Why attack Odo

[pimp]

Hi

In the episode The Search Part 1 the Jem'Hadar manage to board the Defiant and start to attack in hand to hand combat but two Jem'Hadar soldiers attack Odo and Major Kira, one even grabs Odo and pins him to the wall, so i am curious to know why would a Jem'Hadar soldier do this???. I know that not all Jem'hadar have seen a founder but they instinctively know a founder when they come across one. So why was Odo not recognized as a founder, is this just a mistake or is there a reason behind it???

 

[Meredith]

Hi

In the episode The Search Part 1 the Jem'Hadar manage to board the Defiant and start to attack in hand to hand combat but two Jem'Hadar soldiers attack Odo and Major Kira, one even grabs Odo and pins him to the wall, so i am curious to know why would a Jem'Hadar soldier do this???. I know that not all Jem'hadar have seen a founder but they instinctively know a founder when they come across one. So why was Odo not recognized as a founder, is this just a mistake or is there a reason behind it???

It was dark in that ship, the Jem Hadar have poor eyesight....

 

[Damask]

Hi

In the episode The Search Part 1 the Jem'Hadar manage to board the Defiant and start to attack in hand to hand combat but two Jem'Hadar soldiers attack Odo and Major Kira, one even grabs Odo and pins him to the wall, so i am curious to know why would a Jem'Hadar soldier do this???. I know that not all Jem'hadar have seen a founder but they instinctively know a founder when they come across one. So why was Odo not recognized as a founder, is this just a mistake or is there a reason behind it???

Well in the episode where the Jem'Hadar and the DS9 team up (Iconian Gates?) the Jem'hadar are hostile to Odo because he abandoned heaven.

It was only later on that the Jem'hadar changed to the point where Weyoun didn't think they would fire on Odo if ordered too.

Chalk it up to inconsistency in their portrayal.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that like any good soldier, the Jem'Hadar accept their superiors' definition of "enemy" without much questioning. This time around, it was simply "everybody on that ship".

I don't know about that "instinctive recognition of Founders" thing. When have the Jem'Hadar demonstrated anything like that? They defer to their superiors, and they respect the Founders, but I'm not aware of a situation where a Jem'Hadar would respect a Founder without first being told that it is a Founder. In "The Abandoned", the young Jem'Hadar only recognizes Odo for a Founder when he sees Odo shapeshift; indeed, this happens when the Jem'Hadar deliberately attacks Odo! There's no "instinct" there other than some sort of a genetically imprinted need to respect shapeshifters.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bacl]

Meh. They simply did not know he was a changeling/founder.

 

[SoM]

It was dark in that ship, the Jem Hadar have poor eyesight....

That's the Vorta.

 

[pimp]

It was dark in that ship, the Jem Hadar have poor eyesight....

The Vorta have bad eye sight but the Jem'hadar have great vision, and the Vorta have great hearing, Weyoun says this to Gul Dukat but i can't remember the name of episode.

 

[pimp]

I'd argue that like any good soldier, the Jem'Hadar accept their superiors' definition of "enemy" without much questioning. This time around, it was simply "everybody on that ship".

I don't know about that "instinctive recognition of Founders" thing. When have the Jem'Hadar demonstrated anything like that? They defer to their superiors, and they respect the Founders, but I'm not aware of a situation where a Jem'Hadar would respect a Founder without first being told that it is a Founder. In "The Abandoned", the young Jem'Hadar only recognizes Odo for a Founder when he sees Odo shapeshift; indeed, this happens when the Jem'Hadar deliberately attacks Odo! There's no "instinct" there other than some sort of a genetically imprinted need to respect shapeshifters.

Timo Saloniemi

Do you remember the episode where Quark buys a salvage ship and then he discovers that there is a baby on board, that then turns out to be a Jem'Hadar. Anyways when the Jem'Hadar is a adolescent he starts to fight everyone on the station but when he gets to Odo he stops and says "i don't have the urge to fight you", but he couldn't quite understand. Odo explains this to Kira by saying "perhaps the Jem'Hadar have had their genetic make up altered to instantly recognize a Founder" (along those lines)

This distinctiveness to recognize a Founder has to be true, think about it. In a lot of episodes you hear the Jem'Hadar say that they never have seen a Founder, So I'm thinking that in order for the Founders to have authority and control over the Jem'Hadar they must have done what Odo said to Kira.

