Noonian Soong

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This article is about the android creator. You may be looking for the similar-sounding Khan Noonien Singh.


Young Dr. Soong
Shown in middle age via holodeck
Dr. Soong in 2367, shortly before his death


Doctor Noonien Soong was one of the Federation's leading cyberneticists during the 24th century.


Soong was the creator of the "Soong-type androids," including Data, Lore, and B-4, and a descendant of the criminal 22nd century geneticist Arik Soong, who worked extensively on Augments. 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 humiliated Soong disappeared. Traveling under an assumed name to the colony on Omicron Theta, he continued his research, unbeknownst to anyone but his neighbors.


While living on Omicron Theta, Soong met and fell in love with Juliana O'Donnell, and the pair married in secret. 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 deemed "emotionally unstable." The fifth attempt, Data, was the most successful. Despite lacking any emotional ability, and requiring a "learning" period, Data advanced further, and 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. During the same attack, Juliana was fatally injured as the couple fled. Unable to let Juliana go, Noonian transferred his comatose wife's memories into an advanced android body before her passing. The Juliana-android, though still a Soong-type design, greatly advanced Soong's goal of replicating and expanding Human abilities. The new android design was so perfect that she never realized she was not the original Juliana. She later divorced Soong, moved away, and remarried. In a recorded message, Soong told their 'son' Data that he always regretted putting his work before his wife.


The male Dr. Soong was believed to have been killed on Omicron Theta, in the Crystalline Entity's attack, when the massacre was uncovered in 2364. Three years later, however, he was discovered to be alive and secluded where Soong and his wife had fled after the attack. He had continued his work to create a perfect emotion simulation computer 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, NCC-1701-D in order to travel to the Doctor. Unfortunately, the same homing signal also attracted Lore, who had been re-activated several years before, an event of which Soong was unaware. Lore eventually disabled Data in order to receive the emotion chip himself, and when it was installed, he killed Soong.


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 Noonien Soong as a blacksmith, forging a bird that represented Data himself.


Legacy

  • At some point, Soong had a natural son, Altan Inigo Soong.


  • A group within the Daystrom Institute known as the Soong Foundation was named in his honor, and sought to further develop artificial life and highly advanced technology for public use. They were also noted in campaigning for the rights of artificial lifeforms.


  • Different spellings include "Noonien Soong" and "Nguyen Soong".