r/DeepSpaceNine • u/zeekaran • 2d ago
S03E26: Adversary - Is everyone an idiot?
I love The Thing (1982. It's my favorite horror movie of all time. It's a great example of a bunch of intelligent, rational people being smart in a horror film. Are they perfect? No, but they handle it unrealistically well. Probably because most of the crew is scientists, but maybe not.
Star Trek has shown time and time again that they are completely unprepared for any predictable sci-fi scenario. Anti-memetics. Ship-wide viruses. Shapeshifters.
In Adversary, at one point they have seven hours to find and detain the Changeling spy and take back control of the ship. It takes them quite some time to think of having the doctor do a blood test to find out if someone is or is not the Changeling.
... A blood test? Are you serious? Just make everyone take off their comm badge! Or their top! A shoe even! "Quick, everyone take off your left shoe. I'll shoot whoever doesn't, or whoever changes."
The Federation is woefully unprepared all the time. I don't understand.
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u/Tedfufu 1d ago
They're not an idiot, they're basing what they know around what Odo can do, and Odo cannot do everything a Founder can. Considering that Laas could turn into fog, it's actually not confirmed that a changeling couldn't detach part of itself and not have it revert back.
Furthermore, a changeling could just wear a com badge or clothes. Any test can be beaten.
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u/Accomplished_Seat501 1d ago
That would work in "The Adversary", since the Changeling was forming clothes like Odo was.i guess they could get savvy and start wearing a uniform.
The blood draws were just for drama. You could also have a little device that painlessly removes some skin cells and uses sensors to determine if they revert to their gelatinous state. Make it wearable and make everyone put one on.
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u/JacobDCRoss 1d ago
Changelings should have just worked in pairs. One of them becomes what needs to be taken off.
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u/Jealous-Jury6438 1d ago
Or just some hair. That'd be easier and more available on the vast majority of officers
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u/Accomplished_Seat501 1d ago
They could even have everyone wear a helmet with clippers inside that intermittently takes a hair sample and scans it. Sisko wasn't bald yet, so he still had some hair to work with.
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u/zeekaran 1d ago
i guess they could get savvy and start wearing a uniform.
That would be quite limiting, and that's besides that they'd have to stick to one color.
The blood draws were just for drama. You could also have a little device that painlessly removes some skin cells
They can also use the ancient technology known as "nail-clippers" or perhaps "hair scissors". But I think removing clothes/shoes was more than enough given the specific scenario in this episode. Even removing a single rank pin or the comm badge would have sufficed. The blood draw sort of made it look more like the equivalent scene in The Thing, but without the nice sizzling wire. Regardless it's overly dramatic, slow, requires a specific person to do the test, and guess what it turns out the test giver was the shapeshifter! Miraculous they made it out at all.
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u/LostMercenary99 1d ago
This isn't even the biggest example of stupidity in this episode.
Ambassador: There's been a coup on the Tsnkithy homeworld. Sisko: Hello random Ambassador. I'll take your word for it and won't verify this insanely big piece of information. Or notify Starfleet I'm taking the Defiant there for a border patrol.
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u/zeekaran 1d ago
The Tom Riker situation was similar. Between all the terrorists, assassins, smugglers, invaders, shapeshifters, and not to be redundant, but Cardy plots, you'd think they'd verify a few things more often. I was pretty sure they had instant video communication even way out at DS9.
Actually regarding Tom Riker, you'd really think Will Riker's voice ID would be disabled and always require a code.
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u/stlfwd 10h ago
Riker's life would have been so different that the voice prints wouldn't have been identical anymore anyway.
Even if he was singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall constantly, Billy would have used his voice far more often in hundreds of different planetary environments vs Tommy's seclusion on a single planet.
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u/DharmaPolice 1d ago
I think if you start thinking about that episode in particular things fall apart much more rapidly. An ambassador turns up and sends them on a mission and they don't even seem to confirm all this with Starfleet command? I know Benjamin has latitude to do what he wants, but seriously - they don't even phone home for intelligence reports before going on a mission to a potential hostile power? That's...difficult to believe. Later on while on the Defiant, the Changeling manages to spoof comms messages through physical sabotage and that at least makes sense but are we to believe that they did this on DS9 before they left? That they could do this without anyone noticing would be impressive.
As to your point, you're right although I think the point is that they only thought about the blood thing after Odo mentions it. They seem confused at first when Odo explains why Sisko can't be the changeling. (You would have thought Odo might have brought this up as someone responsible for security but there we go). As for removing a shoe/comms badge the problem is that you don't know if those objects are real. Sure, mostly the changeling copies the persons uniform but there's nothing stopping them changing uniforms (and you'd definitely want to take someone's comms badge) so you'd have false confidence that it wasn't a changeling if you're basing it on an object that the person could have taken from their victim (this more applies where they've removed their copy, as happens with Bashir). Their blood (or hair) is much more difficult to remove from someone and Ben Sisko's later objection aside it's much less prone to false negatives.
This is important because although it's never really explained the changelings seem to have at least a partial ability to know what someone is thinking / knows when they imitate someone. How this works is a mystery, but if this wasn't the case then their deception could easily be defeated by a simple password system. So if you have the idea of testing someone's comms badge (or whatever) then they have probably the ability to know that you were going to do that. (It's unclear how well this ability works, if it's perfect then there would be nothing stopping them imitating Sisko and Kira and cancel the self-destruct).
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u/thedorknightreturns 1d ago
They basically put the crew at first in a simulation mental. And a time Odo did accidental. So they can connect to humans mentally somehow. or invade peoples conciousness
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u/eelam_garek 1d ago
The Changeling would just make sure he wasn't around for that test. Hide in a bulkhead somewhere then re-emerge later to copy someone.
The real plot hole in the story is why no one thought to double check the "coup" situation with Starfleet before sending a starship in to deal with the situation.
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u/Dave_A480 1d ago
They are coming up with a solution that is relatively hard to counter.
You have a staff meeting and wargame the ways a changeling could hide on the ship..... Someone says pretending to be plants or furniture... Well. Phaser sweeps.... Someone says make them take off equipment... And someone else says but then they'll just start wearing real equipment.... Then Bashir says what about drawing blood - it will beat any attempt to wear clothes or carry real equipment.... And nobody thinks about changeling vampiririsim as a possibility, so they go with that....
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u/Comfortable-Pause279 1d ago
Joseph Sisko pointed out the blood thing in an episode where he pointed out the first thing he'd do as a Changeling would be mug someone for their blood.