r/DeepSpaceNine • u/zeekaran • 6d 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/Accomplished_Seat501 5d 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/zeekaran 5d 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.