The technological developments of Geordi’s VISOR and implants underscore a degree made by the second most pronounced use of glasses in Star Trek, the pair that Bones provides Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The glasses are McCoy’s method of ribbing Jim about his advancing age (a subject they’ll revisit in every of the following 4 motion pictures). It’s not simply that Kirk is previous and his eyesight is failing; it’s additionally that they’re an vintage, a relic of the previous, identical to the Captain-turned-Admiral himself. Actually, Bones even states that he normally prescribes one thing known as Retinax V for imaginative and prescient loss.
Between the reference to Retinax V and the reward, McCoy highlights a reality concerning the twenty fourth Century and past: folks don’t want glasses. After all, Trek has at all times tried to be forward-looking, discovering a stability between celebrating scientific achievements and never erasing completely different skills or modes of expression. As Stephanie Roehler wrote for StarTrek.com, Geordi retains his VISOR and implants (and Picard stays bald) as a result of “lodging, operate, and acceptance are prized over being extra ‘regular.’”
An Intentional Look
Which brings us again to Nahla Ake’s resolution to strap on a pair of spectacles. She clearly places them on to serve a goal, getting a greater have a look at the display. And she or he appears to deal with them like some other piece of ship’s tools, as demonstrated by the best way she palms them to her XO Lura Thok (Gina Yashere) earlier than dishing out orders.
Thus, her resolution to put on glasses isn’t a mere vogue selection. Reasonably, it’s a strategic selection, a part of the mentality that makes her a captain and a trainer. Nahla Ake is a component Lanthanite, a brand new species launched with Pelia in Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds. Whereas we nonetheless don’t know a lot about Lanthanites, we do know this: they reside for a really very long time they usually develop attachments to the chotchkes they acquire. Typically, these collections will help out in a jam, as when Pelia needed to run landline telephones all through the Enterprise in “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” from season 3. However normally, Lanthanites acquire issues to recollect the previous, to maintain report of the connections they make to individuals who have are available gone of their lengthy lifetimes.
When Nahla Ake places on a pair of glasses, she’s making a connection to the previous. She’s grounding herself in some lengthy gone second earlier than making a choice just like the orders she provides. That connection to the previous is especially vital when one remembers that Starfleet Academy takes place after the ultimate seasons of Discovery, within the thirty second century. The connection she made might very effectively go all the best way again to earlier than The Unique Collection, probably even Enterprise.
