@autisticandroids @soft-galaxies you both raise a good point here, which is that I may have used the words ‘redeeming qualities’ in this post a bit incorrectly. I don’t think that Odo’s willingness to change is enough to redeem him, not really.
I have a really contentious relationship with the character of Odo: he starts out as the typical Star Trek alien who is alone in the galaxy and has yet to find his own place in it, then the show complicates this by introducing the Dominion and the issues of his behavior during the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor. But instead of like, trying to seriously confront these issues for more than one episode, Odo continues to be painted as the Nice Guy™ who pines for the Cool Girl™ who is out of his league. And oh boy do I hate that trope! I think it’s especially tone-deaf because, well, Odo is far from being an innocent teenager, and even during the course of the show he makes some really fucked up choices (the Dominion occupation of Deep Space 9 comes to mind) which are not really talked about again either!
I especially don’t like when the show implies that Odo and Kira’s actions during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor were ‘equally bad’ morally. They just weren’t: Odo was motivated by a very misguided need to bring ‘order’ that did nothing but further the Cardassians’ agenda and brought more meaningless death upon the Bajoran people. I can’t in all honesty compare this to Kira’s experiences in the Resistance, where the violence was a necessity of survival.
I choose to interpret Kira and Odo’s relationship as two people bonding over their experiences in the same war, but it’s not lost on me that Kira is asked by the narrative, over and over, to forgive the people who brought so much grief to her planet. From a characterization perspective I can believe that that happens because of who Kira is as a person, someone who is shaped by her past but not bound to it indefinitely; but as a viewer I don’t like the message it implies.
I think I tend to ‘forgive’ all of this because by the end of Season 7 Odo has also been used as vehicle for genocide, plus his choice to leave the alpha quadrant to try and change his own people seemed right to me (even if he was Yet Another Person Leaving Kira). But still, I have a hard time liking Odo.
autisticandroids replied to your post
imo theres a world in which odo is redeemable, but it’s a world in which 1) he followed a very different plot thread, specifically interrogating what happened in the occupation, why he did it, what exactly he did, and what about that he regrets and must atone for, and 2) the ds9 writers have better politics re, like, colonialism
I totally agree with you on this. I wish the show had been more… consistently aware that Odo’s need to belong somewhere (and with someone) does not really justify anything he did. I think his character loses a lot of complexity too when the plot conveniently forgets about (or refuses to engage with – god I’m still so angry about the closet scene in “You’re cordially invited…”) his past and present choices. And the fact that his needs end up almost completely projected on Kira… idk. I think I’d be more sympathetic towards him if, again, there wasn’t all that largely untouched issue of Odo having collaborated with the Cardassians.
Like, I love “Things Past” but it’s literally just one episode and it’s not nearly enough!
So glad to see this @romulan-commander :)
The only way I can fly with the closet scene in “You’re cordially invited” is with the idea that Odo so wanted to be friends again with Kira that he forcefully linked with her and sort of brainwashed her so she would ignore his atrocities. And that’s why she then reacts so violently when Rusot asks her how it feels to be in a relationship with a collaborator.
I think Odo was a great character in the beginning but the writers Fucked Up Big Time in how they completely overlooked the darker parts of him. Let’s not forget either that the alternate Odo in Children of Time did commit genocide on his “best friend’s” descendants just so he could change his own fate, and spare himself having to lose Kira. He sacrificed thousands of people so he wouldn’t have to deal with that. That and the Dominion occupation of Terok Nor makes me consider that when Odo leaves to join the Great Link, it’s not necessarily a good thing, because he is capable of greater fuckery…