 

[Timo]

Do you remember the episode where Quark buys a salvage ship and then he discovers that there is a baby on board, that then turns out to be a Jem'Hadar. Anyways when the Jem'Hadar is a adolescent he starts to fight everyone on the station but when he gets to Odo he stops and says "i don't have the urge to fight you", but he couldn't quite understand.

Yes, this is the episode "The Abandoned" that I mentioned above.

And no, the youngster does not stop when seeing Odo. Instead, he attacks Odo.

Odo then shapeshifts, at which point the youngster decides to stop attacking and start groveling.

So the young Jem'Hadar does not have an inborn sixth sense by which he would recognize Founders. Rather, he has an inborn directive to obey a shapeshifter once one has been revealed to him.

What Odo actually says about the youngster's inborn settings is this:

Odo: "He's already shown a certain... deference to me. That's probably another genetic alteration implanted by the Founders to insure the Jem'Hadar would remain loyal. I can keep him from harming anyone."

But the deference only came after the Jem'Hadar was shown that Odo was a shapeshifter. There was no recognition there of Odo's nature when the Constable was in his humanoid form.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[pimp]

Oh ok my bad, i haven't seen that episode in a while, surely it would make sense for the Founders to implant such a trait in the Jem'Hadar.

 

[GNDN]

Besides, my take on Odo was that his appearance was merely the best he could do simulating a Bajoran face and body, and it was in deference to him that the female changeling and others took on a similar "unfinished" appearance (even though they could resemble any humanoid they wished)

I never took their appearance as some type of shapeshifter default, for why would they wish to resemble 'solids' or 'humanoids' at all, except to give orders to Vorta or have negotiations with alpha quadrant species. I feel that they based their appearance off of Odo, so a Jem Hadar wouldn't have known Odo to be a changeling just by his appearance until the Jem Hadar had been exposed to other Founders in an 'Odo-like' humanoid form.

 

[TeutonicNights]

The real question is why the Dominion would even allow their troops to attack and possibly harm Odo, when
- the whole point of the whole thing was to bring back odo
- AND the dominion had perfect control over the situation?

So one possible explanation might be that the attack was meticulously planned to make everything unfold as it did- but without actually tellling the Jem'hadar whom they were attacking (maybe like in the battle in the die is cast).

But why risk Odo changing form in front of the Jem'Hadar, turning the situation around and reveal their secrets so early? unless of course that WAS the plan and it failed...
*head explodes*

 

[Bacl]

The real question is why the Dominion would even allow their troops to attack and possibly harm Odo, when
- the whole point of the whole thing was to bring back odo
- AND the dominion had perfect control over the situation?

So one possible explanation might be that the attack was meticulously planned to make everything unfold as it did- but without actually tellling the Jem'hadar whom they were attacking (maybe like in the battle in the die is cast).

But why risk Odo changing form in front of the Jem'Hadar, turning the situation around and reveal their secrets so early? unless of course that WAS the plan and it failed...
*head explodes*

I always wondered why Starfleet ships didn't constantly broadcast transmissions to Jem'Haddar ships which contained images of Odo shapeshifting on the bridge as a way to stop the ships from firing.

Claim Odo is on board every ship.

 

[TeutonicNights]

I always wondered why Starfleet ships didn't constantly broadcast transmissions to Jem'Haddar ships which contained images of Odo shapeshifting on the bridge as a way to stop the ships from firing.

Claim Odo is on board every ship.

That's brilliant. I think that something like that would have been an awesome conclusion to a battle.
A giant Dominion fleet paralyzed by the prospect of hitting a ship with a founder, and they have no idea which one it is.
The Dominion cloning a non-devout new Jem'Hadar breed(and thus become more vulnerable) as a reaction or odo having his own loyal Jem'Hadar army would also have been pretty fun.

