One of my favorite Trek characters, Odo, performed by the late, great Rene Auberjonois is an epic command officer in Star Trek Fleet Command.
He’s a below-decks officer, which is fitting, as he was rarely ever in command during Deep Space Nine.
Officer Ability
Fluidic Strength – Odo increases base Armor, Shield Deflection, and Dodge by (40%, 50%, 60%, 80%, 100%) against Solo Armadas.
This month’s arc gave us a Solo Armada crew, with Bashir and Jadzia Dax. This is a pretty straightforward defensive ability, and isn’t dependent on any particular stat.
Below Decks Ability of Odo
Right Is Might – Odo increases Critical Hit Damage by (20%, 25%, 35%, 45%, and 60%.)
As Below Decks abilities go, this one’s pretty great. It works in all scenarios, so PvP, PvE, Armadas, Hostiles, etc. Critical hit damage is always welcome. It wouldn’t work with his officer ability, but throwing him on any of your strike team crews would be fun. The same would be true for pairing him with Khan or Honorguard Worf.
He’s also an officer who’ll you’ll want for events like Heavy Hitter that rely on doing critical damage.
Nothing really all that complicated here, so we’ll get on to something that’s absolutely fascinating, the life and background of Odo-portraying actor Rene Auborjonois.
Rene Auberjonois
One of the best parts of writing anything is doing the research (the most challenging bit is making sure I’ve spelled Auberjonois correctly each time.) I’m tempted to start another blog about the random fascinating things I come across every day. But it’s fascinating. And all over the map. I hope I don’t lose you here.
This story reads like an episode of James Burke’s amazing Connections documentaries. There are so many different ways to go here.
Rene Auborjonois’s grandfather was also named Rene. Born in 1857 in Lausanne, Switzerland, the elder Rene started out to become a banker, before joining the Swiss Army and serving as a lieutenant in the cavalry.
After leaving the army, he studied art, first as a realist, and then as an impressionist.
The sad bit about the grandfather was often disappointed in his work. He destroyed many of his own works.
His first marriage produced two sons: Maurice in 1909 and Fernand in 1910.
Fernand, too, had an interesting life. He emigrated to the United States, and during World War II his job was setting up radio transmissions to fool the Germans to think that the Allies would be landing at Pas de Calais and not Normandy. He was a top aide to both George Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower. He did secret missions behind German lines. For this service, he was awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 with four palmes by France, the Legion of Merit from the United States, and Polonia Restituta by Poland.
After the war, he became a foreign correspondent for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He was there when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, and still writing when it came down in 1989. He met Queen Elizabeth and testified before Joseph McCarthy. The man was Katherine Hepburn’s private French tutor. He was everywhere.
But because that’s not enough, Fernand married a princess and relative of Napoleon Bonaparte, Laure Louise Napoléonne Eugénie Caroline Murat. Laure’s great-great-grandmother was Caroline Bonaparte, sister of the Emperor and wife of Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon’s marshalls, and later the King of Naples.
Nine paragraphs in, and we finally get to the actor. Pretty sure that’s a record for me. Fernand and Laure’s only son, Rene was born in New York City on June 1st, 1940. So just before Fernand enlisted in the army, and started running around behind German lines.
After the war, the family moved to Paris, and then back to the United States. There, they lived in an artists’ colony in Rockland County, New York. And because this article can’t help but name-drop, the other residents there at the time included Burgess Meredith (Mick from the Rocky moves, and the original Penguin,) Lotte Lenya (Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, you know, the lady with the shoe-knife,) and if that’s not enough, the great John Houseman.
The more cultured among you would probably think of Houseman as the great acting teacher and producer of Citizen Kane. More low-brow people like me think of him in two roles, both released after his death – as Stephanie’s driving teacher in The Naked Gun, and playing himself as “America’s favorite old fart” in Scrooged.
Anyway, this was where Rene spent part of his childhood before the family moved back across the pond to London. There he studied theatre in high school before bouncing back to the United States and getting a bachelor of Fine Arts from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.
An Acting Career
After graduation, Auberjonois spent time with several theater companies, in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and of course, Fish Creek, Wisconsin. His first role on Broadway came in 1968 as the Fool in King Lear. His second role was as Ned in a play called, A Cry of Players, opposite future DS9 guest star Frank Langella.
