Synopsis: A visitor from the Gamma Quadrant tells Odo about changelings like himself in the Gamma Quadrant.
In this episode, we see Odo, the chief of security at Deep Space Nine, struggle with impulses both from his rational Logos-driven conscious, and the irrational, Eros-driven unconscious, when an individual from the Gamma Quadrant awaiting trial for crimes he committed on the station tells Odo he can take him to where more of his kind live.
One reason that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been referred to as the most psychological of the Star Trek series may be that because not everyone on the station is Starfleet, or even from our Alpha Quadrant, which gives the series an opportunity to explore those aspects of our psyches that are not associated with the values that are honored by Starfleet. The Gamma Quadrant can be seen as an analogy to our unconscious and the wormhole adjacent to Deep Space Nine can be compared to a psychic complex, that allows bits of material from the “other side” to come into our awareness.
The character of Odo is that of a shapeshifter, who during the day appears to us as humanoid. However, left to his own devices at the end of the day, he melts his physical self into a gelatinous liquid and spends the night in a bucket. When we first meet Odo in the first episode of the series “Emissary,” he is taking the law into his own hands and roughing up an individual suspected of disturbing the peace on the promenade of the station, until newly arrived Commander Benjamin Sisko tells him that there will be none of that on his station. Odo, who has been on the station since the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, will come to embody much of the values of Starfleet, perhaps because his law and order sensibility is closely aligned with theirs.
In “Vortex” Odo, alone in the quadrant, is given the opportunity to seek out his own kind when he is given the assignment of taking the prisoner Croden to his home world to face punishment there. Punishment that likely will cost him his life. Along the way, Croden rescues his daughter and then saves Odo’s life. By chance, they then come across a Vulcan ship headed home, and when the Vulcan captain asks if the small ship needs any assistance, Odo asks if they could take Croden and his young daughter with them to their world. Thereby, saving Croden’s life and keeping the daughter from becoming an orphan. This is not an act of the rational ego, this is an act of the irrational unconscious that knows what is the correct thing to do for the situation, even if it is not “by the book.” This is an interesting turn of events and makes me want to see how Odo and the other individuals on Deep Space Nine will act in the future.
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