TV URBAN LEGEND: At one point, the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation considered revealing that Geordi La Forge was secretly an alien!
LeVar Burton's Geordi La Forge was one of the constant presences throughout the seven season run of Star Trek: The Next Generation...
He is best remembered for the iconic visor that he wore that allowed his character to see despite being blind...
La Forge was a well-liked character, but it is also fair to say that he was, if not an enigma, certainly not quite as developed as some of the other characters. Many of the characters had elaborate back stories that would be checked in on repeatedly throughout the series. We didn't even meet La Forge's family until the final season of the series, and at that point, show writer/producer Ronald D. Moore even joked that the fact that the show was finally showing Geordi's mother was a sign that the show had been on too long, noting to IGN, "I think it was a point where we were in the room and we were talking about bringing Geordi's mother in, and we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'This is sad. This is the best we can do? Is this the best we can do, is Geordi's mother?' It was such a "who cares" idea that we were just sort of, 'Oh man… This show has got to end'"
This lack of a look into Geordi's back story led to a proposed idea where Geordi would be revealed to be an alien. In Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's seminal work, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years, show writer/producer Jeri Taylor explained, We wanted to make Geordi an alien. He was going to discover that his father was not who he thought he was, and his mother had an almost Rosemary's Baby-kind of thing and had been impregnated by an alien. As a result, Geordi was actually half alien and now, at his present age, his people were coming back to get him. I thought that would have given Geordi's character a lot of elaboration."
The idea was never adopted. Although, it's amusing that Geordi was temporarily turned into an alien in the Season 4 episode, "Identity Crisis"!
The "reveal a human character was secretly an alien" idea was later almost used on Star Trek: Voyager, as well, with Garrett Wang's Harry Kim....
I don't know if the two plots were connected or if it was just a coincidence.
The legend is...
STATUS: True
Thanks to Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman and Jeri Taylor for the information.
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