For several episodes I really thought that Kasidy Yates may have been a changeling. There was something about her actress's delivery and the way the camera focused on her that made me suspicious. Of course we find out that she was doing errands for the Maquis but I thought it would be more serious than that.
You know that's something the show glosses over massively. Looking exactly like someone important is useful in the short term, but if you really want to accomplish anything of note, you have to be a convincing fake. That means getting to know the one you're replacing. Being able to not just look like them, but ACT like them too.
6:14 it was something I didn’t notice until much later on but they had switched uniforms on DS9 to the grey and blacks while the real doctor was still wearing the original DS9 uniform while he was held captive. Just an interesting attention to detail that does give an idea of when Bashir was replaced.
Can you please do a video on how Qo'nos seemingly became habitable again after everything that happened in The Undiscovered? It's a really big plot hole that I would like to learn about.
Qo'nos ozone layer was damaged. But it can recover. Klingons needed to shift their budget from the military to find a solution. Note in Picard Humans found a way to repair their biosphere. Starfleet did help in the Klingon evacuation of the most affected areas. While the Romulans ceased contact with the Federation not so with the Klingons. House Duras collaborating with the Romulans. And Romulans attacking Klingon colonies.
@dustinjoosen5901 while some aspects of TOS have been retconned to fit into the more fleshed out version of star trek in the TNG era of shows and to line up the timeline with modern day (like world war three and the eugenics wars being pushed further down the timeline), like with a lot of long running franchises, the general plot points and characters are the same, the canon of TOS is still mostly intact.
If I remember correctly in Paradise Lost/Homefront the changeling that appears to Benjamin Sisko in the form of Chief O’Brien says “what if I told you there are only 4 changelings on earth?” When Sisko asks him why he should believe him the Changeling says “4 are more than enough”. The changeling could have either been lying or telling the truth. I just thought that was an interesting fact to mention. Another great video
Changelings infiltrate by replacing someone who is not the main person, e.g. Martok instead of Gowron, Lovok instead of the actual Tal Shiar head, Bashir instead of Sisko or Admiral Ross, etc. That way there are less eyes on them.
The funny thing is it's actually really easy to detect changelings, like deceptively easy. All you have to do is use your transporter technologies combined with the bloodletting concept, but instead of trying to bleed someone or take a pound of flesh, you just take an ever so tiny amount of fat cells from here and there, a couple blood cells from here and there, maybe some hair cells, and then once you gather a random sample from all over the place, a little bit of each, well, if it reverts, you know, it's changeling.
It being the changeling beshir healing the young changeling would help explain why the dominion didn't do anything try to save the young changeling themselves.
Now in STO we see the Undine able to do what the founders can do shapeshift into everyone we get that with the first story mission its not the founders that are a threat but the undine being the bigger threat post voyager time.
Nope, that was Voyager as they create a replica of Starfleet Academy and assume human forms due to being afraid of a possible threat by mankind as a staging ground for a mission on Earth, Janeway talks then out of it by pointing out Starfleet is not even aware of their existence besides Voyager crew and they know who started the whole conflict wasnt Species 8472 but the Borg that invaded Fluid Space. They wouldnt be very good at it if Starfleet had warning since Voyager was not only able to find out what they were up and even doing some infiltration of their own but also figured out to force then to revert into their true form. Also STO is really dumb with them, in Voyager they run rampart with the Borg being unable to do anything and that was their home turf as all the Undine needed to blow up a planet was a few bioships to focus a beam were in STO not only they are terrible at the whole impersonation thing because players need to feel SMRT by seeing past them to the point of absurdity (and I am talking about the Ambassador since that is just depressing) but also apparently found the need for *compensating* making huge planet killers when they can already do that like in Voyager as one of the cutscenes shown. To be fair, STO suffered a lot of revisions and deletions from when the game launched and the Undine plot suffered a lot, they exist at this point to justify the whole breakdown of the Klingon and Federation relationship as well to explain why the Gorn are part of the KDF but play little role, in fact before the Iconian War the Undine did agreed to help in it but the devs apparently forgotten about it and that was their last proper appearance, kinda a shame considering they were meant to be the "big baddies" before the Iconians reveal but that is STO .... wasted potential.
