“A Simple Investigation”
Written by Rene Echevarria
Directed by John Kretchmer
Season 5, Episode 17
Production episode 40510-515
Original air date: March 31, 1997
Stardate: unknown
Station log: An Idanian is assaulted in his guest quarters by two Finneans, Sorm and Traidy. When he pulls a weapon on the pair, Sorm vaporizes him. He’s regretful, as he thought it was on stun, and now they have to wait for the woman the Idanian was supposed to meet in order to get the item.
Odo sees a woman in Quark’s named Arissa. She gets rid of Quark by telling him about someone cheating at dabo. Odo is impressed with her observational capacity. She mistakes his words for flirting, and then she flirts a bit back at him.
The person she was waiting in Quark’s for never showed, so she uses her implanted dataport to try to access the computer. That trips an alarm and she’s brought to Odo’s office. She says that she was meeting with the Idanian because he had a lead on her daughter, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Odo takes her to the Idanian’s guest quarters, only to find residue on the carpet that has Idanian DNA—he’s dead. Eventually, Arissa admits that she works for Draim, a major player in the Orion Syndicate. She admits that she has no daughter, and she says the Idanian had information that would enable her to quit the syndicate—not the easiest thing in the galaxy to do. Rather than turn her case over to the Idanian authorities, Odo puts Arissa in protective custody.
He assigns her quarters, with two deputies posted outside. Then he beams him and her to his own quarters, where she should be safe. She can sleep in the bed he still has from when he was a solid. He encourages her to testify against Draim, offering to do everything he can to protect her from the syndicate (he saw firsthand how they treat witnesses in “The Ascent”). She’s impressed with how far he’s willing to go to protect her. He says it’s because she has the courage to try to walk away, something he never could bring himself to do while working for the Cardassians, but it’s obvious that the real reason is that he’s totally smitten with her.
Odo goes to Bashir for advice on whether or not to pursue a relationship with her. He’s scared of rejection. Bashir sagely points out that if he tries, she might reject him and make him miserable, but if he doesn’t try at all, he’ll still be lonely and he’s guaranteed to be miserable.
He goes back to his quarters, where he’s surprised to see Arissa still awake. It doesn’t take long before they start smooching. When we come back from commercial, they’re in bed together. Arissa is surprised to learn that it’s his first time having humanoid sex (he admits that the Great Link is similar in its own way).
Dax and Kira gossip about Odo in Ops, and when he arrives, Dax is even more sure that he’s carrying a post-coital glow about him. Meanwhile, Arissa makes a deal with Draim—she’ll turn over the crystal to Sorm and Traidy if he lets her go. Draim then tells Sorm and Traidy to kill her once they have the crystal.
An Idanian official meets with Odo, revealing that Arissa is an intelligence operative for the Idanian government. She herself doesn’t know her true identity—her true memories are stored on the data crystal. When Odo takes the official to the lab, they find O’Brien in pain on the deck and the crystal gone. The chief says that Arissa took it. The official is able to trace the crystal to a cargo bay, where Arissa is meeting with Traidy, while Sorm hides with his weapon. When he’s about to shoot her, Odo and the official arrive and save the day.
After she gets her memories back, and Bashir undoes the surgery that made her look human, she visits Odo. She’s married, it turns out, and she apologizes, but Odo says it’s not her fault that he fell in love with a woman who never existed.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Arissa has a dataport in her neck that allows her to access computer data. It’s exactly the sort of science fictional thing we should be seeing more of in Star Trek and don’t.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira is thrilled to see that Odo is taking an interest in a woman, and her conversation with Odo on the subject in the cargo bay is delightful. She apparently told everyone about it, since O’Brien is the one who told Bashir about “Bedroom Eyes” (the nickname acquired from Odo sharing with Kira that Arissa said he had “bedroom eyes”).
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf does not approve of gossiping in Ops.
The slug in your belly: Dax does approve of gossiping in Ops.