I also believe having Odo- similar to Sisko's fate- accept and use his role as a founder (and also his role as one of the 100) more and more overtime instead of rejecting it throughout and always remain the outsider.

Like by the end he would already have grown into that new leader of the dominion, maybe even with a new rogue great link by his side.

 

[pimp]

I always wondered why Starfleet ships didn't constantly broadcast transmissions to Jem'Haddar ships which contained images of Odo shapeshifting on the bridge as a way to stop the ships from firing.

Claim Odo is on board every ship.

That's brilliant. I think that something like that would have been an awesome conclusion to a battle.
A giant Dominion fleet paralyzed by the prospect of hitting a ship with a founder, and they have no idea which one it is.
The Dominion cloning a non-devout new Jem'Hadar breed(and thus become more vulnerable) as a reaction or odo having his own loyal Jem'Hadar army would also have been pretty fun.

I also believe having Odo- similar to Sisko's fate- accept and use his role as a founder (and also his role as one of the 100) more and more overtime instead of rejecting it throughout and always remain the outsider.

Like by the end he would already have grown into that new leader of the dominion, maybe even with a new rogue great link by his side.

Lol you made me laugh besides the Jem'Hadar never open their com links anyway.

 

[SoM]

Lol you made me laugh besides the Jem'Hadar never open their com links anyway.

Yeah - that's how Weyoun 7 got Jem'Hadar to fire on the runabout with Weyoun 6 & Odo in TF&tGR.

 

[pimp]

Lol you made me laugh besides the Jem'Hadar never open their com links anyway.

Yeah - that's how Weyoun 7 got Jem'Hadar to fire on the runabout with Weyoun 6 & Odo in TF&tGR.

I never quite understood that because then that means Weyoun 7 must also have a problem because why would he stand back and watch Odo die. Odo is a founder, which means that Weyoun 7 was not up for the job, anyways he dies at the hands of Worf (well funny).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Maybe Changelings didn't look like Odo before Odo met them - why should the Changelings just happen to have "natural" forms that were Odo-like? Their natural forms should be goo.

So the female Changeling shape-shifted to look like Odo just so that he would feel more at home with them. And the Jem'hadar had no way of connecting Odo's looks with a Changeling because they'd never looked like that (and who's to say those Jems knew what Changelings looked like in their natural form).

 

[Nedersong]

I have a pet theory about the founders.

I think the Founders are the Perservers who seeded the galaxy with life all those millions of years ago.

 

[Timo]

The real question is why the Dominion would even allow their troops to attack and possibly harm Odo, when
- the whole point of the whole thing was to bring back odo
- AND the dominion had perfect control over the situation?

Which attack are we talking about?

In "The Search", the Founders probably honestly didn't know Odo would be aboard the intruding ship, and didn't prepare their Jem'Hadar for the possibility.

In "The Die is Cast", it is possible that the runabout where Garak and Odo were fleeing was arranged some special protection, and that the Jem'Hadar just faked the attack against Odo. Then again, it's equally possible that this was a typical fog-of-war situation where Odo was on his own - there'd be no active effort to kill him, but no possibility of arranging for his protection in the battle, either. Ditto for the Klingon rampage in "Way of the Warrior" - the fake Martok wouldn't have been able to orchestrate every little detail of it, but he could have assumed Odo would survive no matter what.

In "The Adversary", the hostile Founder might have intended to save Odo whilst killing all his friends - but when Odo sided with those friends, the Founder might well have made the decision to kill Odo, as surely was the privilege of Gods. Besides, the Jem'Hadar would never find out about it anyway, so the Founder could do anything and everything without endangering the loyalty of the troops.

The "we don't kill each other" thing is obvious propaganda to begin with: clearly, individual Founders disagree with each other, and sometimes these disagreements come to a sharp point. But a feeling of unity against Solids no doubt does limit Founder-to-Founder violence to a minimum.

Timo Saloniemi