A brilliant but reckless 22nd-century geneticist who raised a new generation of Augments and was an ancestor of Data's creator, Noonien Soong.
Arik Soong was a human geneticist who believed that genetic enhancement could improve humanity, despite Earth's ban on the practice following the Eugenics Wars. He stole a collection of frozen Augment embryos left over from that era and secretly raised the children on a distant world, for which he was arrested and imprisoned.
When his grown Augments hijacked a Klingon vessel, Starfleet released Soong to help Jonathan Archer track them down, but he escaped and rejoined his children. He hoped to obtain more embryos stored at a secure medical facility, yet he grew alarmed as their leader, Malik, became increasingly violent and determined to start a war.
Disillusioned, Soong helped Archer stop the Augments and returned to prison, where he resolved to turn his talents from genetics to cybernetics. That decision foreshadowed the android work of his descendant Noonien Soong, the creator of Data. Arik's arc linked Enterprise to both the Eugenics Wars and The Next Generation.