Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Arik Soong, a background character and scientist who appears on multiple episodes of Enterprise.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp229
Soong is a doctor specializing in genetics in the 22nd Century, and as you might guess from the name, he is an ancestor of Dr. Noonian Soong, the creator of Data. Arik Soong is a proponent of genetic engineering, and he spends his life trying to prove that the problems with this process that led to the Eugenics Wars were based on human failures, not the technology itself.
That puts him on the wrong side of the law, of course, in the Earth culture we know from later Federation times. Soong first steals a number of Augment embryos and raises them as his children by trading for goods and supplies with the Orion Syndicate. After about 10 years of this, he is captured and imprisoned for violating the prohibition on eugenics. But his Augment children still existed, letting the proverbial cat out of the bag once again.
That's when we meet Soong in Enterprise, as Captain Archer recruits Arik Soong from prison to help track down and capture these Augments, who had killed a Klingon crew and stolen a Bird-of-Prey. This leads through an interesting 3-episode arc in Season 4 in which Soong helps the Enterprise crew find the Augments, then turns his back on them to join the Augments, and eventually loses charge of the Augments when their leader does not see things the same peaceful way that Soong does. Against Soong's best wishes, the Augments again wanted to cause a large-scale war, this time between humans and Klingons.
Soong therefore must escape the Augments and help Enterprise stop them once again, at which point Soong gives up on his work on genetics. However, as a brilliant scientist with plenty of time to burn in a continuing prison sentence, Arik Soong decides to dedicate his life to the study of artificial life. You know, androids like his eventual descendant made.
QUOTE from The Augments:
[Paul Harvey "and now you know, the rest of the story"]
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp229
Soong is a doctor specializing in genetics in the 22nd Century, and as you might guess from the name, he is an ancestor of Dr. Noonian Soong, the creator of Data. Arik Soong is a proponent of genetic engineering, and he spends his life trying to prove that the problems with this process that led to the Eugenics Wars were based on human failures, not the technology itself.
That puts him on the wrong side of the law, of course, in the Earth culture we know from later Federation times. Soong first steals a number of Augment embryos and raises them as his children by trading for goods and supplies with the Orion Syndicate. After about 10 years of this, he is captured and imprisoned for violating the prohibition on eugenics. But his Augment children still existed, letting the proverbial cat out of the bag once again.
That's when we meet Soong in Enterprise, as Captain Archer recruits Arik Soong from prison to help track down and capture these Augments, who had killed a Klingon crew and stolen a Bird-of-Prey. This leads through an interesting 3-episode arc in Season 4 in which Soong helps the Enterprise crew find the Augments, then turns his back on them to join the Augments, and eventually loses charge of the Augments when their leader does not see things the same peaceful way that Soong does. Against Soong's best wishes, the Augments again wanted to cause a large-scale war, this time between humans and Klingons.
Soong therefore must escape the Augments and help Enterprise stop them once again, at which point Soong gives up on his work on genetics. However, as a brilliant scientist with plenty of time to burn in a continuing prison sentence, Arik Soong decides to dedicate his life to the study of artificial life. You know, androids like his eventual descendant made.
QUOTE from The Augments:
[Paul Harvey "and now you know, the rest of the story"]
Arik Soong is played by Brent Spiner, which was a good excuse to get this TNG actor on the show in a different context than Data, who didn't exist yet. When the story was originally written, the character was supposed to be a callback to Colonel Phillip Green from TOS, but it was redone to fit Spiner when the producers realized the actor was interested in appearing on the show. What resulted was one of the top short story arcs presented in Enterprise, so kudos to the creative team for their flexibility here.
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
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Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
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