Star Trek: Enterprise Has Brent Spiner’s Best Dr. Soong Character
Brent Spiner has played multiple characters in Star Trek series, and of the many versions of Doctor Soong, his Enterprise character was the best.
Even though it is the series set earliest in the timeline, Star Trek: Enterprise featured The Next Generation star Brent Spiner in an extended guest-starring role. He wasn’t playing Data or any of the other android characters. Rather, it was a human character from the family of Data’s creator. Doctor Arik Soong was the best of Brent Spiner’s human Star Trek characters because he was the only one to care about other people.
Along with Data, Lore and B-4, Brent Spiner has played every male member of the Soong family in the franchise. Four have appeared throughout the series’ various time periods. It would be surprising if a 23rd-century Soong appeared in Season 2 of Strange New Worlds. Gene Roddenberry named Data’s creator “Noonian Soong.” Like the character Khan Noonien Sing, was named in homage to Roddenberry’s friend from his time in World War II, Kim Noonien Singh. Thanks to Brent Spiner’s many guest roles, Enterprise‘s Arik Soong connected TNG‘s cybernetic scientist to the genetically modified Superman Khan. However, rather than an overt villain, Arik Soong is one of the few in the family to express concern for anything other than his own scientific work. He actually turned on his “children” to prevent a war and save a small colony of Klingons.
How Star Trek Connected the Soong Family to Khan Noonien Singh
Of the four Soong characters Brent Spiner played, two are focused solely on synthetic life. Noonian Soong and his biological son Altan Soong devoted their lives to creating synthetic lifeforms, culminating in Data’s final form in Picard Season 3. It also led to Picard’s resurrection after his death in Season 1. Yet, the two earliest branches of the family tree were interested in genetic modification. Adam Soong, from Picard Season 2, was revealed to have been connected to the “Khan Project,” which presumably led to the creation of the genetically modified villain. Arik was also all about genetic modification, but he lacked his predecessor’s megalomania. He truly wanted to help humanity. While in prison, he developed genetic cures to diseases, but Starfleet’s ban on that kind of science meant his work went unused.
He was in prison for taking embryos from the same modified batch that produced Khan to raise as his children. When they eventually came to free him, they were murderous and uncaring about others they saw as inferior. Like Una Chin-Riley in Strange New Worlds, the augments’ mere existence is a crime. Over a three-episode arc, Enterprise suggested that had the compassionate Arik been left to raise these kids instead of being arrested by Starfleet, they might not have become villains. When the augments decide to start a war between the Klingons and Starfleet, Arik goes to Starfleet to stop them. And he hates Starfleet.
Arik isn’t a hero, of course. He’s barely a good person. Early in his story, he tries to sell the crew of the Enterprise into slavery to make his escape. He takes what he wants, willing to hurt people to get it. Yet, he’s not willing to kill. Adam, the other geneticist in the family, threatens to have people killed right and left. Yet, of all four Doctors Soong, Arik is the only one who actually seems to care about other people.
How Brent Spiner Turned the Doctor Soong Gimmick Into Good Story
Looking at all of Brent Spiner’s Soong characters in chronological order to the narrative, it tells an interesting family story. With the exception of Noonian, Data’s creator, these characters only exist as a gimmick to justify Spiner’s presence in the cast. Adam was a way to keep Spiner on Picard
Arik was a criminal for the same reason Una faces a court martial in Strange New Worlds. Because of Khan and the Eugenics Wars, Starfleet lives in fear of any kind of genetic modification. The characters on Enterprise treated Arik as a villain, but he believed in the values of Starfleet along with his own belief in the augments’ right to exist. Had Starfleet been more open-minded and worked with him, the last of Khan’s augments could’ve truly helped create a better galaxy.
