As of this writing, actor Vaughn Armstrong still holds the record for the most number of characters throughout "Star Trek." Jeffrey Combs technically might have Armstrong beat, but that's only if you count multiple identical clones as separate roles.

Of the main cast, however, Brent Spiner currently holds the record for playing the greatest number of characters. Apart from his central role as the android Data on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Spiner also played his own evil twin brother, Lore, a Data prototype named B-4 (in "Star Trek: Nemesis"), and the androids' creator Dr. Noonien Soong. On "Star Trek: Enterprise," he played Dr. Arik Soong, an ancestor of Noonien, who was a villain keen on eugenics. In "Star Trek: Picard," he played an even more distant ancestor Dr. Adam Soong, who lived in the year 2024. In both the first and third seasons of "Picard," he also played Dr. Altan Soong, Noonien's biological son. That's seven roles in all.

This number doesn't count the "Next Generation" episode "A Fistful of Datas" wherein a holodeck malfunction transformed the population of an entire artificially created Old West town into Data. In that episode, Spiner played at least four additional characters.

Spiner recently returned to "Picard" to play an amalgam character. It turns out that Altan created an android that contains the brain of Data, Lore, Dr. Soong, B-4, and even Data's daughter Lal. Spiner, who has been ambivalent about playing Data in the past, clearly welcomed the acting challenge of playing so many characters at once.

In a recent interview with Comics Beat, Spiner, now 74, floated the idea of playing Noonien again. His ideas are tantalizing.

Often Wrong Soong

At the start of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Data had no memories of his earliest days alive; he was discovered abandoned in pieces on a remote Federation outpost and reassembled by Federation scientists. His creator, Dr. Soong, was presumed dead, a fact confirmed by his brother Lore. By the show's fourth season, Data and Lore would be remotely summoned by Dr. Soong, now incredibly old and eager to give Data an emotions chip; Data was incapable of feeling because of the missing chip. Data, rather logically, asks Dr. Soong why he was created. They have a brief exchange about how humans are fascinated by the past and are eager to perpetuate into the future. Having children, Soong argues, is a way of assuring immortality.

But little was revealed about Soong's life and philosophy at large, though it was implied that he inherited his interest in androids from several previous generations. The details of Noonien himself, however, have yet to be explored. Brent Spiner suggested finally covering Soong's life in a standalone "Star Trek" series. When asked if he'd even play all seven of his characters at once, Spiner quipped:

"One can only hope! It's high time, don't you think? I don't think that's ever going to happen. I think this one's as close as you're going to get. You know, I think I'm too old — but I would like to see the ultimate Soong episode, or series or miniseries. Just finding out who this family is. Where they came from, really. Because you always have to ask yourself: "How did this guy get a Chinese last name? Who was he, really? Why are all iterations of him so into eugenics and creating perfect species?"

Eugenics?

As was iterated in "Picard" and "Enterprise," the Soong family was weirdly fixated on "the perfect being," and both Adam and Arik were eager to manipulate genetics to that end. Indeed, it was Arik's genetic tinkering with Klingon DNA that caused them to more closely resemble humans for a few generations. That was the in-canon excuse as to why Klingons looked human in the original "Star Trek" series, but why they had pronounced alien foreheads in "Next Generation." Arik, when apprehended for his genetic crimes, announced that a positronic being might be the way to go, and that it would only take a few generations to make an android. The genetic manipulation would also explain why multiple generations across the centuries all happen to look exactly like Brent Spiner.

It was never explained, however, why the Soongs started on that path the begin with. Spiner wanted to look at that more closely.

While Spiner clearly has a knack for playing multiple characters in a scene — or perhaps the scripts he was handed allowed him that opportunity — he did say that he wouldn't necessarily want to play Dr. Soong in a spinoff series. "It's a really intriguing story of a family," he said. "It could even be told without me. There could be other actors who do it."

Not only would this allow Spiner's acting legacy to continue in "Star Trek" for perpetuity, but it would allow other, newer performers to step in. Also, seeing as how the androids are essentially immortal, but human actors are not, shunting Data's brain into new bodies would make sense in canon.

Just about anything can be explored in "Trek" right now — there are six shows at once! — so why not a Soong miniseries?

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