Preservation of matter and energy is for wimps: Where Odo has been the object of unrequited love from Lwaxana Troi and has had unrequited love for Kira, this is the first time he’s fallen for someone who fell back.
Also for some reason Odo has nipples. This makes no sense. They went to the trouble of shaving his entire torso so he wouldn’t have any hair, why didn’t they also cover the nipples? They really have no reason to be there, especially given that he doesn’t even do a full-on face…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Odo apparently has sex in his humanoid form with Arissa, but we do see him using his shapechanging a bit with his hands at one point, and you gotta figure he’s changing at least the size of other body parts, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.
What happens in the holosuite stays in the holosuite: Bashir has a new secret-agent program, and he’s invited Dax, O’Brien, and Odo to join him. Odo declines, but he later interrupts the program—while Bashir is in mid-back-seat-smooch with a hot blonde—to ask for Bashir’s dating advice. O’Brien, once again playing Falcon, gets the drop on Bashir because the latter was distracted by Odo.
Keep your ears open: “I thought it was on stun.”
“Look what you did to the carpet!”
Sorm and Traidy after the former accidentally vaporizes the Idanian.
Welcome aboard: Dey Young, last seen as Hannah Bates in TNG’s “The Masterpiece Society,” plays Arissa; she’ll be back on Enterprise as Keyla in “Two Days and Two Nights.” John Durbin plays Traidy, having played a Selay (“Lonely Among Us”) and a Cardassian (the “Chain of Command” two-parter) on TNG, and who will play a Telsian in Voyager’s “Critical Care.” And Nicholas Worth, last seen as a Lisseppian captain in “Progress,” plays Sorm; he’ll appear twice in Voyager as a holographic character, the evil minion Lonzak, in “Bride of Chaotica” and “Shattered.”
Trivial matters: This is the second appearance of Bashir’s secret-agent program that debuted in “Our Man Bashir,” though details were kept to a minimum to avoid getting another cranky letter from MGM threatening legal action. Bashir has also decided to let other people play with him.
A major inspiration for this story is the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, in which Charles McGraw plays a cop assigned to protect a witness, played by Marie Windsor, and then falls in love with her. However, the “witness” is actually a cop working undercover as a decoy.
Rene Echevarria’s original script had Arissa see Odo while he was regenerating, and he would morph onto her. Ira Steven Behr nixed it, as he thought it was important for him to have sex as a humanoid, but a version of Echevarria’s original scene would be used in “Chimera” with Odo and Kira.
Dey Young wore the same costume in this episode that she wore as Hannah Bates in TNG’s “The Masterpiece Society.” (Hey, at least they knew it would fit…)
This is the second reference to the Orion Syndicate this season, following “The Ascent.” They’ll next be seen in “Honor Among Thieves” next season.
Walk with the Prophets: “I’ve never done anything sexual before.” Every time I watch this episode, I think that it happened at the wrong time. This is an episode that should have been produced during the period between “Broken Link” and “The Begotten” when Odo was made into a humanoid. They had introduced the character of Chalan back in “Broken Link” intending her to be a love interest, and I suspect that this script included several of the beats they might have used with her had they decided to actually use here.
And I kinda wish they had, not least because there really isn’t any qualitative difference between Jill Jacobson’s performance as Chalan and Dey Young’s as Arissa.
Indeed, Young’s performance is part of the problem here, as she just isn’t quite as compelling as the script wants her to be. In much the same way as her Hannah Bates in TNG’s “The Masterpiece Society” was serviceable, Young’s Arissa is perfectly fine, but not quite what you’d expect from the person for whom Odo breaks his proverbial cherry.
Even if you accept that she’s really awesome, though, Odo’s actions here are phenomenally out of character. All along, Odo has been about justice, and for him to completely ignore the fact that this woman is a thief and a liar because he thinks she’s dishy is hugely antithetical to the Odo we’ve been seeing for the past five years.
