Star Trek DS9’s Biggest Con Man Gets Vindicated

Before we can dive into this tale of Odo and his people, it’s important to quickly review the episode “Vortex.” In this episode, a Gamma Quadrant visitor named Croden kills a man and is taken into custody by Odo, which is when the criminal alleges to know more about what happened to his shapeshifting race and even where they now live.

Eventually, Croden is revealed to be a liar who was conning Odo as a way of saving both himself and his daughter whom he had put in stasis on an asteroid within the Gamma Quadrant.

For both Odo and the audience, “Vortex” was an emotional rollercoaster: it’s hard not to sympathize with Odo, a man who feels completely alone in the universe. Despite all the signs that Croden can’t really be trusted, we are instantly caught up in Odo’s fervent need to believe.

And even though he bonds with the criminal in his custody and ultimately lets him go, we are left sympathizing even more with our resident shapeshifter when he realizes that all of the seeming truths about his people were complete lies.

Eventually, Deep Space Nine did more than provide a few answers about Odo’s people. The show revealed that his race is known as The Founders, and they control the Dominion, the most powerful empire within the Gamma Quadrant. Even as Odo’s people became the show’s central villains and we learned more about them, a funny thing happened: some of Croden’s apparent lies from “Vortex” were proven to be more or less correct.

For example, one of Croden’s claims is that shapeshifters once lived on his planet and were ultimately driven away by the solids. While the Founders were most likely never on Croden’s specific homeworld, we later discover that they had to flee from constant humanoid persecution in their earlier days.

In fact, one of the reasons the Founders trust the Vorta so much is that one of them hid a Changeling so he wouldn’t be killed by an angry mob; in exchange, the Founders transformed this primitive race into the very face of the Dominion.

Another claim Croden made in “Vortex” is that the Changelings eventually found a new home inside a unique Gamma Quadrant nebula. Sure enough, later episodes of the show revealed that these unique creatures moved to a rogue planet in the Omarion Nebula.

This is where they created the Great Link, arguably the true source of their power in the galaxy.

It’s interesting to ponder whether the Deep Space Nine writers intentionally created the background for the Founders based on Croden’s lies in “Vortex” or if it’s all a big coincidence.

After all, it’s no surprise that a race that could impersonate anyone would be bullied by solids, and in Star Trek, there’s no better place to hide than a nebula. Still, intentional or not, Croden is one con man who was ultimately proven right in subsequent seasons.