And to pull everything to a quick full circle, he then won a Tony Award in 1969 for his role in Coco, which also starred his father’s old French pupil, Katherine Hepburn.
His first credited movie role is one of my favorites, as the original Father Mulcahy in the film version of M*A*S*H in 1970. Here’s one of his best lines, delivering a perfect deadpan punchline.
Auberjonois worked the TV guest star circuit hard in the70s. He showed up on the Mod Squad, McMillan & Wife, Love, American Style, The Jeffersons, The Bob Newhart Show, Rhoda, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, Hart to Hart, and finally, with the future Katherine Janeway on Mrs. Columbo.
And now we get to the part where I first remember him. As Clayton Endicott III on Benson. He played the Governor’s chief of staff for six seasons. Benson was a fun show in the 80s, but when you look back at it now, as a Trek fan, all you’re going to see is Odo arguing with Neelix. Other stuff happens. Robert Guillaume is annoyed, and the governor is clueless, but Odo and Neelix just don’t get along. (And of course, Kraus is Kraus. Always.)
By the way, a 1981 episode of Benson was the acting debut of Rene’s son Remy. He’s the boy in front of Neelix. You can watch the whole scene here. (Plus a pre-Cheers Ted Danson.)
Voice Acting
So just for fun, I went looking for some clips of Rene’s voice-acting work. And thankfully, someone made the exact compilation I was looking for.
And of course, he voiced Odo on an episode of Family Guy.
Becoming Odo
He made his Trek debut in 1991, as Colonel West in Star Trek VI. He got the role, which was later mostly cut from the film, because of his friendship with director Nicholas Meyer.
The character of Odo developed because the producers of DS9 “… knew that we needed some kind of Data/Spock character who looks at the world from the outside in. And the idea that an alien entity would have to find some way to pass as Human was fascinating, and seemed to give us an avenue into the kind of ‘complexion of humanity’ stories that we wanted to tell.”
The producers of Deep Space Nine looked at some incredible actors for the role of Odo. They considered Garak-performer Andrew J. Robinson and Zephraim Cochrane himself, James Cromwell. They looked at John Fleck who later played Sulik on Enterprise, and Tomalak from TNG, Andreas Katsulas.
They auditioned “D-Day” from Animal House, Bruce McGill. Admiral Nakamura performer Clyde Kusatsu was an option. So was Jerry Hardin, who played Mark Twain in the TNG episode Time’s Arrow (parts 1 and 2.) They looked at one of my all-time favorite character actors, Richard Riehle (Batai from The Inner Light.)
They also looked at the amazing Stephen Root – Jimmy James from News Radio, and Milton from Office Space. (Have you seen Odo’s Stapler?)
And they also looked at fellow Star Trek VI actor Kurtwood Smith, and now you can’t imagine him not calling Quark a dumbass. He didn’t want to wear the prosthetics.
And lastly, they looked at famous meme performer Stephen McHattie.
Auberjonois would go on to play Odo for seven seasons.
Post-Odo
After playing Odo, Auborjonois stayed busy. He made a guest appearance on Private Practice, which led to a regular role on Boston Legal.
On Boston Legal, he played managing partner Paul Lewiston. There are a couple of really obvious Trek connections here, almost too obvious to mention, with William Shatner and Armin Shimerman. But the interesting one for me is the Discovery connection, as his meth-addicted daughter Rachel on the show was played by Jayne Brook, who would go on to play Admiral Katrina Cornwell.
His last Trek appearance came in 2002, on the Enterprize episode Oasis, as Ezral . You’ll notice his daughter was played by Annie Wersching, who later played the Borg Queen in season two of Star Trek: Picard.
The last of his roles to be released during his lifetime was as the dead President James Buchanan in Raising Buchanan. Which is about as weird as it sounds.
My Brief Encounter with Rene Auberjonois
Sadly, we lost Rene in 2019 to lung cancer.
Lastly, A Real Odo
I couldn’t find any connection here, but as an unrelated note, there was a real historical figure named Odo. He was the King of West Francia (the forerunner of France), and the first king of the Robertian dynasty. I won’t go into great detail on him here, just to say that I was watching a history of the Normans (I’m that cool) as I was working on this article, and the name King Odo came up. He was defending Paris from Norman raiders in the 9th century.