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Minister Odala is the main antagonist of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Distant Origin".
She was portrayed by Concetta Tomei, who also played Sister Regina in Diagnosis Murder.
Biography[]
Minister Odala was the leader of the Voth race and a strict adherent of their established Doctrine, which declared they were the first sentient beings to evolve in their area of space. She was thus opposed to the Distant Origin theory, which believed that Voth had evolved in another part of space and their ancestors had travelled to the Delta Quadrant in prehistory. When Professor Gegen presented her and the council with apparent proof of the theory, the remains of a human named Hogan who demonstrated identical genetic markers to the Voth, Odala showed no interest in his insistence that the Voth had evolved on Earth or in his request to track down the remainder of Voyager's crew, suggesting he was the victim of a hoax.
After Gegen set out on his own without authorisation, the Voth authorities captured Voyager and imprisoned the crew. Gegen, along with Commander Chakotay who had befriended him, confronted Odala and the council. Odala dismissed all of Gegen and Chakotay's evidence, including not only the similarities between Voth and humans but identical genetic markers to a number of other Earth species, saying their own scientists had ruled it was simply "random convergence". She also revealed that Gegen's assistant Veer had recanted his support of Gegen's theory, which led Gegen to suspect that Odala had threatened him into doing so.
Gegen accused Odala of only being interested in preserving her own opinion, while Chakotay tried to get her to be more open-minded, pointing to how Doctrine had adapted to scientific discoveries in the past and suggesting that the story of how their ancestors triumphed against all odds to build an advanced civilisation was one to be proud of. However, Odala refused to be moved from her insistence that her people had been granted that area of space as a legacy, saying Gegen's version would make them immigrants and refugees. Gegen refused to change his mind so Odala ordered him sentenced to life on a detention colony. Gegen was willing to accept it, until Odala declared Voyager's crew would also be imprisoned there. In order to save them, Gegen agreed to publicly recant his theories. Odala told him he would be allowed an unremarkable career in another field of science and ordered Voyager to leave their space immediately.
