Star Trek and disability
That's right - we're back to a bit more serious business!
I've actually been meaning to make this post for some time now, but I started overthinking it. Possibly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the post. Describe Star Trek episodes featuring characters with disabilities? Or attempt to comment on them, which could lead to more discussion but could also lead to fail!posting on my part? Then Real Life activities intruded, and I forgot about the endeavour until I found a list I'd made in my project book.
Couldn't really put it off any longer, so here it is. Episodes I have seen are marked with an asterisk.
TOS:
Thanks to lindmere! The Corbomite Manoeuvre: The Enterprise encounters a mysterious and powerful ship commanded by a fearsome-looking being named Balok, who threatens the Enterprise with destruction as the penalty for entering his star system. Following some clever maneuvering by Kirk, Balok appears to overplay his hand and get his ship in trouble, at which point Kirk boards the ship to rescue the endangered aliens. What he finds instead of a cadre of fierce aliens is a single, small, childlike being (creepily played by a young Clint Howard, brother of Ron), along with the puppet used to present the scary version of Balok. The real Balok is cordial and supremely confident, and Kirk, having engaged in a battle of wits with him, treats him pretty much as an equal (albeit with some twinkly eyed indulgence).
Charlie X: Charles Evans was brought up by Thasians - but he's human. He's transferred to the Enterprise which is on course to a colony where his relatives live. He's rather emotionally disturbed; self-centred, violent and with destructive Thasian superpowers.
* The Menagerie, Part I: Captain Pike used to be Spock's CO. Some time later, Spock, along with Kirk and McCoy, diverts the Enterprise to a space station where he finds Fleet Captain Christopher Pike again. But Pike's promotion is a token promotion: Pike has been severely disabled and scarred by Delta radiation burns. He relies on a life-support wheelchair to keep his basic bodily functions in working order, he has a vicious purple burn scar down the right side of his face, and he communicates using a light. Once for "yes", twice for "no". His mind is undamaged.
Notes: And Captain Pike was the Captain Kirk figure in the pilot episode The Cage, which is where a lot of the uninjured!Pike scenes come from. He was a serious man devoted to his duty... making Spock's role rather unexceptional, as Leonard Nimoy has said. Anyway. Why is Pike shut in the one room you can't open non-manually? And why on earth can he not use Morse Code to communicate? It would make his life a lot easier if every request he wanted to make wasn't preceded by a game of Twenty Questions.
The Menagerie, Part II: Spock takes Pike to Talos IV so Pike can live "unfettered by his physical body".
Operation - Annihilate!: Spock is briefly blinded at the end of this episode when McCoy tries a new treatment for neural parasites. Spock remarks that swapping the pain he was experiencing for his eyesight was "an equitable trade".
* Is There In Truth No Beauty?: Dr. Miranda Jones, a telepathic psychiatrist, is blind. She uses a sensor web to move around more easily. She is a consort of the Medusan ambassador, who, as his(?) planetary name suggests, makes humans go mad at the sight of him. Advantage Jones.
Notes: The actress who played Dr. Jones, Diana Muldaur, went on to be the notoriously unloved Dr. Kate Pulaski in TNG. Captain Kirk seems very wary of Dr. Jones; because she's blind? Because she's a woman? Oh, Kirk.
* Plato's Stepchildren: Alexander is the only Platonian who does not have psychokinetic powers. He's also a little person who is made a servant to the other Platonians (he's also their jester and a general figure of fun in their community).
Notes: Alexander's actor, Michael Dunn, had spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia. IIRC, Kirk mentions to Alexander that he'd be treated much better in the Federation; Alexander leaves on the Enterprise at the end of the episode.
TNG: There's a couple of interesting characters here. Geordi La Forge, of course: the blind engineer who uses a VISOR. Unfortunately that's about all the character development he got. He's blind! He's black! He's an engineer! Did we mention he's blind? Oh, his best friend is Data*, the android-of-all-trades. Poor Geordi. In addition, every time it looked like he was about to acquire a girlfriend, what happened? She turned out to be a) attached (Leah Brahms) b) a convicted criminal who's going to be reassigned (Aquiel Uhnari) c) freaked out by his blindness (Hannah Bates). (Although, to be fair to Dr. Bates, I'm not sure he was romantically interested in her. They were friendly, and that was pretty much it.) Try The Enemy and The Mind's Eye (Gosh, that VISOR is incredibly dangerous, isn't it?)
Notes: It should also be noted that Geordi lives with chronic pain caused by the VISOR. He's seen taking it off in several episodes when he wants a bit of relief. Why doesn't he take it off more when he's not on duty? It seems like he only takes it off to sleep. Surely sensor webs still exist - he's described as wearing one as a child in The Eyes of the Beholders. I also wonder how he reads PADDs, given that the VISOR, for some reason, does not detect visible light but does detect infra-red and longer-wavelength EM radiation. If looking at an iPod screen while wearing sunglasses makes the screen look funny (and it does, trust me), I don't want to know what Geordi sees when he looks at a PADD. Geordi La Forge and Ablism Bingo is an interesting discussion largely about this character.
