#la forge

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Prepare to initiate separation sequence When La Forge is left briefly in charge of the ship in “The Arsenal of Freedom,” he is almost immediately put to the test by the planet’s defense system, and he keeps his cool even while receiving constant backtalk from Logan. It’s one of few instances we see the saucer separate as well, allowing Geordi to make use of the battle bridge to save the day!

Elementary, my dear La Forge One of the highlights of all of Next Gen is watching the friendship between Data and Geordi take shape and grow, and early on we get some great moments of them playing Holmes and Watson together on the holodeck in “Elementary, Dear Data,” which is undoubtedly sweet. Extra kudos to La Forge for putting up with Data’s shenanigans when he’s got all the stories memorized too.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? It’s always a joy getting to watch the engineers do their whiz kid stuff, and we get a good taste of that in “Contagion” when Geordi is inspired by Data randomly restarting himself and uses that as a launching point for wiping the Yamato’s records out of the Enterprise as well. It’s Information Technology 101, and he does it so well!

The best piece of engineering we’ll ever need Speaking of great engineering feats, La Forge does it again in “Booby Trap” when he concocts the purely manual solution to get out of the literal booby trap. Because the issue is with the computer, he opts to turn the whole thing off and have Picard pilot through the debris field himself. All you gotta do is ignore some of the weird holo-Leah stuff and it’s quite brilliant!

I will be your eyes Somehow, all of La Forge’s platonic relationships hit some really high marks, and he forms enough of a trust with Bochra in “The Enemy” that the two are able to survive on Galorndon Core. You’d never think humans and Romulans could find common ground before, but when these two find that they need each other, you think there might be hope yet.

Computer, identify the source of this shadow Geordi has another very nice friendship with his old crewmate Susanna Leijton in “Identity Crisis,” but the most impressive part of this episode is the great sleuthing that he does with some video tapes and the holodeck to determine that there was more on planet Tarchannen III than met the eye. In fact, there were otherwise invisible transfigured rave apes!

A blind man who never would have existed in your society Appropriately, we saw Hannah Bates’s actress in our podcast coverage this week in “Two Days and Two Nights,” and that makes it a good time to bring up that Geordi totally schools her biologically engineered ass in “The Masterpiece Society.” He uses his VISOR to save the day, something no one in their colony would ever have because of their ableist views.

BBFF: Best Borg Friends Forever As with his bromance with Bochra, Geordi connects with another unexpected being in “I, Borg.” Indeed, it’s the engineer’s ability to humanize even the least human, most frightening enemies that proves to be one of his best qualities throughout the show. Watching Geordi remind Hugh of his individuality, give him his name, and save him from Picard is the best of La Forge.

Are you saying I'm some blind ghost with clothes? Speaking of forging friendships, La Forge shared a very clever plot with Ro Laren in “The Next Phase,” and it turns out the two of them work together splendidly! Not only do they confront what could easily be interpreted as their deaths, AND find an ingenious way back to the correct phase, but they also foil a nefarious Romulan plot. Oh dear, what would Bochra think?

The Titan’s Turn Boys We picked on Riker the other week for how he acted when Jellico had command of the Enterprise in “Chain of Command.” But you know who took it like a champ and did his damn job? Freakin’ Geordi! He helped Jellico with the solution to their Cardassian problem and even used his friendliness and good nature to get him to involve that whiny Riker to pilot the shuttle.

They see me rollin’, they hatin’ Whenever a chief engineer gets to roll under a slowly closing garage door, you know you’re in for a good time. It happened in “The Best of Both Worlds,” critically one of the best episodes of all of Trek. But an even better roll is in Generations in which Geordi gets a perfect score for the pirouettes and for sticking the landing in a great pose, all while saving his whole engineering crew!

I’ve never seen a sunrise Finally, let’s close out the Best Moments with just a small detail from Insurrection. While we must admit that the rejuvenation storyline on Ba’ku wasn’t terribly well fleshed out, the character who really gets something out of it is Geordi. When his optic nerves have regenerated, he gets to enjoy a sunrise the natural way for the first time, and it’s tragic because he knows it won’t last.

