How many people used a VISOR?

[dahj]

But are you talking about the actual Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement, the multispectral hair-barrettey thing that's wired into a blind person's visual cortex through implanted electrodes on the temples? Or are you just talking about some other visor-like thing that somebody wears over their eyes?

The latter. But since it's bigger and has a thingy that goes on the top of the head as well it's a safe bet we're meant to infer it's an earlier version of it.

 

[Christopher]

The latter. But since it's bigger and has a thingy that goes on the top of the head as well it's a safe bet we're meant to infer it's an earlier version of it.

Who was wearing it? Was the character identified as blind? Or might it just have been a wearable sensor device of some sort?

We've already seen the 23rd-century version of sensor tech for the blind: Miranda Jones's sensor web in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"

 

[dahj]

Who was wearing it? Was the character identified as blind? Or might it just have been a wearable sensor device of some sort?

The guy operating the transporter on the Discovery.
It didn't seem like he was wearing it for fun or for any work purposes.

 

[Timo]

The Discovery continues to be full of people who appear to be war invalids. We see one scurrying around in a conventional wheelchair, too (and wearing the Disco uniform, so he isn't one of Pike's), and we get facial prosthetics of many other sorts, some subtle, others not so. Might be these will grow less conspicuous in-universe simply because these characters heal and can revert to more subdued aids.

Not all of them need heal perfectly. Perhaps poor Leighton wears that half-mask because of Burnham's War?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Qonundrum]

DSC now gives us implants galore, supposedly for coping with war wounds. No one-size-and-shape-fits-all gear there, though. For all we know, LaForge is indeed unique in the sense of demanding top performance at the expense of aesthetics, and for that reason has an exceptionally bulky vision aid that makes him Superman, where people like Detmer want their prosthetics to look like jewelry even if that keeps them at mere human level.

DS9 could have done with a few war wound prosthetics, too. But they did a whole episode on Nog's leg, showing how mere restoring of previous abilities can be done without much ado. And LaForge was never about "restoring".

Timo Saloniemi

Give? Or retconned, if the show allegedly takes place in Prime and not Kelvinland (aka Pufnstufville, with its mushrooms)? Shame it didn't take place in the Kelvin timeline, it just makes more sense to do so.

DS9 could have done more war wound exploration as well, in ways TNG, TOS, VOY, and ENT could not.

 

[Christopher]

Shame it didn't take place in the Kelvin timeline, it just makes more sense to do so.

If you mean in real-world creative terms, I agree that setting it in a different continuity would've been a good idea, although it presumably couldn't have been Kelvin without Bad Robot and Paramount's involvement (but hey, lots of franchises have many distinct continuities).

But as far as in-story continuity goes, DSC can't be Kelvin, because it has a massive Klingon war two years before Kelvin Admiral Marcus says that the Klingons have only occasionally skirmished with Starfleet and may be building toward a future war, and because it has the Enterprise already in service a year before its launch in Kelvin.