The Life And Legacy Of Dr. Soong, The Creator Of Star Trek’s Data

Note: “Star Trek: Enterprise” takes place about a century prior to “Star Trek.”

In a three-part episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise” — “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” which aired in early November 2004 — audiences were introduced to Dr. Arik Soong (Spiner), a mad geneticist who had been altering and “enhancing” humanoid DNA. Because he was banned from his eugenics programs on Earth (eugenics are a big no-no in the world of “Star Trek”), he was forced to implant Klingons with enhanced human DNA. This is why the Klingons from the original “Star Trek” looked more human from the Klingons in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” There was finally a canonical reason, and it was because of a Soong. At the end of the three-part episode, after Arik is arrested for his genetic shenanigans, he announces that gene manipulation isn’t the right path. Perhaps he’d try cybernetics instead. Of course, it would take several generations to perfect … 

In the first season of “Star Trek: Picard,” set several decades after “Next Generation,” audiences found that Noonien Soong, in addition to building robot “children,” also had a biological child. This was Dr. Altan Soong (yet again played by Spiner), who was still building androids, even though doing so was deemed illegal. He lived in hiding on a hidden planet with a secret colony of android children. In a very Gene Roddenberry fashion, the androids all wore diaphanous robes. They also all had emotions. Just like with Dr. Noonien Soong, however, the color eventually came under threat from a massive, destructive space deity. Altan would shunt the consciousness of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) into an android body. Picard and Data now have that in common.

There was at least one additional Soong besides.

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