DS9 Stories/News: DS9 Stories/ News: Odo & Kira Relationship Review (8)

 

“The Abandoned”

Review originally printed in ORACLE

Newsletter July 2011

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Review written by Mary Shaver

ODO:

 

Is that all you can think about?

Killing?  Isn’t there anything else

that you care about?

 

JEM’HADAR TEENAGER:

 

I… I don’t think so.

 

ODO:

 

But there’s so much more to life

than that… there’s so much for you

to discover… to experience…

 

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

 

Odo learns that not everyone can expand beyond the limitations of their natures.

 

EPISODE SUMMARY:

 

An abandoned baby, discovered in some cargo salvage, turns out to be a Jem’Hadar whose genetic engineering accelerates his growth.  Within a day he is an adolescent and Odo agrees to take the teenager under his wing in an effort to help the youngster grow beyond his warrior nature.  

 

EPISODE ANALYSIS:

 

 

Quark purchases some salvage from a Boslian trader and is surprised to discover a baby of unknown origin hidden in the wreckage. Bashir’s examination of the baby turns up a number of unusual readings, most significantly that the child has an abnormally high metabolic rate. Within hours the baby has grown into a child of 8 or 10 years. Not only is this mysterious child growing at an alarming rate; he also seems to have remarkable cognitive abilities. Without any external stimuli, he has learned language, speech and  has the capacity for reasoning and understanding.  Bashir concludes that this child is the product of genetic engineering that is far advanced beyond anything seen in the Federation. To add to the mystery, the child is missing a key enzyme and without a synthetic substitute, he will die. A culture that is capable of this level of technology surely wouldn’t have overlooked something so basic; it must have been a deliberate omission. Bashir is stymied.

 

“The Abandoned” is the first Odo-centric episode since the devastating events of “The Search.”  Despite whatever internal conflicts he might be experiencing after finding his people and learning that they are the Founders of the Dominion, Odo is soldering on in the humanoid world. And while he finds no common ground with his people as to their philosophy of the universe, Odo did take away some positive things from his encounter with the Great Link, and is beginning to embrace his Changeling heritage.

 

While Dr. Bashir is searching to understand the anatomy of the orphaned child in the Infirmary, Odo, searching for a better understanding of himself, is beginning a journey of self-discovery. The first step in this journey is his decision to move out of the stifling little closet at the back of his Security office that has been his make-shift home since the days of Terek Nor, and take regular crew quarters.

 

We learn this as Kira arrives with a gift for his new quarters – a houseplant. Odo answers the door chime and very deliberately chooses to greet her outside his quarters in the corridor. Unabashedly interested about the configuration of his quarters, Kira at first peers over Odo’s shoulder, trying to get a peek inside the room, and when he closes and locks the door she confesses her curiosity  – and she apparently isn’t alone. According to her, “everyone” is curious to see his quarters. For a painful moment Odo seems to be reliving the sort of curiosity he used to excite while a lab specimen. Kira is blissfully ignorant that her words and actions have caused the Constable some consternation, but Odo quickly recovers and invites Kira in. She looks in wonder at the strange collection of items that populate the room and seem to be scattered everywhere. Somewhat apologetically, Odo explains that he hasn’t finished organizing everything. From his expression Odo appears to be looking for her approval. When he then goes on to clarify the purpose for the objects – to practice and explore his shapeshifting gifts – Odo is acknowledging the next step in his journey. Shapeshifting is no longer something he does simply as part of his job when the need calls for it. His reluctance until now to change shapes arguably has its roots in the things he was forced to do when confined to Mora’s lab and when he was taken out ‘on parade’ for the entertainment of the Cardassians. Meeting his people and learning at the feet of the Female Changeling has altered his thinking and now Odo is beginning to understand what it means to be a shapeshifter. He has discovered that the ability to mimic various shapes, forms, textures and surfaces can be a joyful and pleasurable experience. For a man who has seen so little joy in his life, this has to be something of an epiphany to Odo.

DS9 Stories/News: Designing the Deep Space Nine Space Station (1)

Deep Space Nine concept art

By Nick Ottens on September 12, 2005 5:01 PM on Deep Space Nine

On the creative side, many of the elements Rick Berman and Michael Piller brought to Deep Space Nine had been established in The Next Generation — the use of Ferengi, Cardassians, Bajorans and wormholes provided powerful strands of connection to the familiar universe first established by Gene Roddenberry and since enjoyed by millions of viewers. But this new series demanded many unfamiliar things, ranging from an alien space station filled with ill lit corridors, commerce, even a casino, to exotic new species and religious subtexts. It was a strange new world indeed that Star Trek explored boldly as ever.

