Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s LeVar Burton spoke about his time on The Next Generation, revealing that there was one aspect of the character that he wished had been explored more.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is in the process of coming to Blu-ray, and Burton has been able to see the first season episodes. The actor is impressed with the remastering of the series thus far. The picture looks “amazing,” he said. “They have redone all the visual effects, and it’s spectacular.”
Watching the series in his own living room was “a sublime experience,” for the actor. “It’s very cool,” he said. The engineering set is “unbelievable. I mean, it all pops.”
Revisiting The Next Generation got Burton to thinking about the character that he played for seven years, and when asked if there was anything about Geordi La Forge that Burton wished had been explored, Burton said, “his sexuality.”
The engineer did have a few romances, but they were unsatisfactory as far as Burton was concerned. “Yeah, one was with an entity that was actually a monster,” said Burton. “And the other was with a holographic representation of the woman who designed the Enterprise engines. Neither of which I would necessarily call a healthy relationship. I just wish [the writers] had allowed that part of Geordi to evolve.”
La Forge was a stereotype “of the nerdy guy, the engineer who is inept around women,” said Burton. “And we just never had the opportunity — we ran out of time, I guess — we never had the opportunity to evolve beyond that. And I believe with the core of my being that Star Trek is better than that. Star Trek is better than stereotypes.”
Source: io9
