Does Odo have form limitations?

Was thinking about this for a while and a similar question regarding the doctor in the voyager forum prompted this. Why couldn't Odo or any of the other Changelings transform into something incredibly dangerous or monstrous during battles to give their sides a tactical advantage? Are there any limitations to the forms they can take?

 

Well, Odo can't make a proper human face. That limitation is one that not all Founders possess, so he could perhaps overcome it, but it does imply that individual ability is a limiting factor.

 

I always rationalized "I don't do faces very well" as being more of a psychological block.

In terms of limits, we've seen Founders turn into fog, plasma, and a "Monster from the Id".

 

So was there anything stopping Odo from turning into anaesthesin gas, for example, when the station was stormed by the Circle so that he could knock everyone down?

 

That's a good question. I wonder if Odo would miss the bits of him that were inhaled and couldn't be reassembled back into Odo again.

It's well established that Odo is not as good at shapeshifting as the older, more experienced changelings. Laas is apparently capable of traveling space at warp speeds without needing a ship, Odo is a long way from that. Laas makes himself into fog and fire, and Odo has never done that. Odo has not really stretched his shapeshifting abilities, and possibly could benefit from a long-term relationship of some sort with a mentoring founder. Perhaps when he rejoins the Link.

For a long time I thought changelings could not create or destroy mass when they shifted. But then there were forms like one of the glasses on a tray, and even if Odo could manage to be that small a volume, the waiter carrying it should have noticed that it weighed a whole lot more than a tray with glasses ought to weigh.

 

IIRC, he did use tendrils like other changelings.

I read that the behind the scenes explanation is that they can shift mass to a subspace domain XD

 

Odo becomes colored light for Kira at the end of Chimera.

 

We know changelings can even become fog. But could they become, say, Red Matter or Omega Particles?

 

The Borg would definitely try to assimilate them if they could...

 

They might want to anyway. The abilities as we've seen them might be a worthwhile "addition of biological distinctiveness to their own" as it is.

 

We have seen Changelings become all sort of things. But is that for real?

When a Changeling becomes a rock, it is a rock, or so our eyes, hands, tongues, pickaxes and tricorders tell us. But is that merely what the Changeling wants us to believe? If it really became a rock, it would cease to be a Changeling, after all - and rocks can't transform into Changelings, even if the opposite is true.

Perhaps Laas simply was very good at fooling people into thinking there was fog on the Promenade. Sure, he could "fool" a Klingon stomach into thinking it was punctured and fatally bleeding, but that probably did involve sticking a knife-shaped part of himself into that tummy. Doing the fog might be more of an illusion, the same way we could speculate that being a rock involves just doing a rock shell and then somehow fooling the tricorder into thinking there was no Changeling goo hiding inside.

But the other option is that a Changeling really can turn its goo fully into any type of matter, while its "Changelingness" rests somewhere else (perhaps right next to the missing mass, or to the commbadge that clearly wasn't visible inside the transparent drinking glass when our favorite Changeling was that glass).

I think the former interpretation would put stricter limitations on what a skilled Changeling can do than the latter...

In any case, Odo isn't merely an illusionist. We never got any reason to think the Salt Vampire or the Talosian Kidnapper would be capable of becoming thin as a snake even if it changed its appearance to that of a snake - a small hole would still be too small for it to crawl through. But the Chameloid in TUC really became so lithe that it could wriggle out of an iron shackle. Odo is closer to the latter than the former, but is he really more? Could he be, with more training? There's no telling. Perhaps Laas simply has learned better stage magic, and doesn't really travel at warp but merely hitchhikes on a runabout and then fools its sensors into thinking that the hanging onto is actually formation flying?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Isn't there a scene in Emissary, where Odo changes from a bag (holding latinum) back to himself, and while he's doing that, he's seeping through a roster that has holes no larger than 2-3 cm wide ? No reason for him to perform stage magic there, since the corridor is supposedly deserted.

 

What they said in the show was that Odo (or other changelings') form changes were real, that you could scan him when he was being a rock and all you would see on the scanners would be a rock. Otherwise, it would be easy to pick up a changling infiltrator on internal sensors and we'd lose the doppleganger subplot. The rocks are special because he has the ability to change back to goo or anything else, but you can't see that or detect it with any known sensors. Even changelings can't detect each other when they're in a special form. The writers were careful not to define too closely what they could or could not change into, in case it was necessary for future plots.

 

Odo is a more controlled version of THE THING.

 

Come to think of it, Odo is known to disguise himself as an object when trying to listen in to those shady business deals Quark makes every now and then. But how can he see/hear when he's disguised as, say, a glass ?

 

The thing I have the most issues with is his ability to manipulate his mass. He can be as light as a glass on a tray, or as heavy as an 80-kg human. You canna change the laws of physics, captain.

 

As an aside, that's more of a plot hole than anything else. It's kind of like could the Enterprise have just used anesthizine more in order to subdue invaders, or like when Deanna was conveniently not on the bridge at a moment when her empathic powers would have stopped the entire episode. I hate that kind of writing but it's used a lot.

 

I read that the behind the scenes explanation is that they can shift mass to a subspace domain XD

 

Subspace: The cause of, and solution to, all of Star Trek's mysteries.

 

I though that was "technobabble".