On the technical side, Berman and Piller were able to provide the same important connections in the look and feel of the latest series by drawing their key production people from the pool of talented individuals who had worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Production designer Herman Zimmerman returned to design the dark and alien sets of the Cardassian space station. Michael Okuda led the art department’s effort to come up with an entirely new system of Cardassian control surfaces and data displays. Director of photography Marvin Rush brought a rich lushness to the new sets. Costume designer Robert Blackman refined Starfleet uniforms once again and ably met the challenge of a never ending stream of new alien races. Michael Westmore faced the same challenges in devising more and stranger alien races for Blackman to clothe. Visual effects that The Next Generation viewers had come to expect would be maintained and surpassed on the new series.

Early Deep Space Nine design

The task of designing the space station Deep Space Nine— which had to be a new, iconic and alien looking image that could be quickly recognized when seen on a small television screen — was a long, involved process that took several different directions before evolving into the final design we now take for granted. It was production designer Herman Zimmerman who was assigned to come up with this fresh and unique look that would be the centerpiece of the new Star Trek.

Early discussions about the look of the station led to a concept that eventually did not work. “It took us a couple of months of going in the wrong direction to find the right direction,” Zimmerman told Star Trek: The Magazine in 1999, “partly because the producers weren’t sure exactly how they wanted to direct us with the visual elements.”

We started out charged with getting a ‘Tower of Babel’ concept of a space station built over a couple thousand years of separate, disparate cultures, so the technology from one part of the station to another would be of various ages and various cultures, not necessarily interfacing one with the other, and there was this sense of confusion because of that.

“The initial take on it was that it was a very old, ancient type of station — maybe not symmetrical in shape,” Rick Sternbach, co-creator of the Deep Space Nine station, explained.

As Berman and Piller continued to refine the concept of Deep Space Nine, we [Sternbach, Zimmerman and Michael Okuda] continued to evolve some of the exterior station drawings. We started with a very large number of sketches and very quick CGI shapes that we could build in our computers.

We could create a lot of shapes, make multiple copies of shapes and kind of put little pieces together and rotate them around and see how they would work. Also we could see if they would provide enough of a strange alien look that would be approved as Deep Space Nine.

DS9 Stories/News: Designing Deep Space Nine’s Interiors

BY NICK OTTENS ON JULY 10, 2007 5:01 PM ON DEEP SPACE NINE

In designing the Cardassian architecture for the interiors of Deep Space Nine, production designer Herman Zimmerman was inspired by the look already established on The Next Generation. Unfortunately, this was limited, as the interior of the Carassian ships had never been seen. So Zimmerman drew primarily from Robert Blackman’s design for Cardassian costuming; an armored look, somewhat crustacean in appearance. Part of the theory was that the Cardassians were big on structure and if Cardassians felt structure was of vital importance, they would keep it on the outside. Zimmerman visualized a space station of which the basic framework was not concealed but where all supports and structures were clearly visible.

Quark’s bar concept art by Ricordo Delgado

Zimmerman elaborated on his idea of Cardassian design. “The Cardassian mind prefers balance to symmetry, ellipses to circles, angles to straight lines and hard metallic surfaces and dark colors. They don’t like ninety degree angles. Cardassians believe in honesty in design and want to see the columns and beams that make up a structure rather than disguising them with some cosmetic treatment.”

Ops Concept Art

Working with Zimmerman’s basic concept, Nathan Cowley and Joe Hodges melded the desired crustacean look with the heavy handed impressiveness of fascist architecture for the show’s sets. As finally realized, the sets are quite imposing, but still maintain their own unique appeal; a strangely alien sort of streamlining.

As the Cardassians are very militaristic, their operations center was placed by Zimmerman in such a fashion that the commander’s office can look down on it and see everything that is going on. There are literally windows everywhere in the office, so that the Cardassian commander would have had no blind spots whatsoever.

Ops Concept Art

Another part of Zimmerman’s design concept was that the sets and devices on the Cardassian made station were not as user friendly as those on the Enterprise. Perhaps most notable are the automatic doors on Deep Space Nine — large, round and cog-wheeled, the doors roll nosily out of the way and then roll ominously shut. One gets the feeling that, while the smooth, almost soundless doors on board the Enterprise would not, and almost certainly could not, close on you, it seems likely that Cardassian safety features were not so rigorous and that being caught in the way of one of these portals would really hurt.

An artist who contributed heavily to the look of Deep Space Nine was Ricardo Delgado, an illustrator who designed and storyboarded the opening title sequence for the series and designed many of the essential but unobstructive background details of many of the sets. Much of the Promenade was Delgado’s creation, from alien plants to shop designs. The Promenade underwent a heavy facelift after the show’s first season. “We wanted more bustle,” said Rick Berman. “[In the first season] we had all these well dressed Bajoran women browsing around the station as if they beamed up for a little afternoon shopping.” For season two, they made “it look more like the part of town where sailors hang out; less like Beverly Center and more like a remote outpost in space.”

Promenade Concept Art

Promenade Concept Art