Geordi La Forge

Gene Roddenberry created the character in honor of George La Forge, a quadriplegic fan of the original Star Trek series, who died in 1975.[3] He was not the first to honor La Forge in the Star Trek franchise; a character directly named for George La Forge was written into the 1980 Star Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold.

A casting call was placed with agencies for the role, which described him as friends with Data, and specified that La Forge should have "perfect diction and might even have a Jamaican accent" and instructed those agencies not to submit "any 'street' types."[4]

LeVar Burton auditioned for the role in 1986.[4] He had previously appeared in Roots and other major network shows. He stated that "years ago I was doing a TV movie called Emergency Room and it was a fairly miserable experience. But there was a producer on that show, a man named Bob Justman.... six, seven years later, I get this call from Bob Justman and he's working at Paramount on this new Star Trek series and he said I remember your love of the show, we've got this character, would you be interested in coming in and seeing us? And I said was [franchise creator] Gene Roddenberry involved? He said he is. And I said I'll be right there."[5] Roddenberry was very pleased with Burton at his first audition.[6] Among the other actors considered for the role were Wesley Snipes, Reggie Jackson, Kevin Peter Hall, Clarence Gilyard, and Tim Russ, who would later play Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager.[7]

Burton also commented that he was anxious about his role, because he feared that The Next Generation was going to flop: "At the beginning, you know, there was a lot of conversation in the press at what a bad idea this was [but] I thought that since Gene was involved we had a real good shot of making a good show that would carry on in that tradition of Star Trek."[5]

Throughout the series, Burton was equipped with Geordi La Forge's trademark VISOR, which he found extremely unpleasant to wear:

It's pretty much a living hell. 85 to 90% of my vision is taken away when the VISOR goes on. I bumped into everything the first season—light stands, overhead microphones, cables at my feet—I tripped over it all. So it's a sort of conundrum. The blind man, who puts on the VISOR and sees much more than everyone else around him, when the actor actually does that he's turned into a blind person. Then there was the pain. In the second season, we re-designed the VISOR and made it heavier and the way we actually affixed it was that we screwed it, we literally screwed it into my head and so there were screws that we would turn and there were flanges on the inside that would press into my temples and so after fifteen or twenty minutes of that I got headaches. So I had a daily headache for about six years. Which was also no fun.[8]

During the series, Burton's character was Chief Engineering Officer, and thus was often portrayed repairing machines or discovering new scientific phenomena. Burton commented how hard it sometimes was to deliver the technobabble used by La Forge in these scenes with a straight face: "Technobabble brings with it its own challenge. I'm not an engineer, I just played one on TV. The methodology that I found most successful was to really spit it out as fast as I possibly could. Giving the illusion that I knew what I was talking about when, in fact, I really didn't."[9]

Asked about his favorite scenes, Burton answered that he especially liked holodeck adventures: "The Holmes and Watson episodes for Data and Geordi, the Robin Hood episode, you know, those were a lot of fun for us. I think the holodeck was a very cool concept, you know. You can create a three dimensional reality. I mean, how cool is that?"[10]

Following the end of the series, Burton has stated how much he gained from The Next Generation; "When I got married my best man was Brent (Spiner, who portrayed the series character Lieutenant Commander Data) and my groomsmen were Michael (Dorn, Lieutenant Worf) and Jonathan (Frakes, Commander Riker) and Patrick (Stewart, Captain Picard). No matter what, we will always be family to each other. I mean in every respect. There have been times when there have been feuds within the family, when it hasn't been all hugs and kisses. But we have stuck together."[11]

In the series, we learn that Geordi was born blind and wears a VISOR, an arc-shaped prosthetic attached at the temples that provides him with vision. Interfacing directly with his brain, the device enables him to "see" much of the electromagnetic spectrum – radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, and beyond, but not normal light perception, though it does allow Geordi to see the visible light section of the EM spectrum.[22]

La Forge was born February 16, 2335, in Mogadishu, Somalia of the African Confederation on Earth to Silva La Forge, a Starfleet command track officer and eventual Captain of the USS Hera (NCC-62006) and Edward M. La Forge, a Starfleet exozoologist.[23] He has also mentioned having a sister, Arianna. La Forge stated that with two parents in Starfleet he was an "army brat", frequently moving homes depending on where his parents were stationed around Earth (or other planets), which mirrors Burton's own youth (he was born on an American base in Germany). He attended Zefram Cochrane High School[24] and then Starfleet Academy from 2353 to 2357.[25] In 2357, he was assigned as an ensign aboard the USS Victory under Captain Zimbata.[26] After his first cruise, he was transferred to the USS Hood serving with then Lt. Commander William Riker for her 2361-64 cruise, during which he was promoted to lieutenant junior grade.[27]

La Forge once impressed Captain Jean-Luc Picard by staying up all night to fix a shuttle craft that Picard mentioned had a superficial problem. Upon learning this, Picard decided he wanted Geordi on his next command[28] which ended up being the USS Enterprise-D where Geordi was assigned to him as a helmsman. At the beginning of Season 2, he was promoted to Lieutenant and named Chief Engineer; in Season 3, he rose to Lieutenant Commander, a rank that he held for the duration of the series and movies; he finds a best friend in the android Data.

