Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Odo

10. The Malodorous Mr. Inside

Preserved in The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Michael Piller's handwritten notes from early 1992 sketch the very beginnings of the "starbase"-bound series. The Promenade was "The Arcade," but a "security force [was] already in place". In charge was the man who would become Odo, at that point called "Mr. Inside".

If Piller and DS9 co-creator Rick Berman had yet to find their lawman a name, they had got a good whiff of him. Later, on his legal ruled pad, Piller adds that the "Shape Shifter" "turns into a pool" and is "learning to transform". Even the famous "bucket" gets a mention. The paragraph concludes, in almost as laconic a fashion as Odo himself, with, quite simply, "horrible smell".

By the time of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Series Bible of 12 June 1992, Odo was Odo, and the odour had dissipated. In practice, the stench hadn't been removed entirely, however, as Nana Visitor commented much later in The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, 

I'll be the first one to say this, because probably nobody else will. The rubber is really smelly. It gets a sulphurous egglike smell after a while.

From smelly to "Shifty," was the all-too-on-the-nose nickname for the "Security Chief" suggested by Piller in his notes. Of course, as per the smell, that didn't linger either. Odo was also apparently to be called "Otto" at first, Piller recalled on the DVD extra New Frontiers — The Story of DS9. It was Berman who then "put the 'd' instead of the two ts".