Why LeVar Burton Was Glad Geordi Lost The VISOR In Star Trek: First Contact

Throughout "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) wore a VISOR on duty. It was explained early in the series that Geordi was born blind thanks to a birth defect, so he requires a specialized appliance to see. Hence, Geordi was given a series of small electronic implants in his temples, which reached into the visual cortex of his brain. The VISOR would then hook onto the implants and feed visual information directly into his brain, effectively bypassing his missing optic nerves.

The fact that "The Next Generation" had a disabled main character was a boon for representation, and the show's writers never made his disability the central part of a storyline. Geordi's blindness was wholly incidental, so his VISOR became a mere detail in his costume. It was much more notable that Geordi was an awkward man who had trouble finding dates.

Burton, however, hated wearing the VISOR. Not only did it cut off a good portion of the actor's vision, but it was also clamped onto his head every morning in an incredibly painful fashion. Sadly, the VISOR was not glued into place, it was a chunk of metal that was pinched around the actor's temples. Burton was also a little frustrated that, as an actor, a portion of his instrument — his eyes — were covered up. Without his eyes to emote, he felt that his performance was limited.

In truth, Burton didn't fully realize just how limiting the VISOR was until 1996 when he made the movie "Star Trek: First Contact." In that film, Geordi was given mechanical eye implants, which meant that Burton was able to dispense with his VISOR and only had to wear colored contact lenses. (Closeup shots of Geordi's eyeballs were achieved from rudimentary kitchen gadgets.) In the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Burton admitted that he'd finally gotten his instrument back.

Burton was told by "Star Trek" executive producer Rick Berman that the VISOR was necessary to "The Next Generation." Berman, you see, felt that it was a clear visual indicator that the characters were all living in the future. Burton didn't like it for the reasons mentioned above, but also because there were only a few instances where the audience got to look through the VISOR for themselves. As Burton put it:

"80 percent of my vision was cut off when I wore that thing, and it physically hurt, which was one of the more important reasons I wanted to get out from underneath it. We held on to it for so long, because, as Rick says, it was one of the ways that we established in the minds of the audience the technology of the 24th century. On the series it became problematic because it was cost prohibitive. We were never able to show the audience what Geordi saw, because it was too expensive and we were on a tight budget."

Burton added that the VISOR, after seven full seasons of television, had become a barrier. It hurt his head, it was difficult to write stories for, and, worst of all, it covered his eyes. "On a spiritual level, it's really just a sin to cover an actor's eyes," Burton explained.

When it came time to make "First Contact," though, a change was required. "It was time," Burton recalled. Something had to be done to indicate that things had changed for Geordi. When asked about the contacts, Burton said he was relieved, once again recalling the problems with the VISOR:

"I wasn't really aware of how much of a barrier [the VISOR] had become until we shot ['First Contact']. And in the absence of the VISOR, I noticed that the other actors were relating to me very differently. They were engaging me in a way that they never did in scenes. So the VISOR is dead; long live the visor!"

Geordi hasn't had the VISOR since.