Probably the biggest problem with this episode is encapsulated by the fact that Odo has nipples. Why does Odo have nipples? Seriously, that makes no sense on any possible level. I mean, yes, they’re there because Rene Auberjonois has nipples, but there’s no reason for them to be there. It’s indicative of the lack of thought that went into this episode, starting with not doing this when Odo was a solid, and then not really embracing the notion of how an animated pile of goo would have sex, but just having Odo kind-of act like a solid, ’cause, y’know, why not?
I totally get Odo stumbling into a relationship with a humanoid. It’s clear that, even though he’s a changeling again, he’s still on the outs with the Great Link, and it makes sense for him to look at the possibility of more humanoid relationships, since that’s who he’s going to be living with for the foreseeable future as far as he knows.
But ultimately, the whole thing just feels so constructed. Odo isn’t a humanoid, he’s an animated pile of goo, and the episode refuses to even really acknowledge that except in cutesy lines tossed off like Odo saying he doesn’t have a heart and Arissa saying he could’ve fooled her. Instead, it plays out like an ordinary love story with bits of science fictional trappings because it’s a Star Trek show, but those trappings are basically irrelevant, leaving us with a bog-standard romance-of-the-week. There are only two reasons why it’s at all compelling viewing, and one of them is, as ever, Auberjonois, who totally sells Odo’s interest in Arissa, even if Young doesn’t always sell her reasons for that interest, and his anguish at the end when he discovers that Arissa isn’t even a real person, exactly, is palpable.
The other reason is the excellent, and tragically underused, double-act of John Durbin and Nicholas Worth as Traidy and Sorm, who nicely Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern their way into the episode and provide it with most of its charm, leavening the rather sodden romance storyline. (Bashir’s secret-agent program does likewise, but fear of cease-and-desist orders from MGM left that aspect of the story a bit wanting from sparseness, though O’Brien/Falcon’s line about not picking up hitchhikers was epic.)
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the guests, alongside Nelly Reifler, Tor.com’s own Emmet Asher-Perrin, and host Ryan Britt, for “Lust For Genre: Classic SF&F Readings form Our Favorite Humans,” tonight at Singularity & Co. in Brooklyn at 7.30pm. We’ll each be reading, not our own work, but the work of one of our favorite classic authors. Come on by!
Why does Odo have nipples?
If he didn’t have them, viewers would assume they were watching Game of Thrones (specifically the nippleless Unsullied).
This episode definitely should have taken place prior to The Begotten. It makes zero dramatic sense, unless Odo is a solid.
I’ll never understand why writers resorted to romance of the week plotlines. 40 minutes is not enough time to invest in a new couple, especially with no long-term consequences.
I think I like this episode even less than krad did. For me, Traidy and Sorm aren’t so much Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern as they are almost Pakled levels of stupid. And the humor associated with them just doesn’t work at all for me. They vaporized a guy and we’re supposed to laugh at jokes about carpet stains?
I want to know why Odo is so pink.
Or red or reddish pink. Or is it just that Arissa is so pale? But even that doesnt negate his pinkness! Is that cosmetic? Or makeup? The nipples i can overlook but the pink just stands out so much.
My co workers and i have conferred on the pink. Odo looks like an extra from the planet Salmonipplea.
I agree we needed to see more transhuman upgrades in Trek, but implanted data ports are kind of silly, because there’s such a thing as wireless communication. Having a piece of metal sticking out of your flesh — especially if it’s an open jack like Harper’s in Andromeda — has got to be one hell of an infection risk. So it’d make more sense for a data port to be a small chip embedded just under the skin and able to communicate through induction with another device.
Otherwise, not much to say about this episode — except, is this the first mention of the Orion Syndicate by that name, or at least the first episode to focus on it? That’s kinda significant. Although it’s weird that DS9 talked so much about the Orion Syndicate but never actually showed any Orions in it. I mean, I like the idea of it expanding into a more multispecies criminal alliance (which is sort of what the Orion sisters in my Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel were trying to achieve), but you’d think there’d still be some actual Orions here and there.
