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At the end of "The Search," Odo asks the Female Changeling to allow himself, Kira, Sisko, and the rest to leave the Great Link planet. The Female Changeling permits this, stating that no changeling has ever harmed another.

How could she possibly know this? One hundred Changelings had been sent out many years (centuries?) earlier, and there was certainly the possibility that some of them had encountered each other, gotten into some sort of disagreement, and fought.

Perhaps the Female Changeling was only speaking of Changelings which she had knowledge of---those in the Link.

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    If she didn't know about it, how could she know about it?
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 1, 2017 at 21:07
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    Pretty much any statement made by anyone could be preceded by "As far as I know," but we usually leave it out.
    – Organic Marble
    Commented Jan 1, 2017 at 22:20
  • @Valorum: To be fair, she could have sufficient self-awareness to realise the limitations of her knowledge, and accordingly decide not to make entirely unproveable blanket statements. Though Organic Marble has a point.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 14:18

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The female shapeshifter has perfect memory of the entirety of shapeshifter history aside from the hundred infants that they sent out into the galaxy. Odo was the first to return home.

FEMALE: You had no choice. The urge to return home was implanted in your genetic makeup. And now, thanks to the passageway, you're the first to return to us. We weren't expecting you so soon.

ODO: When were you expecting me?

FEMALE: Not for another three hundred years.

You're not wrong that these other 99 might actually be fighting with each other like cats in a bag, but how would she know?

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    +1. Though I've always hated the exchange you quote, because in the first episode of DS9 it's implied that Odo actually came through the wormhole to begin with. It's too minor a retcon to really be considered a retcon, but still. :-P
    – ruakh
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 0:38
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    @ruakh - I don't see why that shouldn't be the case. His people live on the other side of the wormhole and sent a hundred self-guided pods off in 100 directions. One of those pods went through the wormhole and landed on Bajor. A few years later he came back through the same wormhole and found his people again.
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 0:40
  • @Valorum Yes, but if there were some mechanism guaranteeing, as the exchange suggests, that it wouldn't land next door, it should have then ended up three hundred years' travel time away from Bajor (also where in the galaxy would it take three hundred years to return from, given Voyager's projected travel time of 70-odd years?)
    – Random832
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 0:55
  • @Valorum: But then why did they have any expectation about when he would get back? The statement only seems to make sense if they knew roughly where Odo's pod was supposed to end up, and how long it would take it to get back.
    – ruakh
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 0:57
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    @Random832 - Voyager's travel time is based on a high-warp trajectory. The pods are (presumably) designed to travel for decades at lower warp without the need for maintenance.
    – Valorum
    Commented Jan 2, 2017 at 1:00

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