In 2372, Geordi is transferred to the new Sovereign-class starship Enterprise-E. When the ship travels back in time to the 21st century, he works alongside Dr. Zefram Cochrane and helps him successfully launch Earth's first warp-capable vessel and achieve first contact with the Vulcans.[24]

During the Ba'ku incident, La Forge began to experience pain in his eyes after sojourning on the planet. Doctor Beverly Crusher removes his ocular implants to discover that his optic nerves have regenerated and he has gained normal sight. This effect is caused by the healing properties of the Ba'ku ring system and, at the time, it is speculated that the effect will fade after La Forge leaves Ba'ku.[29] This diagnosis proved correct; La Forge again wears the implants in Star Trek: Nemesis.

In the third season of the sequel series Star Trek: Picard, La Forge is revealed to have fathered two daughters, Alandra and Sidney, who have joined Starfleet by 2401. Like their father, Alandra has become an engineer while Sidney has become a pilot. Alandra serves alongside Geordi while Sidney serves aboard the USS Titan; he has become overprotective of them nonetheless. La Forge has become a Commodore and is the head curator of the Starfleet Museum, wherein he has been working on a secret project for twenty years. Picard, Crusher, their son Jack, and the Titan crew, on the run from a Changeling conspiracy in Starfleet, seek La Forge's help to try to clone the ship's signals, but La Forge points out that Starfleet has upgraded their ships to "talk" to each other. However, when his daughters and Jack steal a cloaking device from the Museum and install it on the Titan, La Forge reluctantly goes along with them, whereupon he is reunited with an altered form of Data, fighting with his "evil twin" Lore for control of their common android body.[30] La Forge helps Data overcome Lore's dominance of the body, which allows Data to kill the main antagonist of the season.[31] La Forge is reunited with the rest of the Enterprise crew; he helps Data and Crusher find the true nature of Picard's neurological disorder and loses his daughters to it, forcing La Forge to reveal his secret project: the full reconstruction of the Enterprise-D.[32] Picard uses the Enterprise to infiltrate the antagonists' collaborators' base; La Forge assumes temporary command, letting Crusher destroy the base's power source with the Enterprise's torpedoes, eliminating the collaborators' threat once and for all, and oversees Picard's rescue. La Forge greets his daughters, who have been returned to normal, on the Titan over video; he is last seen playing poker with his Enterprise crewmates at the Ten Forward bar in Los Angeles, content with his life.

Critics and fans have responded favorably to the character. Burton himself has complained on DVD featurettes about the lack of romantic interests for his character. At least one scholar, however, states that out of seven principal black characters across the Star Trek series, only La Forge and Tuvok "really qualify as nerds, and neither of them compares with the extraordinary geekiness of the teenaged Wesley Crusher." According to Dr. Ron Eglash, the construction of the La Forge character stands up to the standards of Afrofuturism.[34]

In David Greven's book Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek (2009), he described the use of the VISOR as a means to obscure the face of the character, describing it as a "surprisingly clunky symbol of blindness". However, he felt that the bionic eyes used in the film series were an improvement but followed a pattern of African American eye modifications in fantasy and science fiction films such as Halle Berry as Storm in X-Men (2000). Greven suggested that these changes were to create the impression that the wearer was alien in nature and to highlight the difference between that character/actor and the others in the film.[35]

In 2018, TheWrap ranked Geordi as the 11th best main cast character of Star Trek shows, noting his ability to come up with technical solutions on short notice and his friendship with Data.[36] In 2016, the character of Geordi was ranked as the 21st most important character of Starfleet within the Star Trek science fiction universe by Wired magazine.[37] In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter ranked "Relics" as the 62nd greatest of the Star Trek franchise up to that time, noting that LeVar Burton has many great scenes with original cast veteran James Doohan reprising his famous character Scotty.[38]

In 2017, IndieWire rated Geordi as the 8th best character on Star Trek: The Next Generation.[39] CBR ranked La Forge as the 13th best Starfleet character of Star Trek, in 2018.[40]

In 2017, Screen Rant ranked La Forge the 9th most attractive person in the Star Trek universe.[41] In 2018, The Wrap placed La Forge as 11th out 39 in a ranking of main cast characters of the Star Trek franchise prior to Star Trek: Discovery.[42]

• Artificial eye
• Human echolocation

• Geordi La Forge Archived July 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine at the official Star Trek website
• Geordi La Forge at Memory Alpha