Star Trek Picard Season 2: How villain Adam Soong makes Data’s career even better!

• Adam is introduced as a villain in Star Trek: Picard season 2. The scientist is an ancestor of Data’s creator, Noonien Soong.
• Noonien works on artificial intelligence, while Adam tries his hand at genetic experiments.
• Adam Soong’s handling of his experiment, Kore, only makes Data’s journey all the more powerful. We reveal why!

In “Star Trek: Picard” season 2 we meet another member of the Soong family with Adam Soong (Brent Spiner). Starship Enterprise fans know that Adam Soong’s descendant Noonien Soong (Spiner) is the creator of the android Data (Spiner). While Noonien works on artificial intelligence, Adam conducts genetic experiments.

While Data has an already impressive career as a Starfleet starship officer, the tragedy of Kore (Isa Briones), Adam Soong’s experiment, makes Data’s story even better.

In Star Trek: Picard, Kore is kept at home by her “father”. She cannot and must not leave the house. This is of course initially due to a genetic defect that Soong cannot correct in his experiment. But when Kore can finally walk to freedom, Adam wants to stop her.

He wants to keep his experiment as his own and doesn’t see her as a daughter either, just as an experiment. And therein lies the difference between the selfish Adam, who only cares about his own legacy, and Noonien Soong.

While Noonien also loses many social contacts in his madness to research, he programs Data with free will. He wants his “experiment” to go its own way, to break away from him. And that’s exactly what Data is doing by joining Starfleet.

While Noonien Soong doesn’t like this as he would have liked his “son” to be in research and science, he respected Data’s wish. Data can live the way Kore would wish. A mind game: we turn the tables and Adam and Noonien swap their personalities.

Then we would have a Data that would have been held back and never been able to reach its full potential. Comparing the Soongs’ dealings with Data and Kore underscores the value of free choice and self-realization, regardless of who or what you are.

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is currently streaming weekly on Amazon Prime Video. We list all other new “Star Trek” releases that will start in stream and cinema in 2022 and 2023!