Say what you will about the Founders, at least they didn't shy away from dirtying their -hands- jelly extensions. They might model themselves gods, but they don't just sit on their thrones as a big puddle and let the Jem}'Hedar do all the work
I somehow doubt it. If a Borg tries to inject tha nanites, the Changeling might just return to their fluid form, leaving the nanites behind... I know the Borg struggle to assimilate the Undine. I guess the shapeshifting doesn't go well with the implants.
I'm currently not sure about the timeline but imagine one of those the were replaced was one of the Species 8472 starfleet infiltrators ... or vice verse
Can you do a lore video on starship decals/racing stripes? I never noticed that the same ship class could have a different colors, IE The Cerritos has yellow while the Alhambra has blue. Or Excelsior has navy while the Enterprise B has Turquois.
Did the changelings have to physically touch their targets to imitate people's personality? At times I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief when a changeling could not just copy a person's likeness but their brain/mind, to the point they could engage in convincing small talk for weeks... such as the Bashir changeling and Miles O'Brien. I just thought of something.. changeling Bashir helped Kira give birth right? He was there, looking at her with her legs spread wide. So when Odo linked, he got to see the memory image of Kira's gaping wormhole? I bet he loved that. 😀
Wouldn't the transporters have detected the changelings? as it was able to detect whatever it scanned in pre-transport initiation, it would of course need to be able to detect the matter it was scanning such that it would detect "changeling matter" because said matter is held in a different sort of bond than "solids". And, say scanning a human, it would detect every single cell as it scanned said cells down to the sub-atomic composition, a changeling would be composed not bone-cells or muscle-cells and so on, but of the changeling-cells held in a specific form to mimic bone and muscle cells and so on, thus even in the scanning-stage of transportation, starfleet should have been able to detect changelings.. (changelings as seen in the shows and lore don't change to become solids, they just assume the form by changing their appearance).
@@keithwiggins3131 6, not 5. Chameloids and Founders are (for now) theoretically different species, but we'll have to wait and see if the Section 31 longtrek changes that. Either way, the Dominion was around long before Kirk, so it's not impossible.
Well, regarding Martok's wife and why she never figured out he wasn't actually Martok, Martok himself gives the answer: "She shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste." Perhaps if she'd been more willing to accomodate him, she might have noticed. The flipside of that is, she _did_ notice, but for some reason never called it out, and when the real Martok came back, she found herself... _disapoinited_ shall we say :P
Changelings can make themselves warp capable, I’ll never shake how incompetent Picard S3 made them, bumbling around trying to capture a single human. I’m hoping SNW return of more episodic content will serve the Star Trek formula better not needing a ticking clock for every season when the writers aren’t up for making that compelling.
Why put any limit on the lifespan of a Founder? What was it the female changeling said? The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes the drop. It seems strange to put a limit on that. Maybe you meant a single changeling like Odo. But what if two changelings linked like in Season 6 of DS9? It seems to me like a smaller ocean. Thoughts?
I like to joke that Bashir was replaced in The Search Part 2 but boy, would that create problems. Such as, why would a Changeling try to cure the Quickening or help rogue Jem Hadar or have sex with Leeta....well, who wouldn't do that? Does that Founder escape before the Runabout explodes? Dominion has very long range transporters. That O'Brien impersonator must've felt really dumb later. If he'd killed Sisko right then and there, the Dominion would've won the war that came later.
All those early Changelings DID get around the blood test by containing the blood of the intimidated person within them and releasing some when a sample has to be taken. PICARD writers are not known for their imagination or ability to research.
I really really really really really really really really really really really really wish the 'twist' at the end of Picard Season 3 wasn't 'it was the Borg all along'. There were elements of S3 I liked but I wish we could have done away with that final episode altogether. I do remember a lot of people being quite positive on S3 at the time but on reflection I think people were just giving it higher praise than it deserved after the mess that is Discovery and the first two seasons of Picard, they were just happy to have something that was slightly better than expected.
