Noonien Soong

Species:	Human
Status:	Deceased
Died:	2367
Other Relative(s):	Dr. Arik Soong ("Ancestor") Lal ("Granddaughter") (TNG: "The Offspring")
Spouse(s):	Juliana Soong
Children:	B-4 ("Son") (Template:Titles/Star Trek Nemesis) Lore ("Son") (TNG: "Datalore", "Brothers", "Descent", "Descent, Part II") Data ("Son")
Played by:	Brent Spiner

This article is about the cyberneticist. You may be looking for Khan Noonien Singh.

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Doctor Noonian Soong, sometimes listed as Noonien Soong and nicknamed "Often Wrong", was one of the Federation's leading cyberneticists during the 24th century.

History

Soong was the creator of at least five Soong-type androids, including Data, Lore, and B-4, and a descendant of the 22nd century criminal geneticist Arik Soong. An associate of Ira Graves, as well as a star scientist of the Federation in his own right, Soong's early work was highly regarded and he promised breakthroughs on the positronic brain. After failing to deliver on his promises, the disgraced and utterly humiliated Soong disappeared. Traveling under an assumed name to the colony on Omicron Theta, he continued his research, unbeknownst to anyone but his neighbors. (TNG: "Datalore", "Inheritance"; Star Trek Nemesis)

While living on Omicron Theta, Soong met and fell in love with Juliana O'Donnell and the pair married in secret on Mavala IV, keeping their relationship secret due to Juliana's mother's disapproval of her daughter's involvement with a much older man; their intention was to show her later that they could make their relationship work. Together, they perfected his design and built functional humanoid androids with advanced artificial intelligence. Each of the androids created by the Soongs represented an advancement and refinement of the potential for their creations. B-4 was a relatively primitive android, capable of only the most basic speech and motorization. Lore, the fourth attempt, displayed tremendous advances in cognitive abilities and interaction but had difficulty in adapting to ethical subroutines designed to facilitate interaction among Humans and was emotionally unstable. For this reason, he had Lore deactivated and began work on his fifth attempt, Data, who was the most successful. Despite lacking emotional ability and requiring a "learning" period, Data advanced further more quickly than Dr. Soong had originally hoped.

In 2336, when the colony on Omicron Theta came under attack by the Crystalline Entity, the inert body of Data and the disassembled body of Lore were left behind on the colony to be discovered years later. For this reason Soong was never able to apply his improvements on Data onto Lore, which was his original intention. During the same attack, Juliana was fatally injured as the couple fled.

File:Noonian Soong, Inheritance.jpg

The holographic duplicate of Dr. Soong (TNG: "Inheritance")

Unable to let Juliana go, Noonian transferred his comatose wife's memories into an advanced gynoid body before her passing. The Juliana-android, though still a Soong-type design, greatly advanced Soong's goal of replicating human abilities in an android. The new android design was so perfect that she never realized she was not the original Juliana. When Soong began to become too caught up in his work, she later divorced Soong, moved away, and remarried. In a recorded message, Soong told their 'son' Data about his mother and that he always regretted putting his work before his wife, admitting that the 'original' Juliana would have also left him under the circumstances. (TNG: "Inheritance")

Soong was believed to have been killed on Omicron Theta, in the Crystalline Entity's attack, when this massacre was uncovered in 2364. Three years later, however, he was discovered to be alive and secluded in the jungle of Terlina III, where Soong and Juliana had fled after the attack and where he had continued his work to create a perfect emotion chip for his son Data. In an effort to bring Data to him so that he could install the emotion chip he activated a homing device that forced Data to hijack the USS Enterprise-D in order to travel to Terlina III. Unfortunately, the same homing signal also attracted Lore, who had been re-activated several years before, an event of which Soong was unaware. During this time, Soong admitted that he would have preferred Data to go into cybernetics like him rather than joining Starfleet, but nevertheless expressed compassion for both his 'sons', trying to convince them to reconcile despite the disastrous results of Lore and Data's first meeting, apologising to Lore for his inability to help Lore during their initial time on the colony in favor of working on Data instead. However, angered at the discovery that he and Data were not actually as different as he had initially believed, with the only difference being Data's greater ability to adapt to the ethical subroutines that Soong had given him, Lore eventually disabled Data in order to receive the emotion chip himself, and after it was installed attacked Soong, hastening his death. As Soong lay dying, Data assured him that he would remain to continue Soong's legacy, and, although briefly he commented that he would not be able to grieve for his creator, Soong's last words were to assure Data that he would mourn his death in his own way, dying shortly after Data called him 'Father' for the first time. (TNG: "Brothers")

Despite Soong's death, this was not the last encounter Data had with his father. Dr. Soong implanted a subroutine into Data's base programming enabling Data to dream when he had achieved a certain level of development. The dream circuit was activated prematurely while conducting an experiment with Dr. Julian Bashir from Deep Space 9. Data's dreams included images of a young Noonian Soong as a blacksmith, forging a bird that represented Data himself. (TNG: "Birthright, Part I")

According to the time-traveling Berlinghoff Rasmussen, very few records of Doctor Soong's work survived to the 26th century. However, as Rasmussen was actually a con-artist from the 22nd century, the veracity of many statements he made is in question. (TNG: "A Matter of Time")

Appendices

Appearances

• TNG:
  • "Brothers" (Season Four)
  • "Birthright, Part I" (Season Six)
  • "Inheritance" (Season Seven)

Background

Data's personnel file Passenger manifest from Omicron Theta

Soong was played by Brent Spiner (who also played Data, Lore, B-4 and Arik Soong). Along with Khan Noonien Singh, Noonian Soong was named after a man named Kim Noonien Singh whom Gene Roddenberry knew during World War II.

Soong's first name was spelled "Noonien" in the scripts for "Datalore" and "The Measure Of A Man" while all subsequent scripts ("Brothers", "A Matter of Time", "Birthright, Part I" and "Inheritance") spelled the name "Noonian". The Okudagram for Data's personnel file seen on-screen in "Conundrum" used "Noonian" while the passenger manifest seen in "Inheritance" used "Noonien". The "Noonien" spelling is used in several reference sources, including the Star Trek Encyclopedia and StarTrek.com. [1]

Soong was originally planned to be played by actor Keye Luke (who previously appeared as Donald Cory in TOS: "Whom Gods Destroy") in TNG: "Brothers", but the 86 years old Luke was either unavailable or unwilling for the part. He died only a few months after the broadcast of the episode. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide (CD-ROM))

Comments by production staff (and the casting of Brent Spiner) indicated that Noonian Soong was the great-grandson of Arik Soong. This is supported by Arik Soong's comment about cybernetics in ENT: "The Augments", when he said that developing an artificial life form "might take a generation or two."

External link

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