Does anyone else think that there have been a few problems with Odo being as powerful as he is? I think the creators watered down (diluted) Odo's powers.

TOP TEN THINGS THE CREATORS DID TO MAKE ODO LESS POWERFUL.
10. He should be able to attack people a lot better than he does.
9. He sleeps in a bucket! He sleeps in a bucket! All a guy would need to do is flush him down the toilet and Bye Bye Odo.
8. He can make a perfect bird but can't make a normal ear!
7. Odo is confined to the station (since he is station security) when he should be on all the away missions. He could really kick some a$$!
6. He doesn't have a lot of the powers that Laz ("Chimera") has.
5. Starfleet doesn't want him to be station security. WHY NOT?? If I wanted to feel safe somewhere, I'd definitely want Odo there. He can make just about any weapon imaginable.
4. He has to regenerate every day even though the rest of his people don't. They can pretend to be someone for years.
3. Odo has been confined by forcefields (example: Civil Defense). Why can't he just break himself apart to the size of quarks (no pun intended) and ooze through the force fields?
2. He hates phasers even though a phaser set to stun is probably a lot safter than getting into a physical fight with someone.
1. He has to walk to get around the station even in an emergency. Why not shapeshift into something a tad more faster or even liquify and go through the air vents.

What do you all think?

as a odo fan i must say to some of these huh?
10.attack? why would he attack and one on one odo never lost a fight!
9.odo make be in a bucketbut he would be aware of a distruble and when he could regain form........
8.i assume you mean nose
7.did you see all the eps. odo did go on his share of away missons.
6.differt race so diff powers
5.starfleet doesn't? only because the race of his race are not nice so they think he may be a traior someday it has nothing to do with his powers
4.they don't? hmmm let's see the avaraige person does sleep take breaks and such so they say goodnight and then they go off and regenerate
3.immpossle as he could not reuite and a atom sized odo would be useless
2.he is in charge of sucuity and hates all weapons not just phasers,
1,simply everone on ds9 knows odo so get out of the way there is a ememecy, odo as bird or a blob would add to the chaos and make things worst.

omnidragon - #6, Laz is one of the 100 shapeshifters sent out. He is the same race as Odo. Nice try, though.

Okay Omnidragon, here is my explanation.

10. You did catch an error. I should have said "defend himself". Criminals get away from him for the sake of the episode but Odo could have captured them.
9. You could flush him down the camode if you were really quick about it. Besides, he'd be pretty weak, that's why he's regenerating.
8. You seen his ears? They're crazy!
7. But those away missions were never for security. Odo would only be used as an advisor or an intelligence source on the Founders.
6. ScottN already corrected you.
5. You're wrong here. We first find out about Starfleet's distrust of Odo at the beginning of "The Search, part 1" This is before Starfleet knew anything about Odo's people. All they knew was that Odo was a shapeshifter and they didn't trust someone who was a shapeshifter. (Odo said this exact thing)
4. We know the rest of his people don't regenerate because they would be found out pretty quick. Odo says that he must regenerate every day "CONTINUOUSLY" for a certain number of hours. A Changeling spy would have great difficulty in being a spy if it had to do this.
3. Why couldn't he reunite?? He's done similar things before.
2. But he refuses to carry a phaser. Phasers are safe and effective. That's why Starfleet uses them.
1. It would not add to the chaos if everyone was used to it. And the surprise of seeing a moving blob might startle the intruder.

I try not to make my posts extraordinarily long. That's why it may seem that my list seems a little choppy. Sorry about that.

Plantman:

#3 : When has he done something like that? [IF you're not refering to his little "gaseous display" for Kira in "Chimera"] According to the techncal information we have on his race, any small part that becomes disattached goes gooey. That said, I guess the flakes of Odo that came off during the torturing session ["Die is Cast"?] do come slinking to rejoin the rest.

#4: His people must regenerate. In fact, don't they generally spend most of their time in that form? That's what the Link is.

#1: He doesn't always walk everywhere. We've seen him going through the air ducts before.

Just my 2 cents

I think the worst example of the creator's diluting of Odo's powers is in The Way Of The Warrior, during the fight on the promenade when a Klingon rushes at Odo with a Bat'leth.A Bat'leth?A stabbing/slicing weapon, which would pose Odo no threat, but he just stands there looking worried until Bashir shoots the Klingon.I think in situations like that, Odo should just morph into a huge beast and just shred everyone.

Why doesn't anyone believe me about Odo's ability to reunite after separating. That little escapade in "Chimera" is a great example of his ability to do so.

In the episode "The Adversary", Odo liquifies, goes through a vent plate, and into the air ducts. In order to get through the vent plate, he would have to separate to get through the grating right? So why couldn't he do this on a smaller scale.

>> I still don't understand how a Changeling could successfully be a spy for any long period of time if they have to regenerate every day.

Cableface--
Great example.

I thank you sah.

ok plantman i forgot laz was a changling i am not prefect however as for the rest of it......
10.i never said odo is prefect bad guys always get away from the good guys at the begining no matter who they are even superman
9.fine flush him it woundn't kill him though and when he was regenerated.......
8.lots of people have odd looking ears7
7.first odo is not a showoff and and besides he could have acted if he had wanted to he didn'twant to give away a advantage and they always came though fine anyway.
6.ok there are a lot of shapeshifters and i got 0ne wrong
5.you can also say they didn't trust odo because they knew 0 about him. as odo also knew 0 outside of hey i can shapeshift starfleet's being unsure of him is understandable
4.sorry but my comment on this stands all you can say is if they cam't regenerate and be be spys. don't spys sleep?
3,he has? name one ep where odo was slipt in 2 either by himself or a attacker
2.i never said phasers weren't safe there are a weapon and as i said odo hates weapons! all weapons. in fact i quote for the first ep"i don't allow weapons on the promanard!
1.well if you are going to argue that way then..first everone may not be aware odo is shapeshifter and could take a inturder by sirprise. if he was a blob then a inturder might just say a trap and shoot the blob and then dead odo!