Okay, I haven't seen Picard, but why would the Dominion want the Borg of all races to have more power? To take over the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, along with the wormhole back to the Dominion? Are the Changelings not able to be assimilated by the Borg? No matter their desire for revenge, they aren't stupid. The Borg are the Galaxy's biggest threat. Helping them doesn't seem to be helping the Dominion in any way - even if they can't assimilate Changelings, their slave worlds could be taken by the Borg, leaving the Dominion with nothing.
I gotta say, I've had my suspicions ever since I first heard you say, 'I've been Ric'
Everyone knows that isn't how he spells his name.
For several episodes I really thought that Kasidy Yates may have been a changeling. There was something about her actress's delivery and the way the camera focused on her that made me suspicious. Of course we find out that she was doing errands for the Maquis but I thought it would be more serious than that.
you had a good instinct nontheless ^^
I agree, it may be bad acting or bad writing but I never fully trusted that character.
You know that's something the show glosses over massively.
Looking exactly like someone important is useful in the short term, but if you really want to accomplish anything of note, you have to be a convincing fake. That means getting to know the one you're replacing. Being able to not just look like them, but ACT like them too.
Could've been an interesting tie-in if the 4 changelings nOt'Brien says are on Earth were some of the group of 10 from Pic S3.
6:14 it was something I didn’t notice until much later on but they had switched uniforms on DS9 to the grey and blacks while the real doctor was still wearing the original DS9 uniform while he was held captive.
Just an interesting attention to detail that does give an idea of when Bashir was replaced.
I laughed, the settee laughed.
Can you please do a video on how Qo'nos seemingly became habitable again after everything that happened in The Undiscovered? It's a really big plot hole that I would like to learn about.
I wouldn't count TOS as too canon tbh
Qo'nos ozone layer was damaged. But it can recover. Klingons needed to shift their budget from the military to find a solution. Note in Picard Humans found a way to repair their biosphere.
Starfleet did help in the Klingon evacuation of the most affected areas.
While the Romulans ceased contact with the Federation not so with the Klingons. House Duras collaborating with the Romulans. And Romulans attacking Klingon colonies.
I'm guessing that the federation helped them in some way or they fixed it themselves with their own technology.
@dustinjoosen5901 “I wouldn’t count OG Star Trek as too canon.”
Bro, watch yourself. You might get jumped for that kind of heresy! 😅
@dustinjoosen5901 while some aspects of TOS have been retconned to fit into the more fleshed out version of star trek in the TNG era of shows and to line up the timeline with modern day (like world war three and the eugenics wars being pushed further down the timeline), like with a lot of long running franchises, the general plot points and characters are the same, the canon of TOS is still mostly intact.
If I remember correctly in Paradise Lost/Homefront the changeling that appears to Benjamin Sisko in the form of Chief O’Brien says “what if I told you there are only 4 changelings on earth?” When Sisko asks him why he should believe him the Changeling says “4 are more than enough”. The changeling could have either been lying or telling the truth. I just thought that was an interesting fact to mention. Another great video
Changelings infiltrate by replacing someone who is not the main person, e.g. Martok instead of Gowron, Lovok instead of the actual Tal Shiar head, Bashir instead of Sisko or Admiral Ross, etc. That way there are less eyes on them.
mind you one did briefly impersonate admiral leyton.
It's all fun and games until your sofa starts changing shape....
meh, that's still fun and games... just not for anyone sitting on it at the time.
Or your dog turns out to be a murderous coalescent organism. Whoops! Wrong show.
It's just a Yul Oolu design.
This feels like the setup for a classic UA-cam skit
just so long as it is not a plastic sofa then it might eat you.
The funny thing is it's actually really easy to detect changelings, like deceptively easy. All you have to do is use your transporter technologies combined with the bloodletting concept, but instead of trying to bleed someone or take a pound of flesh, you just take an ever so tiny amount of fat cells from here and there, a couple blood cells from here and there, maybe some hair cells, and then once you gather a random sample from all over the place, a little bit of each, well, if it reverts, you know, it's changeling.
It's super easy, barely an inconvenience!
