Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Geordi La Forge

During the very beginnings of the creation process for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry had expressed his desire "to have a disabled crew member" on board the Enterprise-D, as stated in The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years. It was story editor/creative consultant David Gerrold, who had written for Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Animated Series, who then prepared a memo "listing various disabilities" from which Roddenberry "focused on blind."

The first casting call for "LT. GEORDI La FORGE," as given in The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, further indicated that, [w]ith the help of a special prosthetic device […] Geordi's vision far surpasses anything the human eyes can see." The story behind the creation of Geordi's VISOR will be discussed later.

In choosing a name for the character, David Gerrold looked to honour the memory of one fan of The Original Series in particular — George T. LaForge Jr, who had suffered from muscular dystrophy and sadly passed away in 1975, aged only 19. Gerrold suggested the name to Roddenberry who thought it was a "terrific idea."

Our honoured fan also has his namesake in beta canon. In Gerrold's 1980 Star Trek novel The Galactic Whirlpool, there is an Admiral George La Forge, and in the 2016 Star Trek: Enterprise novel Live by the Code by Christopher L. Bennett, Captain George La Forge features as one of Geordi's ancestors.