#arik soong

[hincithur]

— everything is a goddamn textpost for the local family.

[defconprime]

Soong and T’Pol

[dangerousconnoisseurdonut]

Mathematics Help for Star Trek?

So, I'm writing a fic in which Data declares Julian to be his cousin, but I want to make sure my mathematics are correct as this whole thing is rather confusing. Here is the excerpt:

“My creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, was the approximate great-to-the-10th-power-grandson of Dr. Adam Soong, who was the main progenitor behind the Khan project; his knowledge of genetics was the key to the project succeeding. Following his disgrace after the Eugenics War, and the incarceration of his great-grandson, Arik Soong for attempting to follow his great-grandfather’s work, the Soong descendents abandoned genetics and decided to focus on cybernetics. However, this does not remove Adam Soong’s contributions to the Khan project, which - though thought to be destroyed - were used to re-write your own genetic make-up. As we are both descendents of Adam Soong’s intellect, through different branches, I believe this makes us, in effect, cousins, eight times removed.”

Now, these factors are based around the assumption that, from the time of Dr. Adam Soong - the father of the Khan Project - in the 21st century, to Data, Lore, Altan, B-4, and Julian of the 24th century, approximately 12 generations of Soongs have come and gone.

That is, 4 generations every 100 years, which could be off as it's established that, after the Eugenics Wars, humans started living longer and it's highly possible the Soong's would put off having children, but let's stick with 4.

According to Google, this makes Noonien Soong, Data' s father, Adam's great- to the 10th power -grandson.

Now, I remember seeing in a video that Arik Soong of the 22nd century, and, by our calculations, Adam's great-grandson was the last Soong to specialize in genetics, and was incarcerated for attempting to continue his great-grandfathers work. After Arik, the family moved away from genetics and onto cybernetics.

This means that Arik's generation is when the 'split' occurred that makes Julian and Data cousins; as Arik was the 4th generation from our starting point of Adam, that means that approximately 8 generations passed between Arik and Altan, making Data and Julian cousins, eight times removed.

Does this sound right to everyone? I never realized how tricky genetics could be!

[dataentryspecialist]

Soong men 🤝 talking with their hands

[discocuttlefish]

The fact that Star Trek has had Brent Spiner play a whole gang of Soong family members, with the chronologically earliest one being a geneticist has some interesting unintentional in-universe implications. My headcanon is that all the Soong guys after Arik are clones, probably grown in artificial wombs, and probably genetically enhanced. This explains why Noonian was doing his work on some random isolated colony outside of any formal organization. The Soongs are used to hiding their science crimes. This also means that Lore and Data are just the latest generation of a line of mad scientists who have been reproducing asexually for like 200 years.

[yellowcakeuf6]

Happy birthday to my fan art muse Brent Spiner

[hitrone]

divorced

[reginaldqueribundus]

okay I've already posted about the shenanigans of the S'chn T'gai / Grayson line, but can we talk about the Soongs? because

my

GOD

these men are menaces (emphasis on men, there's been like one female Soong and she immediately noped the fuck out to do Doctor Who shit and I love that for her. respect.)

in reverse chronological order we have:

Altan Soong — honestly, he's not so bad. he made way more android children and they seem to have turned out fine. sure he almost helps cause the extermination of all biological life in the galaxy, but only out of fatherly love. and he gave up his shot at immortality to give an elderly man another shot at life

Noonien Soong — mostly just a shitty dad. builds himself three android sons, makes sure their penises work before fixing their emotional dysfunction. names them Information, Myth, and "Previously on Noonien Soong tries to build an android". abandons the first one in a ditch somewhere, presumably for being too childlike, stuffs the second in a box at the back of his closet like an old pair of rollerblades for being too evil, and runs away and leaves the third one to be raised by Starfleet because of his own insistence on being a weird hermit. makes an android out of his dead ex-wife and convinces her she's human. finally comes up with a fix for his third son's emotional issues and overrides his autonomy to make him hijack a Galaxy-class starship to his front step instead of just emailing him like a normal person. can't even tell his android sons apart and accidentally installs the chip in the evil one, who then starts a Borg death cult. refuses to share his work with the scientific community, resulting in Mars exploding and Data having to constantly fight for his right to not be disassembled and studied. his evil son caused all their neighbours to get eaten by a big flying snowflake. also was a bitch to his human son (Altan) and made sure he knew he wasn't the favourite.

Arik Soong — grows a bunch of Augments in secret, gets arrested while he's out buying groceries and doesn't tell anyone he's left a bunch of child supersoldiers in a Lord of the Flies scenario, resulting in them nearly starting a war with the klingons. stands by and watches his augment son inject a guy with space ebola. tries to sell the Enterprise crew into chattel slavery. also indirectly responsible for the smooth klingon virus, which is kinda funny

Adam Soong — gaslights his clone daughter, hits a 90-year-old man with his car on purpose, hires armed mercenaries to shoot said elderly man and his friends, teams up with the Borg Queen, tries to blow up a spacecraft full of innocent astronauts and murders Talinn while trying to poison one of said astronauts. also he probably created Khan and caused the Eugenics War, and in an alternate timeline was responsible for turning Earth into a genocidal interstellar empire

... it's funny how they get more awful the further back you go, which makes me wonder if all Soong men looking the same is the result of Kore photocopying her dad until she clones the god complex out of him or something