Also a nice touch that they took a species that had been mentioned before but never seen, the Idanians (of spice pudding fame), and used them as the featured aliens. I hate it that so many Trek episodes just make up new random aliens rather than latching onto previously named or glimpsed races and fleshing them out. It undermines the sense of a continuous universe when so many aliens just appear once and then vanish from reality. So taking a throwaway name like the Idanians and actually featuring them in a story was a nice change of pace.
Maybe these were Odo’s “bedroom” nipples, nudge nudge, wink wink…
Why wouldn’t Odo have nipples? It’s not as though he took his uniform off to reveal them; the uniform is just as much an expression of his shapeshifting as a naked chest is, and he would’ve just gone from one to the other. Male chests have nipples, so he would have nipples. It may even be a kind of habit to have them formed from having had nipples all the time he was solid, or it might’ve been for Arissa’s benefit (since, again, he’s effectively naked even if he appears to have a uniform).
So if this episode had happened when Odo was stuck in humanoid form (as it should have), would we have been focusing on whether or not it makes sense for Odo to have nipples? OK, probably.
Anyway, I would have expected Kira to be a bit more conflicted here. I know she’s currently involved with Shakkar, but did she really not have any romantic attraction to Odo at this point? Sure she’s happy for him, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bit of jealousy too.
Ross: He can’t even do an ear, but he can do nipples?
Christopher: To answer your question about the Orion Syndicate, I point you to the final paragraph in the Trivial Matters section. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s a “Star Trek does romance” episode. I do not believe there has ever been a “Star Trek does romance” episode that I have actually enjoyed. Furthermore, the whole espionage plot falls down on the fact that Arissa starts off being all super-secret-agenty and efficient, and ends with not even bothering to check that there might be another person hiding in a room full of really good places to hide.
However, the whole episode is rescued by “Car trouble, Mr Bashir? Hi Odo!”
Odo can turn into a hawk and fly around the promenade. Do you think working feathered wings are simpler than a convincing auricle? Of course Odo can do an ear. He chooses not to.
And even if he couldn’t, nipples are simpler than ears, so why would that even be surprising?
@11: Although I like to say that Odo’s birds probably look as unconvincing to other birds as his humanoids do to us humanoids. It’s just that we aren’t birds ourselves so we’re more easily fooled by the illusion.
@12: Doesn’t Odo himself say that in “Homefront/Paradise Lost”?
Also, feel free to add me to the list of people who barely remember this episode beyond “Odo gets it on with a witness”.
An entirely forgettable episode.
Re: nipples: Well, he’d just seen a great example pair…imitation is flattery after all.
Maybe they’re buttons for speed settings?
It bugs me when Odo fights two unarmed dudes, struggles and never shapeshifts.
We’ve seen what he can do.
Either his shapeshifting abilities have diminished since becoming a solid and then returning to shapeshifting, or he just prefers to stay in solid mode and struggle in a fight?
Or it’s just too much time and money to use on just any old episode? but if that is the case, can’t they just have one of the aliens use a weapon. correct me if i’m wrong, because it’s been a couple of weeks since i rewatched, but those two goons he struggled with were unarmed, yes?
wasn’t an unwatchable episode, just things like this bug me.
Rating’s about right, but for the wrong reasons in my mind. Odo and Arissa were adequate as a fling to establish some history for him before he gets serious. The problem was the ‘big idea’ or twist of the episode, brainwashing an undercover agent and getting the memories back later, had already been used multiple times on Trek as well as other science fiction. Heck, even Stephen King used it in The Stand.
And for someone who focuses on the ideas behind the episode a lot instead of the characters, that made this episode pretty weak.
