this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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It makes no sense that Odo can very successfully turn into all sorts of extremely complex shapes but can't manage a human face. Especially when he has no problem changing realistically into other animals. They expect me to believe Odo can do this and not do a passable human nose?
Same goes for the female founder and Laas (the one who turns into fog). Then, by the time of Picard season 3, they've finally mastered faces. Just the usual unexplained plot magic.
PIC claimed they had to be tortured for ages in order to be able to mimic humans accurately.
Although other changelings in DS9 don't seem to have the problem Odo has. Like the Changeling that took over for Bashir.
If there was some couple of lines in an episode that mention that look was their natural state before a few evolutionary leaps, I'd find it reasonable enough. Maybe even go so far as to link that look back to TNG's "The Chase" with the ever so similar alien that seeded some 18 different species.
There's enough information to explain why Odo had a unique problem, and that others were just copying HIM either as an insult or to make him feel more at ease.
...But the real reason is that they needed Odo and the Changlings to look different from all the other aliens to avoid viewer confusion.
The progenitors in The Chase still look different enough to be unrelated from the Founders, but the art department was clearly inspired since thats also the same woman that plays the Female Changling in Deep Space Nine.
IIRC in picard they explain it as a special subgroup of changelings the federation kept and experimented upon during and after the dominion war, improving their shapeshifting so that they could imitate internal organs too, and for longer periods of time before they had to revert, to make them better infiltrators I guess.
Turns out torture makes the subject quite resentful and the first of them (forgot the name, the weed smoking captain one) teaches others who are also seeking revenge its improved abilities. Downside: they lose their immortality.
Though the point still stands that they infiltrate earth and mimicked several prominent officers, as well as martok easily. So they really should be able to without torture, especially since they are basically timeless. They could have practiced shapeshifting for eons, and a nose is really not that difficult.
Vadic
I think it's safe to say that Picard is not a reliable source of Star Trek lore.
Even the creators have set it apart from the new primary timeline.
The female founder can definitely do humanoid faces, I thought. No hard evidence, but I thought she transformed a few times. I also recall a quick line when she meets Odo, saying something like "I take this form to match you".
I assumed it was the same story for that one-off episode changeling who taught Odo to become a ball of orgasmic light.
Nothing about aliens makes sense in Star Trek...
Didn't that one episode of Deep Space Nine basically show that Odo was traumatized by the Bajoran who found him and he was psychologically unwilling to make a realistic humanoid face?