An Android for Noonien

[Mojochi]

I often wonder why they never discussed how come Noonien never built an android for himself, seeing as he had managed to transfer Julianna into one. Even Ira Graves managed to pull it off by hijacking data.

It seems his dying regret was that he'd never had the time to get back to fixing Lore. Well, if he'd transferred himself into an android, then he would have had plenty of time. He could have found & perfected all of them, actually, & if he'd needed help, I'm sure he could have persuaded Data to help him

Just a thought

 

[Tiberius]

Who would have transfered his consciousness though? Doesn't seem to be the sort of thing you can do to yourself...

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe there was already a lot of Soong in Lore. And Soong was embarrassed how Lore turned out.

Subsequently, Data was an amalgam of memories of the colonists, but with no emotions.

Who would have transfered his consciousness though? Doesn't seem to be the sort of thing you can do to yourself...

Dr Ira Graves managed to download his consciousness into Data in "The Schizoid Man".

 

[Tiberius]

Ah, didn't think of that. Maybe Graves should have told Soong how to do it...

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

How do we know Noonien didn't do exactly that?

It could have all been set up in advance, and the Enterprise crew left PDQ after he "died".

Would make for a good novel.

 

[Mojochi]

Who would have transfered his consciousness though? Doesn't seem to be the sort of thing you can do to yourself...

Data could have helped too

Maybe there was already a lot of Soong in Lore. And Soong was embarrassed how Lore turned out.

It wouldn't seem believable that Soong could have been married at all if he'd been anything like Lore. Nah, it always struck me that Soong was a pretty decent guy, who's big mistake was that he'd made Lore too well, stronger than a human, smarter than a human, tougher than a human, & more emotional than a human

That's always what I figured about Lore. Soong had made his emotions too powerful. His hate, resentment, jealousy & obsession would overpower him, & he'd do terrible things, which in turn made him feel he was a terrible person, & in turn made him identify himself as such, creating a cycle of bad behavior

When Soong admits he's dying, Lore has a genuine emotional reaction that is not evil, but more like saddened, & concerned. So it's apparent he has good emotions too, but his bad ones so often consume him, making him behave badly, that he identifies himself that way. Besides, even too much of a good emotion is bad. That's Lore's flaw, too much emotion

This is why Data was given none, until Soong could correct the problem, or fine tune the program, but by the time he creates Julianna, it appears he's sorted those problems, & perfected the transference technique, & could then be reasonably sure that transferring himself would work, & he'd then have time to help Lore, & perhaps B4 & the others too

But he chose not too, at least not that we see, & we sort of watch Data see Soong die, & I presume that transference would have to occur before death, & doing so would leave the former body dead or evacuated... perhaps

In all likelihood, he didn't do it, & it would have been nice to know why not, like perhaps, by the time he'd thought about it, he realized that what he'd done to Julianna was wrong

The Soong in the hologram that Data sees is much younger than the one Data encounters. Perhaps in all that time, he came to believe that what he'd done was wrong, hence why he didn't tell Data & Lore about her, on his death bed

That's the only explanation I can come up with

 

[Timo]

Soong seemed to have this thing about remaining below the radar until he could proudly present his triumphant crowning achievement or whatnot. Moving to distant poorly known colonies, escaping from said and covering his tracks, ultimately living as a hermit on a world of his own... Probably comes from being known as "Often Wrong".

It would be consistent with that if Soong ultimately did immortalize himself in an android body - but one of disguise, one that for a rare once didn't look like his biological body at all. That Soong (or dozens of them) might be gallivanting around the galaxy as we, er, type, while the original biological body died in "Brothers".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

I still can't get around one thing though

Ira Graves technique of transferring himself into Data seemed like something of a download of himself into Data, which presumably could only be done once, & the result is that he escaped death by doing so, which was his plan

Soong described his technique as "Synaptic Scanning" which by the way it sounds might in fact be possible to do multiple times over

In that case, it might be possible that he made an android of himself before he died, but something about that strikes me as not actually being him, but a recreation of him, & Julianna for that matter. Not really either of them, transferred into an android body, but rather an android created with the foundation of their synaptic patterns as its base, so that in Julianna's case, she believes herself to be Julianna, down to every detail, but actually isn't

 

[Timo]

I'm sure the synaptically scanned copy of Soong could develop all sorts of anguish about his deeper nature, just like the recipient of an artificial arm or heart or extensive facial surgery might decide that it's actually a pretty good idea to put a gun to one's mouth and eat a 9mm last supper. But Soong could just as well decide that no difference is no difference, and that he's real enough for himself.

Granted, Ira Graves certainly appeared the type who wouldn't care, yet ended up scuttling himself after all. But since he also appeared to be very different from Noonien Soong, there's every chance Soong would persevere.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Holdfast]

It's also possible that while Soong was perfectly happy for other people's memories to be downloaded into androids, he didn't like the idea of it being done for himself. Plenty of scientists can think & know one thing about their subject in an abstract way, and feel very differently about its applications to themselves. Of course, his willingness to suspend disbelief re: Julianna counts against this somewhat, but still, it's possible.

 

[Timo]

We might even speculate that Noonien Soong was an android from the get-go, perhaps the creation of advanced alien forces in cahoots with Arik Soong, and was struggling to understand himself and create "offspring", pretty much the same way Data later did. Soong's slightly greater success there would be due to him being a "higher-order" android, that is, to Data being an inferior second-generation copy. That'd explain why Noonien looked identical to old Arik, for one thing...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sindatur]

We might even speculate that Noonien Soong was an android from the get-go, perhaps the creation of advanced alien forces in cahoots with Arik Soong, and was struggling to understand himself and create "offspring", pretty much the same way Data later did. Soong's slightly greater success there would be due to him being a "higher-order" android, that is, to Data being an inferior second-generation copy. That'd explain why Noonien looked identical to old Arik, for one thing...

Timo Saloniemi

Yea, I've kinda been wondering about that myself, if he wasn't already an android, especially because of the resemblance to Arik.

LOL, this thread title makes me chuckle everytime I read it, I keep thinking of Children's books:

A Dog for Billy
A Room for Cathy
etc

 

[Mojochi]