Maybe he just assembles a tiny bit of his mass to form a glass, and the other 95% of his mass is hidden in some jefferies tube around the corner, still in a goo-like state?
Does Odo have form limitations?
- Thread starter kira_nerys
- Start date
Because rats don't know how to hold still in the makeup chair while the makeup person applies pancake to their faces?
Yeah, I intended "individual ability" to cover that.
Odo was able to be a piece of reflective surface, as shown in the teaser of "THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR".
Regarding being able to knock out people as a gas... he can't separate pieces of himself.
Regarding being able to knock out people as a gas... he can't separate pieces of himself.
That would mean that there's an upper mass limit to what he can morph into, when he has none of his usable mass left in subspace. Probably that would be true for the "Odo" form,.or otherwise we'd have to assume that that part of him got split off when he was changed into a Solid by the other founders.(Assuming that they left it 'in store' for him just to cover for the possibility he'd eventually become a changeling at some point in the future again seems a bit far fetched to me). That in turn would mean he cannot change into something heavier than Odo, e.g. a 500 kg boulder, or a "genuine" elephant.
It also occurs to me that I think the producers were thinking of the T-1000 limitations in TERMINATOR 2. In the movie, T-800 Arnold says it cannot become complex weapons, chemical weapons, or moving parts. But it can make parts of itself turn into bladed weapons and hooks, which we see multiple times in the movie.
The movie did come out about 6 months before DS9 premiered.
The movie did come out about 6 months before DS9 premiered.
Why not? Everybody else in Trek manipulates mass willy-nilly. All it takes is a gadget. For a Changeling, the gadget may be an organ - perhaps the only organ they possess at that.
He sort of covers that in "Paradise Lost", by saying that his apparently perfect seagull (that is, a real seagull!) wouldn't convince a fellow seagull.
WIth humans, faces are hard to do. The best CGI creations may otherwise fool us, but even the most complex fake face money can buy will look slightly off. With seagulls, faces probably don't matter: birds can't do facial expressions, and their brains aren't bred to recognize those. But perfect seagull body language may in turn be far beyond Odo's skills.
With dogs... Well, again, facial expressions wouldn't matter much. But dogs are visual, and can learn to read the facial expressions of more expressive species such as humans. Then again, Odo never said he couldn't do a perfect German Shepherd. But since he very well knows he can't do a perfect Bajoran face, he probably accepts that there's no point in even trying: the uncanny valley would be worse than what he gets by doing a rigid mask.
Unless, of course, the real Odo weighs in at thirty tons.
We know that when knocked unconscious, Odo is "heavier than he looks", as in "Vortex". Perhaps completely comatose, he would weigh even more - such as when he's locked in a stasis chamber in "Invasive Procedures"? We just couldn't tell, because even at thirty tons, Odo probably wouldn't fall through space station decks or even stasis chamber shelves.
Does Odo shunt additional matter into Changelingspace, or does he merely shunt the mass of that matter? Since Odo can become anything, according to a tricorder, probably the latter: otherwise he'd need to keep X tons of every possible type of matter in reserve, rather than just genuine goo that can assume required properties (such as mass) when called for. And if Odo shunts mass, we don't really need to think there would be a limit: he could have a trillion quintillion tons in his Changelingspace pocket, or then a gram, all of it equally meaningless because mass there doesn't have any pull or crack any linoleum on the Changelingspace floors.
Timo Saloniemi
How does this equate with Odo having to turn into goo in a bucket every 18 hours or so? Is that just a heavy duty bucket? Has anyone ever been seen carrying it?
I imagine all of Odo has to be in that bucket. Otherwise, he could just mass/matter shift his own form (minus a pebble?) into Changelingspace and not be a bother. Maybe that's what more knowledgeable Changelings do.
I imagine all of Odo has to be in that bucket. Otherwise, he could just mass/matter shift his own form (minus a pebble?) into Changelingspace and not be a bother. Maybe that's what more knowledgeable Changelings do.
You know, I don't recall if it was mentioned Odo had to revert to his liquid state each day after he got his ability back in "THE BEGOTTEN".
If that was a necessary thing for all Changelings, it could be an indication of a spy in the ranks just by simple 24 hour monitoring of people in high positions.
I wonder if this reverting thing was required for Odo only because of one or more of the tests Dr. Mora did on him.
If that was a necessary thing for all Changelings, it could be an indication of a spy in the ranks just by simple 24 hour monitoring of people in high positions.
