Warning: Contains spoilers about the latest season of Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: Picard’s third season is proving popular with longtime fans and newcomers alike. But just who are the elusive shapeshifters that always seem to be one step ahead of our heroes?
Members of this unique alien race, known by Starfleet as “Changelings,” can morph their form at will, making them one of the most dangerous species in the entire Star Trek universe. The Great Link refers to the combining of many Changelings in their natural liquid form, who can share each other’s thoughts.
The Changelings were known to Dominion races as the Founders, in reference to their founding of the Dominion that controlled much of the Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy. The Founders created several genetically modified slave species to do their bidding. But the Founders were not always so powerful. For thousands of years, they were persecuted by “solids” (the name given by the Founders to all non-Founder races), who mistrusted their shapeshifting abilities. This led them to settle on a distant rogue planet and left them with a deep hatred of solid species.
Much of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine involved the protracted Dominion War between the Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant that led to huge numbers of dead. Eventually, the Founders were infected with a deadly virus that would have slowly killed them were it not for the actions of Odo (an abandoned Changeling who lived and worked on DS9). After an antidote was developed, Odo singlehandedly cured the Founders, and this act helped secure peace.
Odo decided to return to the Great Link at the end of DS9. Decades later, he warned his old friend Worf about a renegade group of Changelings out to cause chaos in the Federation. We learn in the latest season of Picard that members of this terrorist sect have stolen quantum tunneling technology and impersonated Starfleet officers.
The Founders already caused millions of deaths during the Dominion War. Viewers are left to wonder just how destructive this latest wave of Changeling infiltration will be.