I dont’ know if Odo would have actually felt anything during his “coupling.” I mean, sure, he can apparently do nipples, as KRAD has pointed out, and pointed out (lol), but, assuming he had a good time, which is kind of shown on his face (beyond the emotional connection, I mean), that means he can do nerve endings in his…uhh, “great link” but he can’t do a face or ears? I don’t know, I don’t care about this episode. I just liked Sisko’s reaction to the gossip Worf so disaproved of—“Niiicce.”
happytoscrap: The morphing effect was expensive, so they tried to be sparing in using it. And one of the two guys was armed….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I find it a bit amusing that the nipples are among the most controversial part of this episode. Why WOULDN’T he have nipples? I mean, when you think about it, why would he have ANY part of human anatomy, since he doesn’t really need any of it. But since he’s trying to imitate a human, why wouldn’t it have nipples? I think it would be much wierder if he didn’t.
Anyway, yeah, I don’t have much else to say here, I was kind of surprised that he fell so quickly for somebody that was obviously not what she was saying she was. And I probably spent a bit too much time wondering about the mechanics of humanoid/shapeshifter intimacy…
@20: The idea is, Odo’s face is lacking in detail compared to a human(oid)’s, so it seems reasonable to expect that his simulation of a naked body would have a similar action-figure smoothness to it (well, except for the bits he needed to simulate in order to have humanoid-style sex).
Two nipple theories:
1. Arissa likes to play with her partner’s nipples, so she asked Odo to make some.
2. He had them when he was a solid, and something about them made a strong impression on him (chafing? Who knows?) and so they became firmly embedded in his concept of his humanoid appearance.
Thanks, Keith.
I figured cost might have had something to do with it.
I agree with others that this would have been a better episode to do back when Odo was a solid. And all the strange comments on Odo’s nipples has made me wonder about Odo’s penis. Is this a family thread?
If you get turned into a solid, and all of a sudden you need to drink water to live, you’d suddenly have the need to urinate for the first time. So you’d need a urethra. But you wouldn’t neccesarily need a penis….So when he was suddenly turned into a solid, did he get male parts?
I don’t know if Odo experiences any physical pleasure coupling with a solid, but I bet the solid human female would. he could be any shape and size she desired.
Sorry if this is too PG-13 for a Trek thread. The nipples people have my mind wandering.
I agree that this episode would have made far more sense had it taken place back when Odo was stuck in solid form. Now that he’s a Changeling again, he shouldn’t really have hormones to be led astray by. I can believe Changeling-Odo wanting to form emotional connections, but not really the immediate lust we seem to get here.
Regarding nipples and any other parts of Odo’s simulated naked anatomy, I think that after this episode I sort of assumed that, having actually lived as a humanoid for an extended period, he’s much better at humanoid shapeshifting than he was before. I’d buy that he could do better with faces too, at this point, but he prefers to keep his relatively-featureless form because he considers it to be his true face.
-Andy
Hey, folks — deadlines loom and I must delay “Business as Usual” to Wednesday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s just as well. Too many World Cup games on the air to keep track as it is.
I always liked this episode. It’s quiet, sensitive and understated and Dey Young’s acting fits perfectly into this. Isn’t it logical that Odo is interested in a woman that is a mystery? And fittingly ironic that she remains or becomes one at the end again?
Instead it’s all about nipples here. Oh, well …
I have been chuckling so much at this rewatch and the comments, my wife is looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. All this talk of nipples has me way off-track of what I wanted to say, which isn’t much.
Composing myself.
I didn’t mind Dey Young’s acting or Odo falling for Alissa. He’s lived among humanoids for years now, been a humanoid himself, and has finally met someone who interests him and who returns the affection. It makes since he would finally throw caution to the wind and act on feelings. Of course, this would have worked better if this had happened while Odo was still actually a humanoid, but it still works given all Odo’s been through the past five seasons.
As for the nipples– I’m sorry I can’t….
