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In the Star Trek universe, the fictional material "Latinum" is valued in much the way we value gold. It's almost always referred to as "gold-pressed" (the naturally liquid substance encapsulated in gold "containers") and usually shown on-screen as rigid gold-colored bricks or rectangular tokens. "Latinum" itself is described as being a liquid, and only appears on screen as a liquid once - at the end of "Who Mourns for Morn?", when Morn apparently regurgitates a small quantity into a glass.

My question is: what was used to depict it on-screen? It looks somewhat similar to mercury, but it sloshed in the glass in a very surreal way (mercury wouldn't move like that). I'm thinking it was CGI, but based on the way Odo's shapeshifting was CGI'd I didn't think CGI was good/mature enough when the episode was produced to deliver the effect as we see it.

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Was it CGI or some sort of practical effect?

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    I'm imagine like everything else in trek, it was glue mixed with silver paint.
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 0:41
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    This show was produced nearly seven years after Terminator 2. At this point they were able to seamlessly animate entire fleets of ships with CGI.
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 0:49
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    @Valorum ...and five years after Jurassic Park.
    – J...
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 11:37
  • @Valorum the only reason I wondered was because the only other "fluid" CGI I recall seeing on the show was Odo's shapeshifting, and it always struck me as rather crude and sometimes cartoonish, where, apart from its surreal slow motion slosh, the "Latinum" looked believably real.
    – Anthony X
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 14:28

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According to an interview with Ronald D. Moore referenced in Memory Alpha, it was done with CGI.

Q. Ron, I think you may have missed it, but the week we were discussing "Who Mourns For Morn", I asked if the liquid Morn expressed into his glass at the end of the episode was a CGI VFX or if it was accomplished through some sort of on-set rigging.

Ronald Moore: This was a CGI effect.

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