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Worst moments

This is why you wear PPE Who’s keeping count of how many times “The Naked Now” or “The Naked Time” has come up in these character spotlights? Well, in the case of the TNG spinoff, you can thank La Forge for catching the Psi 2000 virus in the first place by handling a corpse with no protective equipment. And am I the only one it rubs wrong that he spent the episode complaining about being blind?

An adversary capable of defeating Data Here’s another shipwide problem that was basically Geordi’s fault. With his imprecise wording, he effectively made the computer create Moriarty in the holodeck in “Elementary, Dear Data” and we see the repercussions of his mistake throughout both that episode and “Ship in a Bottle,” which I’ve already given Picard some guff about.

Their rubber band broke, right? La Forge starts the abysmal “Samaritan Snare” off on the wrong foot from the word go. He makes fun of the Pakleds pretty much to their faces, which is uncomfortable on its own. But he simultaneously underestimates them, assuming them to just be dopey but affable instead of dopey and malicious. Getting kidnapped by caricatures makes for a pretty rough day.

That’s a Coco No-No! It begins. Why the show decided Geordi had to be weird with women is beyond us, but it starts with his weird date with Christy in “Booby Trap.” He takes it way too personally that she’s not that into him on their date and gripes about it to Guinan afterwards. And that’s not even mentioning the rest of this squicky episode that sets Geordi up as the incel of the franchise.

Hold the Broccoli Despite La Forge generally being a friendly guy and a good boss, the way he treats Barclay when we first meet him in “Hollow Pursuits” is downright shameful. Throwing around the disparaging nickname. Complaining to Picard whenever he has to be in the same room with him. Overall treating him like a leper. Not great boss behavior.

I’m guilty of a terrible crime, Doctor. I offered you friendship. There’s good reason for “Galaxy’s Child” making our Worst Episodes of TNG list, and that’s that it entirely besmirches the character of Geordi La Forge. It’s one thing to get a little action with holo-Leah, but it’s another to expect the real Leah to treat you the same way. And then to turn it around so it’s all her fault? Nothing on our Best Moments list makes up for this railroading of an otherwise good character.

Even in a La Forge post, O’Brien must suffer Geordi just plain wasn’t having a good day in “The Mind’s Eye” and it’s full of bad behavior that can easily be blamed on the brainwashing, but blame we will! Manchurian Candidate’d or not, Geordi La Forge was capable of killing the simulation O’Brien at the command of some Romulans, and later dumping his drink on him in real life… but that’s nothing new to the chief.

A century out of date Okay, so it’s plain and true that Montgomery Scott was entirely underfoot and a bit of a hindrance for the engineering crew in “Relics.” But it’s also so sad to watch our resident miracle worker from The Original Series get treated like an obsolete dunsel. Geordi is prepared to ignore the old engineer until the captain takes him aside with another of his patented Picard pep talks.

I'm starting to feel like I know her If falling for a holodeck version of Leah Brahms wasn’t creepy enough for you, don’t worry, Geordi can go lower. In “Aquiel” he falls for the eponymous character by watching her personal logs, ostensibly for an investigation, but then when he hooks up with the murder suspect when she turns out to still be alive, no one can doubt that he’s taken it too far. Like freakin’ always.

How do you feel? We already saw in our spotlight on Lt. Commander Data that installing the emotion chip in Generations was a bad move. Geordi does promise to his android friend that he’ll remove the thing at the first sign of trouble… which happens at the most inopportune time right as Geordi is busy getting kidnapped by Klingons. This guy. Always getting kidnapped and reprogrammed, he is.

This is the exact spot where your statue’s gonna be One more from the movies, and that’s that Geordi gets to meet one of his heroes in First Contact… and immediately creeps Zefram Cochrane out by fanboying all over him. Word of advice, Gordo: if you’re already messing with the Temporal Prime Directive, maybe don’t start talking about going to Zephram Cochrane High School to the guy.

The Butterfly-in-the-sky Effect We get even more temporal shenanigans when Geordi gets a brief cameo in Voyager’s “Timeless.” Sure, LeVar was also busy directing this one so it’s a no-brainer to pop up on a viewscreen while he’s on set, but it also just feels weird for one of our past heroes to be the one browbeating our current heroes to stop their super cool time adventure. What a Herbert.

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