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

Odo was, and still is, one of the most mysterious characters in all of Star Trek — that as much by his origins as his own pointedly reserved personality. One of the Hundred 'infant' changelings sent out every which way into the galaxy without so much as a star chart or shapeshifter how-to manual, Odo knew nothing about who he was or where he was from when we met him.

Answers were quickly forthcoming, if not particularly pleasant. Oh, so you're the Founders. Can you stop trying to subjugate and/or murder all my solid friends, please? Almost everything about his people was antithetical to Odo, contrary to his supposed 'innate' sense of justice. As the 'lawman' of Deep Space 9, Odo often abided by his own set of rules and regulations, but at least his moral code didn't include galactic warfare.

Gruff from the get-go, still a tad grumpy by the end, Odo was the uniquely dissenting malcontent looking in at those Federation interlopers. A fine actor, much missed, René Auberjonois shaped and shifted the role from what was initially on the page into something more subtle. Odo then softened over the years, much like his make-up, as Michael Westmore and team perfected the process from individual pieces to full face mask. Quark was just glad to see the back of him!

The last we saw of Odo was of who he left behind — Kira — by what he was heading towards — the Great Link. The rest is mere mention, a hologram, and a bucketful of unknowns from before, after, and in-between.

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".