Brent Spiner has managed to pop in almost every major era of Star Trek thanks to his portrayal of various members of the Soong family. While the Soongs have been on the right and wrong side of Trek history with their scientific advancements, they’ve ultimately played a key part in many stories over the years. With that said, Spiner feels like there’s more to their story to still be told, and he has some ideas.
I spoke to Brent Spiner about his long stint in Star Trek and wondered if he ever wanted to play characters who weren’t androids or members of the Soong family. What I was surprised to learn is that Spiner is not at all tired of playing Soongs, and he spoke about it at length with me during our conversation:
I have enjoyed playing all the Soongs and I think theirs is a really interesting story if you look at the whole thing. And I don’t think we’ve seen the whole thing. There was a moment in Season 2 where Picard meets Adam Soong in a gala, and he says, ‘You were the first.’ Well, clearly, he wasn’t the first because where did he come from? Surely he had parents. I think that’s always been a question.
As Brent Spiner said, the Soong family had origins dating back before Adam Soong, and of course there’s also a good stretch of time after him with other descendants that isn’t well accounted for. There are certainly stories left untold when it comes to the Soongs, but just how deep does that well run?
If you’re Brent Spiner, he’s convinced there’s enough material there for Star Trek shows to cover Soong’s origins and identity. The actor spoke about the possible questions such a series could answer and teased he’d been thinking about the answers to those questions over the years:
I think there’s a season at least of the search for Soong’s identity. I mean, who is he really? Because, obviously, he has a Chinese last name. What gives? What’s the story? I’d like to know. I have a few ideas, but I don’t know if any of them would be particularly interesting to anyone other than me.
I didn’t ask for any of Brent Spiner’s ideas on the Soong family, but I can personally say that I’m invested in hearing their story fleshed out further in a Trek series or even a miniseries. As I mentioned previously, the Soongs are a pretty notable part of Trek history, with their hands in everything from the creation of advanced sentient synthetic human life to augmented human beings. A family like that would surely have many interesting stories to tell and could be placed amongst some key moments in the timeline a normal series might not touch on.
An added bonus of making a Soong Star Trek series would also be to show the connective tissue between them and the characters we’ve already met in the series. As Brent Spiner said, there’s a bit of Soong in even the androids that he created before Data’s latest incarnation, as he likened Adam Soong’s personality in Picard Season 2 to that of Lore:
I totally enjoyed it because they’re all connected in so many ways. I think Adam Soong from Season 2 of Picard that’s where Lore’s DNA comes from, basically. It started with him, that particular aspect of humanity which was selfishness and narcissism.
It’s trippy to think about a Soong series considering doing one wouldn’t necessarily be closely tied to Starfleet, but that might be the most interesting element. A Star Trek series like this would allow fans to see the world through the lens of a family who helped shape it and clearly thought there were imperfections that needed addressing.
Of course, Brent Spiner isn’t the first Star Trek cast member to pitch a series that sounds intriguing, but isn’t guaranteed to happen. Michael Dorn is still working on pitching a Klingon series, and many Picard cast members are hoping Picard showrunner Terry Matalas will get rehired to make a continuation series after its conclusion. As great as all these ideas may be, they’re still very much just ideas and not currently a part of the current Trek schedule. Hopefully they will be someday, though, because I’m loving the continued enthusiasm we’re seeing of wanting to tell fresh stories in this franchise!
Catch Brent Spiner on Star Trek: Picard, with new episodes being available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription on Thursdays. The series is quickly winding down, but rest assured, there are still plenty of other Trek episodes on Paramount+ (opens in new tab) featuring Spiner’s Data, Lore and, of course, the Soong family to watch after that.
