MooPig TV Series Reviews :: WWGD ?

What Would Geordi Do?
by Pat Darnell

Geordi was the chief engineer aboard the flagship Enterprise of Star Trek -- the Next Generation, NG for short. In the TV series he is without sight, a bachelor, and plausible.

He might have been a stock room supervisor in charge of shrinkage at a Wal-Mart had he not landed this mejores role in Star Trek. But as a sightless, black man of average height, with the elocution of a Harvard professor, Geordi, Levar Burton, LaForge had a multitude of barricades to hurdle.

Luckily he did not have a hard upbringing, as both his role parents are admiral or better in Star Fleet Command. He does not have a need to wear a hopped version of the regular uniform worn by all, because of his ethnicity. Although the resident Klingon, Worf, has to jazz his uniform a bit. But with his head gear, blind Geordi is brilliant; enough said.

LeVar Burton, American actor, director and author first came to prominence portraying Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley.

In his TV role with Next Generation, Geordi had replaced the previous token black Star Trek actress, Officer Uhuru, and the Irish hard-ass chief engineer Mr Scot. Geordi could never fill her shoes, and his accent was 100% LA; so he had to find a different angle of approach to his role. He tweaks the Enterprise with some engineering feats, while cruising the decks thinking outside his cubicle.

His best friend it turns out is an OCD android officer, Data, who he visits just to whisk out the day's chaos, chew the fat or tell some funnies. They usually discussed some freakish mechanical enhancement that they had tried, or jabbered on about Data's lack of emotion. We experience Data through Geordi's chortles, churns, and disambiguaitons.

For all of this, it turns out, blind Geordi LaForge didn't play slide, nor did he flat pick. But he does put a special visor on his eyes. This visor, which looks like a plastic gator hair clip that girls in the eighties wore, allowed Geordi to see above and beyond typical human spectrums. If no one else was detecting, Geordi was detecting.

The toothed visor attaches to "implants" at Geordi's temples. This means he is hot wired often to "detect" things "out there." They usually put fiber optic threads into his head, and had him stand next to a Japanese jungle gym.

So when we say WWGD, "What Would Geordi Do?" it involves detection. "I'm not picking up any tachyon , pistachio, mustachio, stanchion, nor Hitachi wave lengths out there... " is what Geordi might say. It deepens our thirst for mystery that must be quenched before the hour is up.

Of course, WWGD? -- he would fix it, by gosh!

We won't really know until we experience an off-shoot of LeVar Burton's Chief Engineer, through a new personality developed by the Star Trek Universe.

Feb. 16, 2009 – Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr., who played Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987-1994), turned 52 last year.

He also hosted the PBS series “Reading Rainbow” (1983-2005).