Geordi La Forge Holds The Worst Possible Star Trek Honor
LeVar Burton’s Geordi La Forge is one of Star Trek’s best characters: between his brilliance as an engineer and his big heart, Geordi soon established himself as the heart and soul of The Next Generation. Unfortunately, this character’s portrayal and his legacy were ultimately tarnished by something so glaring that Geordi could have seen it without his VISOR. Specifically, this gifted Starfleet officer ended up arguably becoming the first incel in mainstream television history.
Geordi La Forge Kept Failing At Love
It’s something of an open secret that Geordi La Forge had the most miserable love life of the entire Enterprise crew. One woman that he fell in love with turned out to be a monster, and another…well, another was a hologram. To put things in perspective, the emotionless android Commander Data ended up having better and more fulfilling romantic relationships onboard the ship.
Geordi Got Close To A Hologram
The lack of love is bad enough, but what puts Geordi La Forge into the “incel” category is how he behaved toward Leah Brahms, the designer of the warp drive of the Enterprise. He first gets to know her (sort of) in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Booby Trap:” in order to help the ship get out of the titular trap, Geordi ends up recreating Brahms on the holodeck in order to get her advice.
Geordi Thinks The Relationship Is Much Different
They help save the ship and crew, but the episode makes clear that the engineer has fallen—and fallen hard–for a hologram… the 24th-century equivalent to modern-day incels who have turned to AI chatbots in the search for love. For Geordi La Forge, things go from bad to worse in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Galaxy’s Child” when our erstwhile engineer gets to meet the real Leah Brahms in the flesh. He’s as creepy as he can be toward her because he imagines them already having a kind of relationship (he previously kissed her hologram), culminating in one of the show’s ugliest scenes.
The Real Dr. Brahms Calls Him Out
The real Brahms catches Geordi La Forge in the holodeck with his recreation of her and rightfully calls him out, telling him she feels “invaded” and “violated” and openly speculating about what other creepy things he has been doing with her image. That’s when our familiar Star Trek character goes full Nice Guy on her, claiming that the only thing he is guilty of is “hoping we could connect” and offering “friendship.” Arguably, this entire scene undermines a claim LeVar Burton made to Rolling Stone that Geordi couldn’t be an incel “because he isn’t angry.”
Star Trek Predicted Deepfake AI Companions
It’s true that Geordi La Forge is not presented as an outright misogynist in these Star Trek episodes or any other. But the character is quite literally involuntarily celibate throughout the entire show (not counting the alternate future in “All Good Things”), and in “Galaxy’s Child,” he gets very angry and defensive towards the real Leah Brahms as soon as she calls him out for his creepy behavior.
She caught him in a deepfake fantasy using her image, and he gaslighted her into thinking he only wanted to be friends when he spent the entire episode trying to be much more than friends. Oh, and did we mention this gaslighting is so effective that she apologizes to him by the end of the episode?
Geordi La Forge Was (Unintentionally) Star Trek’s First Incel
It brings us no pleasure to report that Geordi La Forge made television history by becoming the first incel in mainstream TV history. But his entire dating history, combined with pretty much everything having to do with Brahms, makes us think he is just one bad day from replicating a fedora and calling Deanna Troi “m’lady.” Speaking of Troi, we’re now grateful that she managed to crash the Enterprise before we had to see incel Geordi get even more depraved on the holodeck.
