List of Minor Recurring Characters in Star Trek: Enterprise - Arik Soong

Dr. Arik Soong appeared in a three-episode final-season story arc consisting of "Borderland", "Cold Station 12", and "The Augments." He was portrayed by The Next Generation regular Brent Spiner.

Soong was a criminal mastermind. While director of the Starfleet Medical facility Cold Station 12, he stole nineteen genetically enhanced Augment embryos placed in stasis after the end of the Eugenics Wars. Soong took the embryos to a remote and secluded planet, where he raised them and taught them they were gifted and superior. Starfleet caught up with Soong when he was off on a side trip, and imprisoned him ten years after the theft, leaving the Augments stranded on the remote planet with just his teachings and the physical necessities for survival. As they grew up alone, they became violently committed to the formation of a genetically engineered race of superhumans, believing themselves to be the future of humanity.

Soong believed genetic engineering was a panacea to humanity's problems. As a result, he questioned humanity's abandonment of genetic engineering in his "lively" debates with Jonathan Archer and Phlox. Although he lamented the deaths of thirty million humans during the Eugenics Wars, Soong believed the Earth government and the main characters in the story were simply using the Wars as an excuse for their irrational phobias of genetic engineering. He maintained that he himself and humanity in general had learned the lessons of the Eugenics Wars and should not continue to hide behind those events when there was progress to be made now that the technology had matured and was much more practicable.

Soong was also the great-grandfather of 24th century cyberneticist Dr. Noonien Soong, who created the androids Data, Lore, and B-4. These four characters were also played by Spiner.

Twenty years after the theft, and ten years into Soong's prison sentence, his Augments stole a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Enterprise was tasked with finding them to avert a war with the Klingons, and took along Soong to make the search easier. The Augments freed Soong from the Enterprise's brig and proceeded to Cold Station 12, a Starfleet and Denobulan-run medical facility where the remaining 1,800 genetically-enhanced embryos were stored. Soong found, to his dismay, that his Augments had taken his teachings to an extreme, and he escaped from the Bird-of-Prey in order to help Enterprise stop them from starting a war with the Klingons.

Ultimately failing to prove that improved humans could peacefully co-exist with the rest of the galaxy, Soong, upon returning to prison, admitted that perfecting humanity may not be possible. He vows to find perfection by creating artificial life through cybernetics, noting that he might not finish in his lifetime, and that it might take "a generation or two," a vision apparently passed on to his progeny, specifically Noonien Soong, established to be his great-grandson. This phrase is also an obvious acknowledgement of the manifestation of said vow in the form of Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The story ends on a positive note, leaving the viewers to think that it is likely that Soong was released from prison sometime before his death; this point is especially positive considering that the story gave little indication that Soong had yet fathered any descendants at that point. It also leaves enough "open" ends to permit an eventual return of the character in subsequent episodes. The series ended before this could happen.