Anyway I was a child in the early 1980s and when LeVar Burton suddenly appeared on a new Star Trek series with a hair clip over his eyes, I was a bit confused & disillusioned.

Yes in the mid 1980s that was a new hair bauble that all us girls were wearing to clip our long hair up into a mohawk-like ponytail. And yes it has been confirmed that the wardrobe people on Star Trek TNG indeed saw one of these hair clips and decided it would make a good sci-fi eye covering for a blind character in the future. As if the audience wouldn’t notice that’s a fucking hair clip over Reading Rainbow guy’s eyes.