You sound kind of mad at me. I didn't mean anything personal. I just don't really understand. Odo is a very ambiguous character. His abilities have never been well defined. His name says it all.
ODO-- "It means: Unknown Sample."
The flushing thing was just kind of a joke by the way.
Specific example of his splitting into many parts: In "The Adversary", Odo goes through the grating of an air vent. In order to go through a grating, he has to split. While all of the parts may be connected at any given time, I'd imagine that he could do the same at a submolecular level as well. (This is all speculation since I'm not a chemistry/physics expert)
Sorry again if I sounded insulting in my previous posts. I wasn't trying to be.

i am not mad at you plantman i am sorry if i came off that way i was just getting into the debate.and in reguards to your exzample oozing in not the same and separating so the question still stands :)

Hence my confusion. That's why nobody ever nitpicks Odo because no one understands what he can do. Except for the debate in "The Way of the Warrior" where he's afraid of a knife, everyone just accepts everything he does. Can you blame them. No one understands his abilities, including me! :^)

Well, this isn't exactly diluting Odo, but it's an Odo question that came to me yesterday. Apologies if it's been answered somewhere else and I never saw it.

Odo doesn't eat or drink. That seems fair enough. But it seems as though he must take in some form of energy for his life functions. Has it ever been explained what he lives on? Ultraviolet? Infrared? That is, what is the energy source for Founders?

Well, this isn't exactly diluting Odo, but it's an Odo question that came to me yesterday. Apologies if it's been answered somewhere else and I never saw it.

Odo doesn't eat or drink. That seems fair enough. But it seems as though he must take in some form of energy for his life functions. Has it ever been explained what he lives on? Ultraviolet? Infrared? That is, what is the energy source for Founders?

I have to say this: I never found Odo a very likable or sympathetic character. For instance, his attitude toward the strikers at Quark's bar was completely unsympathetic, and he was one of the few people who broke the strike. He was also too busy grooving with the female shapeshifter to help Kira while the station was occupied. And as a lawyer, I've never understood how he got away, during the entire series, with apprehending criminals by completely disregarding everyones' right to privacy and civil rights. For instance, he asks Lwaxana Troi whether she can "sense" whether anyone in the room feels guilty after her hair clip is stolen! Whoa! And then he proceeds to pummel the (fortunately) guilty-minded person into submission. This went on constantly with Quark. Odo: "I know you're up to something, you little louse, heh, heh, heh...." Uggh.

Well, I'm sure this will get some heated responses, but I just never saw Odo as a hero.

Don't forget his actions in The Wire. Bugging Quark illegally, wanting to question Garak even though it might hasten his illness.

However, this adds dimension to the character, one of DS9's best. And not just because of the gimmick.

lawyer may i ask how you define a hero? odo may bot have been prefect but then who is? the hair clip thing well unless i missed something odo knew the guy was guilty because lwaxana could not read him. the guy was not going to confess so odo showed off a little and made him confess. the female shape shifter thing? well ok he made have been a little wrong there but maybe just maybe he was going to try to get inside info that they could use later ever hear of bentifit of the doubt? as for invading privisy well i can only say so what? that always stuck me as nonsense. if a person breaks the law they should go to jail. even if they just break in in their homes. minor laws maybe but stealing and hiding stuff in there homes. so what? the innosent wouldn't care and only the glity would really care. as for the strike maybe odo was pro strikers because in the trekverse stiking ferengi are unheard of and he just didn't take it all that seriouisly? not staying odo was prefect but then who is? not mad just staying a lot of this stuff is open for debate

Odo didn't help out Kira et al because he was too busy GETTING SOME! Odo rarely ever got any action in the entire run of DS9 (ok, maybe a little more towards the end but not around the time of the ep in question) and I'm willing to bet that even shapeshifters have a sex drive. So I can't fault him for that one.
But lawyer is right in part- I don't think Odo was ever meant to be a hero per se. He's more of an anti-hero, not meant to be liked, just grudgingly respected.
As for Odo bending the rules, it's always been clear to me that Odo cares more about justice than he does about following the rules. He probably got away with his rule bending because he kept the crime rate low and Capt. Sisko was smart enough to know that if he forced Odo to follow the rulebook to the letter, crime would rise. Besides, it's a Bajoran station and Bajorans, as a formerly occupied people who had to turn to large scale resistance fighting for their freedom, might just have a slightly different defintion of due process. See "The Darkness and the Light" for example. A Bajoran resistance group blew up a house and killed a bunch of civilians just to get one Cardassian officer.

We have seen Odo split. In one episode (spying of Quark, I think) he was a glass which got smashed. The bits of glass liquified and reintegrated.

However, I don't see how he could split into anything smaller than a single cell, because if he did then the bits wouldn't be a shapeshifter any more, and would loose their abilities. (I assume Odo has cells or something analogous, because we've been told he has DNA, and DNA lives inside cells.)

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