*Does Data make anyone else think of Asperger's syndrome? He's incredibly intelligent but lacking in some of the more subtle - and some of the more obvious - nuances of social behaviour. Try Data's Day.
Then there is Reg Barclay who I will freely admit is my favourite character. Reg Barclay is an extremely talented engineer. He's also a hypochondriac, he has social phobia (amongst other phobias), and he also suffers from holo-addiction (because he can program a holodeck to produce a bunch of people who think he's the bee's knees). He learns to deal with these problems, and because he's far from perfect, unless most of the rest of the Federation, he's my favourite. He has problems and he copes with them. And he's also a really nice bloke at the heart of it. (Reg also turns up more than once on Voyager, still with his holo-addiction and still with Troi counselling him every step of the way.) Try Hollow Pursuits, Realm of Fear and Genesis.
Too Short a Season: Admiral Jameson has Iverson's Disease, which ages the body but leaves the mind in perfect working order. Admiral Jameson uses an anti-gravity wheelchair and generally exhibits signs of extreme aging; he becomes addicted to treatments that reverse this process.
Notes: I would have seen this but it's from the notoriously dodgy first season of TNG. I really must get over it.
* Loud as a Whisper: The Enterprise is sent to pick up a famous mediator to sort out some terrible intraplanetary dispute. To Picard and Worf's surprise, the mediator, Riva, is deaf, and communicates using three telepathic aides, who represent his id, ego and superego. Or reason, balance and passion, if you're not into Freud. Simple? Oh no, for as soon as they get on the Civil War planet the aides are disintegrated by some ray gun (though it looks like a Dalek did it, judging by the visual effects). Riva is distraught; the only way he can communicate now is through a sign language, which no-one on the Enterprise understands. But wait! They have Data! Data learns the sign language to communicate with Riva; Riva decides to turn his perceived disadvantage into an advantage, and decides to teach the two warring races sign language to solve their differences.
Notes: The actor who played Riva, Howie Seago, is Deaf, and had a hand in the ending of the episode that was broadcast (the first draft ended with Riva learning to speak, AFAIK). Considering this episode is from the second season of TNG (which was also not that great), it's pretty good - it's hard to believe that it was the next episode after The Outrageous Okona, which was bad enough to be recapped on The Agony Booth. Both Worf and Picard seem wary around Riva because of his deafness. Geordi states in this episode that his blindness and VISOR are part of his identity and refuses Dr. Pulaski's offer of ocular implants.
* The Loss: There's a fair bit of Enterprise trouble: Counsellor Troi loses her empathetic Betazoid powers and feels like she's lost her purpose in life.
Notes: We make a foray into the world of fantastic disability here. (Like Fantastic Racism. Troi's powers of mind-reading telepathy and empathy are destroyed; she considers herself disabled, she's distraught, and she plans to leave the ship. (Let us ignore for the moment that her powers, such as they are, could be effectively replaced if every member of the crew wore a mood ring.) Picard - I jest not - tries to persuade her to stay by saying "I knew a person in a wheelchair, once, and she was great!". This is paraphrased. Riker - her romantic interest, despite the fact that every species in the quadrant wants to date Troi - tells her that he feels more comfortable when she doesn't have her powers. A bit of a dick move. Dr. Crusher points out that Troi is now on the same footing as the other human crew members and accuses her of ignoring her human side. And Guinan says - again paraphrased - "Oh, you're not going to be the ship's counsellor any more? Good, I'll go for the job." I suppose it's meant to be tough love, but poor Troi! But the Reset Button is in full force here, so Troi is back to her mind-reading self by the end of the episode. I mean, if she hadn't got her powers back, she might have had some character development instead of being a walking mood ring! She can be awesome without really using her powers... why couldn't she do more of this?
* Ethics: Worf is paralysed in an accident in the cargo hold of the Enterprise. Because he's a Klingon, the traditional course of action to take in this situation is ritual suicide; he asks Riker to kill him with a special blade. Riker refuses on the grounds that he's being selfish to assume his life is over and he also has a son, and points out that Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko, who is about ten or something, is technically the one who should be wielding the blade. Worf agrees to go through a risky and somewhat unethical procedure to regenerate his spinal cord (which he only survives because as a Klingon, he has lots and lots of redundant backup organs); at the end of the episode he is shown learning to walk again.
Notes: Worf could presumably have used an antigrav chairhad the operation been a success: Doctor Crusher offers him motor assist bands and neural transducers, which would have restored 60% or 70% mobility. Riker and Picard discuss Worf's injury; Picard tells Riker to be more culturally sensitive. Oh hi there Picard, your security chief wants to KILL HIMSELF. Shouldn't you be, you know, worried? In DS9, when Worf tries to carry out the same ritual suicide thing with his brother, Sisko really tears a few strips off him. WTF, Picard?
