How does LeVar Burton actually see outta that thing?

[Michael]

Yeah I always thought it was pretty useless making Geordi blind. They barely ever talked about it and they didn't do any stories about it either. If they were gonna make him wear that thing they might have made it a little bit useful.

The problem is that the "they" who originated the idea weren't the same "they" who ended up producing the majority of the series. Of the people who developed TNG -- Gene Roddenberry, David Gerrold, D. C. Fontana, Bob Justman -- all but Roddenberry had been driven out by the end of the first season, and I'm not sure if Roddenberry made any substantial contributions beyond the second season or so, given his declining health. And so a lot of the original intentions behind the show fell by the wayside. The original developers wanted the Enterprise to be charting the deep, unknown frontier, away from home for so many years that the crew needed to bring their families with them. They wanted the families and civilians to be a major part of the series, to have the Enterprise be not just a ship but a community in space. They wanted to focus on new aliens in that uncharted frontier and keep familiar aliens to a minimum. Instead, the E-D spent most of the series on diplomatic or political or military missions in known territory; we ended up seeing a lot of the Klingons and Romulans; and the civilian scientists aboard were forgotten, with the only civilians we ever saw being families of the Starfleet crew. Data was originally meant to be capable of emotion, just inexperienced at dealing with it, but Michael Piller retconned him as an emotionless being. And the original creators no doubt had ideas about what Geordi's VISOR could be used for -- see "Heart of Glory" -- but their successors evidently had little interest in the idea.

Thank you, that is the most interesting post I read in a while. I wonder how the series might have turned out had some of the original authors stayed longer.

One thing I'm not quite sure I understand, what specifically are you referencing with the Michael Piller/Data remark? When did he retcon Data? Wasn't he emotionless all of season one?

 

[Christopher]

One thing I'm not quite sure I understand, what specifically are you referencing with the Michael Piller/Data remark? When did he retcon Data? Wasn't he emotionless all of season one?

No, we never heard Data say he lacked emotion until "The Ensigns of Command" early in season 3, when Michael Piller took over as showrunner. In the first two seasons, Data often showed evidence of subdued or nascent emotionality. He got "drunk" along with everyone else in "The Naked Now" and grinned widely when Tasha led him to bed, and he showed clear signs of feelings for Tasha in "Skin of Evil" (when he told Armus with very quiet rage that he thought Armus should be destroyed) and "The Measure of a Man" (when he admitted they had been close). He wasn't overtly emotional, but he at least was assumed to have the potential for emotion, even if it was underdeveloped.

Granted, "The Schizoid Man" in the second season did treat emotion from Data as something unusual, but it wasn't until season 3 that the "I have no emotions" schtick became an overtly and constantly (and tediously) referenced element of Data's character.

 

[T'Girl]

Yeah I always thought it was pretty useless making Geordi blind. They barely ever talked about it and they didn't do any stories about it either.

That's not quite true. Geordi's blindness are featured in The Enemy and The Masterpiece Society. Bringing up different future cultures viewpoints on birth defects.

The Masterpiece Society culture and the Romulans (The Enemy) seem to have the same negative position on a society allowing disabled children to live. LaForge had very similar discussions in both episodes on the matter, the Romulan felt that Geordi's parents should have ended his life by infanticide, while the Masterpiece Society culture would have required the ending of Geordi's life by abortion as soon as the defect with his vision became obvious

LaForge: Who gave them the right to decide whether or not I should be here? Whether or not I might have something to contribute?

Given Star Trek's social left of center mindset, Geordi statement is almost surprisingly pro-life.

 

[Christopher]

That's not quite true. Geordi's blindness are featured in The Enemy and The Masterpiece Society. Bringing up different future cultures viewpoints on birth defects.

As I see it, the problem wasn't that they didn't do enough with his blindness, but that they didn't do enough with his VISOR. Here was a character who had a highly versatile superpower, and the first two seasons established a number of different cool things it could do, but afterward it was treated more often as an impediment than an enhancement.

while the Masterpiece Society culture would have required the ending of Geordi's life by abortion as soon as the defect with his vision became obvious

Which was silly, since presumably their technology would be advanced enough to allow for in utero gene therapy to correct the defect. Heck, we're already able to do that now in some cases. So that was a failure of futurism on the writer's part, though I guess the message was considered a higher priority than the credibility.

Given Star Trek's social left of center mindset, Geordi statement is almost surprisingly pro-life.

The misleading thing about the phrase "pro-life" is that it implies the pro-choice position is somehow anti-life. It isn't -- it's just the position that the right to make such a profoundly personal choice should reside with the woman herself instead of with the state. And certainly no pro-choice liberal would approve of aborting babies just because they don't fit some arbitrary, state-dictated standard of purity. That's the opposite of a free choice, plus it's the kind of discrimination that goes against liberal and Trekkish values. (Plus it's what the Nazis did, so it's the sort of thing most folks should be able to agree is wrong regardless of how they identify themselves politically.)

 

[inflatabledalek]

There is always that problem with portraying disabilities in science fiction, trying to come up with some appropriately futuristic way of compensating with it that doesn't just look silly or quickly dated and also isn't so effective it pretty much nullifies the disability completely making it almost pointless including it in the first place. I always thought the visor did a pretty good job of it, a nice simple design that's distinctive but doesn't look insanely stupid.

Though the conceit that they could give him all that wide variety of special vision but not anything even slightly like regular sight was something I always found a bit odd. Sure, the other stuff is useful, but considering how much Geordi clearly would love to see "normally" they couldn't stick a regular (probably 3D HD one) camera in there as well?

 

[Christopher]

Though the conceit that they could give him all that wide variety of special vision but not anything even slightly like regular sight was something I always found a bit odd. Sure, the other stuff is useful, but considering how much Geordi clearly would love to see "normally" they couldn't stick a regular (probably 3D HD one) camera in there as well?

In one of my Trek novels, I postulated that it was an issue of his optic nerve's "bandwidth," so to speak. His brain and optic nerves were only adapted to process a limited range of frequencies, so to pour the whole spectrum through that same bandwidth required compressing the data, as it were, so that the whole range of visible light would pretty much be perceived as a single "color." After all, visible light is a teeeeeeeny-tiny part of the EM spectrum.

Though that leaves the question of why they gave Geordi the full-spectrum vision in the first place instead of just building a prosthetic with normal vision. My explanation (though I forget how much of this got on the page and how much is just in my head) is that this "superpower" was offered to him as compensation for the constant pain he'd have to suffer, and that Geordi went for it since he was a kid at the time and it sounded cool.

 

[7ofJackson]

It was a way to give him a super-ability. Too many characters in the show had super abilities. Jordie with super sight. Warf with super strength. Wesley with his super brain. Data with super everything. I remember worrying they they were creating Star Trek X-Men.