I wonder if this reverting thing was required for Odo only because of one or more of the tests Dr. Mora did on him.
I'm sure sleeping in a bucket is a thing for drooling babies, and goes away very quickly, within just a couple of hundred years in the normal case...
...It's probably comparable to suckling. Babies stop doing that eventually (and indeed Odo's originally quoted 16-hour interval increases to 18 hours as the show progresses). Then they make do without for more than a decade, before they return to suckling with much more finesse, and indeed would never stop unless reality intervened (but the Link can skip reality and keep sucking forever).
Timo Saloniemi
...It's probably comparable to suckling. Babies stop doing that eventually (and indeed Odo's originally quoted 16-hour interval increases to 18 hours as the show progresses). Then they make do without for more than a decade, before they return to suckling with much more finesse, and indeed would never stop unless reality intervened (but the Link can skip reality and keep sucking forever).
Timo Saloniemi
Didn't Lwaxana Troi carry the goo in her lap when he had to return to liquid form when stuck in that turbolift ?
However, that wasn't unprepared so perhaps he still could have shifted the bulk of his mass into the subspace domain. Perhaps the goo we see is just a tiny fraction, a residue of certain particles that cannot be shifted there.
Could also be that it is an antigrav bucket, and Lwaxana is lugging 30 tons around, but only feeling the weight of the bucket.
I don't think so, unless Lwaxana has an antigrav unit cleverly hidden within her dress, just in case:
The bucket seems to be nowhere around, and why would it be, as they're unexpectedly trapped for hours in a turbolift? I'd expect it to be out of reach somewhere in Odo's quarters ...
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At that point in the series, it was in his office.
I trust Odo would be only slightly heavier than expected in "Vortex", despite being unconscious - hauling bodies around is hard work even as is. It would take deep coma for an even greater degree of Odo's "real" mass to leak into realspace, and perhaps all of it would come crashing down at the moment of Odo's death (we have seen pretty explosive death scenes, including Mirror Odo's, and possibly not all of that came from the weapons being used).
Of course, Odo in "Vortex" might have been faking it, in order to get a better picture of Croden's character. Croden did pass that test with flying colors, and was subsequently set free...
Timo Saloniemi
Of course, Odo in "Vortex" might have been faking it, in order to get a better picture of Croden's character. Croden did pass that test with flying colors, and was subsequently set free...
Timo Saloniemi
The remaining mass of the dead founder in The Ship doesn't look like anything near 30 tonnes, unless that small heap of ash-like material has a density far higher than lead, of course ...
I wonder - what would be a plausible lower limit for this putative hidden mass? A runabout probably easily weighs thirty tons, but would Laas be lighter despite being equally large? Odo has never been anything particularly bulky, and he might simply be holding onto a floor like a goo-based suction cup when pretending to be a table that does not shake, or a rock that does not budge.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
A lot of these problems would probably be solved if those shapeshifters don't have individual mass they store in subspace, but a shared mass in subspace (similar to the Great Link), and they can borrow /stow as much of it as they need for their current shape. We don't know (according to earlier discussions) what exactly makes an individual changeling in the first place.
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Changelings abilities are really vague in terms of their limitations. We’ve seen them become space creatures, birds, chairs, rocks, rocks with people in them, and a lot more. Fire even.
They seem to be able to transcend their mass, and become much smaller or bigger than they are in their humanoid appearance.
They become also much more dense, or less dense.
Odo’s primary limitations seem to be exact facial features, and more generally his own imaginative limits.
It appears the changelings can actually become things, and not merely imitate them. “Being a rock”.
So perhaps it’s not merely illusory but actually an ontological change.
Which means they can be just about anything they imagine.
Though they can’t become planets, stars, galaxies, nor subatomic particles. At least that we know of.
So their appears to be some limitations. They can’t “become the universe” as they are apart of the universe.
Which itself logically means there are limits to what they can be.
What those are, is far less clear.
They seem to be able to transcend their mass, and become much smaller or bigger than they are in their humanoid appearance.
They become also much more dense, or less dense.
Odo’s primary limitations seem to be exact facial features, and more generally his own imaginative limits.
It appears the changelings can actually become things, and not merely imitate them. “Being a rock”.
So perhaps it’s not merely illusory but actually an ontological change.
Which means they can be just about anything they imagine.
Though they can’t become planets, stars, galaxies, nor subatomic particles. At least that we know of.
So their appears to be some limitations. They can’t “become the universe” as they are apart of the universe.
Which itself logically means there are limits to what they can be.
What those are, is far less clear.
