Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Geordi's VISOR
Eyeballs are overrated. With his VISOR, Geordi was able to do far more than just seeing.
Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation was born without eyes, but, thanks to Starfleet medical science, was able to see even better than those with normal Human vision, using his signature VISOR (which stood for Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement).
Geordi received his first VISOR shortly after turning five. It basically gave him superhuman abilities, as he could see things that would be invisible for others, but the device wasn't without it's issues. Throughout his Starfleet career, it caused Geordi a fair amount of trouble (and made the job a lot harder for LeVar Burton, who had to play the character with his eyes almost completely covered). The VISOR has also become greatly iconic in pop-culture, and has inspired a lot of real-world creations.
In this list, we're gonna explore all of the most interesting facts about Geordi's VISOR that fans may have missed or forgotten over the years. As you'll see, the VISOR was much more than a fashion statement.
10. What Geordi Can See
The colours that Humans see are actually just different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, with red being the longest (at around 700 nanometres), and violet the shortest (at around 380 nanometres). However, visual light is only a small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. Longer wavelengths contain types of radiation like infared light, microwaves, and radio waves, and shorter wavelengths contain types like ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays. With his VISOR, Geordi was able to see much more of the electromagnetic spectrum, meaning he could detect heat by looking at infared light, and sometimes see through objects or clouds that would appear opaque for anyone else.
He also saw the world in much more detail than the average person. He could detect tiny details in people's heart rates and perspiration, which sometimes even allowed him to tell if someone was lying.
Several scenes have given us representations of Geordi's way of seeing, but with ordinary Human eyes, it's actually physically impossible to even comprehend what it would be like to see anything other than visible light.