Just from the end of your video, I love the idea of a forgetful undercover spy. That got me. 😂
What are the odds.. Im 14 mins into re-watching ' by infernos light ' and this comes into my feed 😂
0:00 PROVE IT!
WHO was Captian of the USS Enterprise from 2381 to 2385?
That intro had me cackling XD
It being the changeling beshir healing the young changeling would help explain why the dominion didn't do anything try to save the young changeling themselves.
Now in STO we see the Undine able to do what the founders can do shapeshift into everyone we get that with the first story mission its not the founders that are a threat but the undine being the bigger threat post voyager time.
Nope, that was Voyager as they create a replica of Starfleet Academy and assume human forms due to being afraid of a possible threat by mankind as a staging ground for a mission on Earth, Janeway talks then out of it by pointing out Starfleet is not even aware of their existence besides Voyager crew and they know who started the whole conflict wasnt Species 8472 but the Borg that invaded Fluid Space.
They wouldnt be very good at it if Starfleet had warning since Voyager was not only able to find out what they were up and even doing some infiltration of their own but also figured out to force then to revert into their true form.
Also STO is really dumb with them, in Voyager they run rampart with the Borg being unable to do anything and that was their home turf as all the Undine needed to blow up a planet was a few bioships to focus a beam were in STO not only they are terrible at the whole impersonation thing because players need to feel SMRT by seeing past them to the point of absurdity (and I am talking about the Ambassador since that is just depressing) but also apparently found the need for *compensating* making huge planet killers when they can already do that like in Voyager as one of the cutscenes shown.
To be fair, STO suffered a lot of revisions and deletions from when the game launched and the Undine plot suffered a lot, they exist at this point to justify the whole breakdown of the Klingon and Federation relationship as well to explain why the Gorn are part of the KDF but play little role, in fact before the Iconian War the Undine did agreed to help in it but the devs apparently forgotten about it and that was their last proper appearance, kinda a shame considering they were meant to be the "big baddies" before the Iconians reveal but that is STO .... wasted potential.
Say what you will about the Founders, at least they didn't shy away from dirtying their -hands- jelly extensions.
They might model themselves gods, but they don't just sit on their thrones as a big puddle and let the Jem}'Hedar do all the work
Speaking of dirty, I loved their more realistic and grotesque body horror appearance in Picard. It reminded me of that scene near the end of Akira.
Great vid, love the Trek lore.
I think Bashir was taken before Rapture.
Not sure why this didn't come to mind before, but can the Borg assimilate a changeling?
I somehow doubt it. If a Borg tries to inject tha nanites, the Changeling might just return to their fluid form, leaving the nanites behind...
I know the Borg struggle to assimilate the Undine. I guess the shapeshifting doesn't go well with the implants.
You forgot to mention the Changeling spotted on the footage of the bombing of the Antwerp Conference at the start of the episode Homefront
then again i suspect that could have been a fake by admiral leytons mob to help create the conditions for his coup.
I💚Ric ✌🏻😎🖖🏻
I'm currently not sure about the timeline but imagine one of those the were replaced was one of the Species 8472 starfleet infiltrators ... or vice verse
Can you do a lore video on starship decals/racing stripes? I never noticed that the same ship class could have a different colors, IE The Cerritos has yellow while the Alhambra has blue. Or Excelsior has navy while the Enterprise B has Turquois.
Did the changelings have to physically touch their targets to imitate people's personality? At times I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief when a changeling could not just copy a person's likeness but their brain/mind, to the point they could engage in convincing small talk for weeks... such as the Bashir changeling and Miles O'Brien.
I just thought of something.. changeling Bashir helped Kira give birth right? He was there, looking at her with her legs spread wide. So when Odo linked, he got to see the memory image of Kira's gaping wormhole? I bet he loved that. 😀
Wouldn't the transporters have detected the changelings? as it was able to detect whatever it scanned in pre-transport initiation, it would of course need to be able to detect the matter it was scanning such that it would detect "changeling matter" because said matter is held in a different sort of bond than "solids". And, say scanning a human, it would detect every single cell as it scanned said cells down to the sub-atomic composition, a changeling would be composed not bone-cells or muscle-cells and so on, but of the changeling-cells held in a specific form to mimic bone and muscle cells and so on, thus even in the scanning-stage of transportation, starfleet should have been able to detect changelings.. (changelings as seen in the shows and lore don't change to become solids, they just assume the form by changing their appearance).
