Noonien Soong

Translation in progress - Traduzione in corso Saavikam 14:00, 9 lug 2009 (UTC)

File:Noonien Soong, Inheritance.jpg

Il dottor Noonien Soong

File:NoonienSoong2367.jpg

Soong poco prima della morte

Questo articolo riguarda il creatore degli androidi. Forse stai cercando il personaggio di Khan Noonien Singh.

Il dottor Noonien Soong, soprannominato "Spesso errato", era uno dei più importanti scienziati specializzati in cibernetica della Federazione nel XXIV secolo.

Soong era il creatore degli androidi di tipo Soong, tra i quali Data, Lore, e B-4, ed un discendente di Arik Soong, criminale e scienziato specializzato in genetica del XX secolo. Collega di Ira Graves, così come scienziato di prima grandezza della Federazione, Soong svolse i suoi primi lavori in maniera molto promettente, specialmente per quanto riguarda lo sviluppo del cervello positronico. Dopo aver fallito nel suo lavoro, Soong, ormai caduto in disgrazia e profondamente umiliato, scomparve dalla circolazione. Dopo essersi recato sotto falso nome sulla colonia di Omicron Theta, proseguì le sue ricerche, rivelando la sua identità solo a pochi. (TNG: "Datalore", "Una madre per Data"; Star Trek La nemesi)

While living on Omicron Theta, Soong met and fell in love with Juliana O'Donnell and the pair married in secret on Mavala IV. 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.

Unable to let Juliana go, Noonien 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. 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. (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. Lore eventually disabled Data in order to receive the emotion chip himself, and after it was installed and attacked Soong, hastening his death. (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 Noonien 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")

Appendici

Apparizioni

• TNG:
  • "Fratelli" (Quarta stagione)
  • "La voce del sangue - prima parte" (Sesta stagione)
  • "Una madre per Data" (Settima stagione)

Retroscena

Soong è stato interpretato da Brent Spiner (che ha anche recitato nei ruoli di Data, Lore, B-4 ed Arik Soong). Come Khan Noonien Singh, al personaggio di Noonien Soong è stato dato tale nome quale omaggio a Kim Noonien Singh, conosciuto da Gene Roddenberry durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale.

Secondo la produzione (ed i responsabili del cast di Brent Spiner) Noonien Soong è stato il bis-nipote di Arik Soong. Questa tesi è supportata dal commento fatto da Arik Soong a proposito della cibernetica in ENT: "I potenziati", quando ipotizza che lo sviluppo di una forma di vita artificiale potrebbe richiedere l'impiego di "una o due generazioni."

Collegamento esterno

• [EN] Noonien Soong su Memory Beta, una wiki di Star Trek per i prodotti non canon.