I really liked the episode, and I’m surprised that everyone feels it was a mistake to not have it while Odo was a Solid. I feel that would have sent the message that he should only be in a relationship if he’s human. He was interested in Kira before he was human, so why shouldn’t he be interested in someone after his time being a human? I think putting him in a relationship while he was human would be somewhat cliche – “Oh, now that he’s human, NOW we can put him in a relationship.” I think waiting was a better storyline. Who says a Changeling can’t be interested in having a relationship?
Strange. I wasn’t really buying the attraction between Odo and Alissa and to be honest the post-coital scene was beyond awkward. And not to get too much into their business, but I’m having trouble believing that a shapeshifter who’s never had sex with a humanoid before just jumps straight into the saddle so naturally that she doesn’t even notice. But when Alissa walked in after her memory was restored… THOSE few moments between them were really authentic, and poignant. Odo sadly saying he fell in love with a woman who never really existed actually got to me, and I loved her compassionate response. On the strength of the ending, I’d bump this up to a 6.
Damn, I really need to catch up on the comments…
I did really like this episode. It doesn’t make ANY sense whatsoever for Odo to have sex in humanoid form. The story about an undercover cop working undercover without her knowing it is good enough on it’s own. It didn’t really need this half-assed love story.
Why didn’t the DS9 internal sensors pick up the phaser discharge at the start of the episode? I thought that was a fairly standard thing (at least I remember them being mentioned in TNG).
@32/RogerPavelle: DS9’s internal systems were never as reliable as Starfleet’s, both because it was a decades-old Cardassian station and because it had been thoroughly trashed by the Cardassians on their abandonment of it. For all of O’Brien’s constant efforts to restore it to full function, there may still have been things that didn’t work right even this far into the series.
@33
Maybe so, but that seems like one of the features that both Sisko and Odo would have insisted be up and running very quickly, and that the Cardassians especially would want for safety reasons.
No one remarked at how wildly inappropriate Odo behaved in this episode? Odo threatened to have a female suspect strip-searched… I thought it was so over-the-top inappropriate I laughed. After catching her in a criminal act (attempting to access confidential computer info), he let her off the hook because he was interested in her. Then he asked her to stay in his quarters and had a sexual encounter with her while acting in a professional capacity to provide her security?
Nothing in this episode made much sense to me considering how by-the-book Odo is.
I thought Odo got rid of the bed after In Purgatory’s Shadow. Arissa looks like the Scottish Widow at the end (albeit the wrong colour). 1: Trek relationships (especially the romantic kind) sink or swim on the chemistry of the actors. 30: She wasn’t that compassionate – she never bothered to tell Odo her real name. 33: DS9’s systems go to hell whenever O’Brien spends too much time away from the station, like Honour Among Thieves.
The play they’re given to act out is called “The Queen’s Gambit”. Nothing to do with chess, apparently.
Mods, the index page for the DS9 rewatch automatically forwards to this episode.
@38: Thank you for the heads up! Update: Should be fixed–you may need to clear your browser’s cache, but the link should work properly now.
I think the nipple thing is a bit overblown by Krad. I respect immersion, but that minor little detail had no bearing on my enjoyment of the episode, in fact, I didn’t even notice it. As for the two alien hitmen, I agree that they were a great double act and I could watch John Durbin smarmying it up all day. As for his character’s companion, Sorm, I’m pretty sure his vaporizing of the Idanian was absolutely not accidental and he was just indulging in his perverse sense of humor that we see throughout the episode.
Well, I liked this episode. I imagine not liking this episode is common among deep DS9 lovers because it’s more of a TNG or Voyager than a DS9 story. Which is kinda why I liked it.
Nipples are pleasurable. The real question is not “why did he have nipples” – the question is “why did he not have MORE nipples”.
I agree though, that this would have been a better episode when he was permahuman — or it would have been better for him to melt in his sorrow at the end. I know it was expensive, but don’t do a major Odo episode without budgeting some shapeshiftery, then?