A changeling replaced my reproductive organ. It has decided to stay.
Wasn't there a changeling in Kirks era? When Kirt was trying to escape Klingon prison in one of the Star Trek films?
Yes star trek 5 but it's possible she might have been a different changeling not the ones from the Dominion.
Chamelon. Not a changeling :)
@@dustinjoosen5901 I agree.
@dustinjoosen5901 Ah, okay. That explains it. Thanks.
@@keithwiggins3131 6, not 5. Chameloids and Founders are (for now) theoretically different species, but we'll have to wait and see if the Section 31 longtrek changes that. Either way, the Dominion was around long before Kirk, so it's not impossible.
Well, regarding Martok's wife and why she never figured out he wasn't actually Martok, Martok himself gives the answer:
"She shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste."
Perhaps if she'd been more willing to accomodate him, she might have noticed.
The flipside of that is, she _did_ notice, but for some reason never called it out, and when the real Martok came back, she found herself... _disapoinited_ shall we say :P
It’s all fun and buffoonery until someone wants their artifact back after it walks out.
Changelings can make themselves warp capable, I’ll never shake how incompetent Picard S3 made them, bumbling around trying to capture a single human. I’m hoping SNW return of more episodic content will serve the Star Trek formula better not needing a ticking clock for every season when the writers aren’t up for making that compelling.
12:26 Very Funny.
Why put any limit on the lifespan of a Founder? What was it the female changeling said? The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes the drop. It seems strange to put a limit on that. Maybe you meant a single changeling like Odo. But what if two changelings linked like in Season 6 of DS9? It seems to me like a smaller ocean. Thoughts?
I like to joke that Bashir was replaced in The Search Part 2 but boy, would that create problems. Such as, why would a Changeling try to cure the Quickening or help rogue Jem Hadar or have sex with Leeta....well, who wouldn't do that?
Does that Founder escape before the Runabout explodes? Dominion has very long range transporters.
That O'Brien impersonator must've felt really dumb later. If he'd killed Sisko right then and there, the Dominion would've won the war that came later.
3:01 it was a saber bear not a saber boar.
Suddenly I feel the need to grab myself a tin foil hat!
In which episode the Romulan is discovered
LSA!
All those early Changelings DID get around the blood test by containing the blood of the intimidated person within them and releasing some when a sample has to be taken.
PICARD writers are not known for their imagination or ability to research.
You Make The Best Star Trek Videos! 🚀
Everytime I see a new one, I get excited and immediately watch it. 🎉
Keep up the Amazing job! 😎
I really really really really really really really really really really really really wish the 'twist' at the end of Picard Season 3 wasn't 'it was the Borg all along'. There were elements of S3 I liked but I wish we could have done away with that final episode altogether. I do remember a lot of people being quite positive on S3 at the time but on reflection I think people were just giving it higher praise than it deserved after the mess that is Discovery and the first two seasons of Picard, they were just happy to have something that was slightly better than expected.
Honestly, I put Discovery into it's own timeline if I could. That way we'd have, maybe, less reasons to be mad at it's existence. And less headaches.
Never.
Because none of that happened.
🤘😄🤘
Random question: aren't those invasive blood tests a *massive* violation of privacy and civil rights?
Okay, I haven't seen Picard, but why would the Dominion want the Borg of all races to have more power? To take over the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, along with the wormhole back to the Dominion? Are the Changelings not able to be assimilated by the Borg? No matter their desire for revenge, they aren't stupid. The Borg are the Galaxy's biggest threat. Helping them doesn't seem to be helping the Dominion in any way - even if they can't assimilate Changelings, their slave worlds could be taken by the Borg, leaving the Dominion with nothing.
Cuz this was not the dominion, like Rick said. It was 10 chenglings who had been Federation prisoners and escaped, and then wanted revenge