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

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful frenemyship, to coin a phrase. The je t'aime… moi non plus between Odo and Quark had begun before we met them. As we know, it ended "all over his back". If familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps contempt breeds familiarity, too. Or, in other words, as his "worst enemy," Quark was "the closest thing [Odo had] in this world to a friend".

"We knew early on that this relationship was something special, reminiscent of Spock and Bones from the first series," Armin Shimerman commented in The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As Ira Steven Behr related in The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, it was only by watching the characters begin to interact that the writers/producers discovered that the "twosome was something [which] would have juice for ages". In fact, the June 1992 Series Bible makes no mention of any kind of relationship between Odo and Quark. Instead, the Bible's description for Quark states that he,

Forges an interesting relationship with Sisko. They actually enjoy sparring together.

Of course, we'd be remiss not to re-mention a certain 'outtake' from What You Leave Behind, reportedly shown at convention panels for the documentary What We Left Behind in 2019. Kiss and make up, or, rather, make out, was Auberjonois and Shimerman’s hilarious reinterpretation of the Odo-Quark farewell scene of the finale.