part II" they did spend time roaming the stars, searching out other races, adding to their knowledge of the galaxy, and then of course there's the engineering of their underling races, etc. So one would think they'd be plenty familiar with the concepts of sex and gender.

(And yet, the "female" changeling didn't know how Solids expressed intimacy before Odo...ahem...showed her in "Favor The Bold." But perhaps this just a case of understanding the concept being no substitute for actual experience. )

In any case, certainly doesn't seem like gender would be useful in the Great Link, where there's no differentiation between individuals. (Or is there? In "Broken Link" Odo said the "others" were hiding things from him while he was in the Link.) But it might be useful when dealing with gendered species, which is pretty much how we see them use it, or the pretense of it.

 

Let's also note that procreation only makes sense if the species or species-like entity is subject to two phenomena: dying and expansion.

We have not learned of Changelings dying of natural causes. For all we know, every one of the seeming "adult" individuals has existed for billions of years already, and is incapable of growing old in the biological sense. We have learned of expansion, though, which may call for the creation of more individuals, or at least of more Changelingmass that can be temporarily be split into individuals.

Perhaps expansion is relatively rare, however, considering Changelings don't settle planets, and relatively seldom travel offworld from their compact hideout planet(oid). The Hundred may have been a unique event in Founder history, unrelated to procreation or other expansion of the species, and solely done in order to expand Founder knowledge.

On the other hand, use of sexual reproduction as a means of coping with evolutionary pressures is by no means mandatory. An immortal and non-procreating mass could quite plausibly find ways to cope as well.

Timo Saloniemi