* Tapestry: Picard dies because his artificial heart isn't quite as good as a real one when it comes to being phased in the chest. Q gives him the chance to live his life again; it would have been very different had he not been the sort of man who took risks...
Note: We learn that Picard has an artificial body part. Also, this is a fantastic episode. (It's also the episode from which the Picard And Q Have A Conversation That Implies They've Just Slept With Each Other At Last To The Delight Of Millions Of Slashers, Unless You Watch It In Context conversation in excerpted.) EDIT: Actually, I just found out the artificial heart comes up earlier in the episode Samaritan Snare; Picard has to take a journey to a starbase to have surgery on it. And he's Not Happy.
DS9:
Babel: Everyone gets a viral aphasia. It resembled Wernicke's aphasia from the script (fluent nonsense, not the "telegraph sentences" of Broca's aphasia).
* Melora: Ensign Melora Pazlar comes to Deep Space Nine. She is an Elaysian - from a low gravity planet. Because of this she finds it difficult to move in Earthlike gravity environments and uses a wheelchair or braces and a walking stick to get around the station. Dr. Bashir offers her a medical treatment that will enable her to walk in Earth-gravity environments, but not on Elaysia; she eventually declines it.
Notes: OK, I've only seen half this episode (my connection crapped out on me) - sorry! The writer of this episode, Evan Carlos Somers, uses a wheelchair. This episode, from what I've gathered, is not much loved, possibly because Melora is an intensely irritating character who is generally abrasive to everyone. No, I'm not a touchy-feely person but I like people. The general consensus on TV.com is that it's very moral-of-the-week: Disabled people are Useful!
Doctor Bashir, I Presume?: In this episode, it's revealed that Bashir is the man he is today because his parents genetically engineered him when he was seven to be super-brilliant. Before that, he was intellectually disabled or had learning disabilities (unspecified, from what I can make out).
Notes: It's apparently illegal to genetically enhance a child, but not to treat genetic diseases using similar techniques.
The Sieve of AR-448: Nog, the only Ferengi in Starfleet, loses a leg in a battle against Jem'Hadar soldiers.
It's Only A Paper Moon: Nog receives a biosynthetic replacement leg.
VOY:
* Year of Hell, Part I & Part II: Voyager has a bit of an argument with some angry, genocidal aliens, the Krenim who like blowing stuff up. Voyager is rammed and badly damaged due to a Timey Wimey weapon. While attempting to carry out some repairs in a Jefferies tube with Seven of Nine, Tuvok is blinded when a Chroniton torpedo (no, I don't know what that means either) explodes about halfway through the first episode, or on Day 47.
Notes: Voyager has a tactile interface on the bridge; Tuvok uses this to carry out his duties. Does that mean there are visually impaired bridge officers/crew in Starfleet?
ENT: The Aenar are a race of Andorians who only appear in ST:Enterprise. They resemble the blue Andorians found in TOS, TAS and Enterprise, but they have a condition resembling albinism, they are blind, and they have highly developed telepathic abilities which they use to communicate, amongst other things.
Daedalus: The inventor of the transporter, Emory Erickson, appears; Erickson became paraplegic in a transporter accident and uses a wheelchair.
Notes: Why do the transporters in other series have steps up to them? Maybe the antigrav wheelchair was only introduced after the 22nd century, and antigrav tech is so common by then no-one cares about steps any more. Still, I don't get why the transporters would have to be on a little platform. Might be awkward if you're beaming up an injured away team member.
Sources:
Memory Alpha - a lot.
These pages which have thematically related Trek episodes..
starbase_idic
TV.com
Wikipedia, which has, interestingly enough, chosen Star Trek VI as its article of the day on October 6th.
And, um, TV Tropes, of course.
All accessed 4th-5th October 2009. Oh, and the 6th.
There's an interesting couple of pieces of fanfiction here where Spock loses his sight: Eclipse and Reconciliation. You may not be able to access Reconciliation unless you have an account at fannation.com.
I've actually been meaning to make this post for some time now, but I started overthinking it. Possibly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the post. Describe Star Trek episodes featuring characters with disabilities? Or attempt to comment on them, which could lead to more discussion but could also lead to fail!posting on my part? Then Real Life activities intruded, and I forgot about the endeavour until I found a list I'd made in my project book.
Couldn't really put it off any longer, so here it is. Episodes I have seen are marked with an asterisk.
TOS:
Thanks to lindmere! The Corbomite Manoeuvre: The Enterprise encounters a mysterious and powerful ship commanded by a fearsome-looking being named Balok, who threatens the Enterprise with destruction as the penalty for entering his star system. Following some clever maneuvering by Kirk, Balok appears to overplay his hand and get his ship in trouble, at which point Kirk boards the ship to rescue the endangered aliens. What he finds instead of a cadre of fierce aliens is a single, small, childlike being (creepily played by a young Clint Howard, brother of Ron), along with the puppet used to present the scary version of Balok. The real Balok is cordial and supremely confident, and Kirk, having engaged in a battle of wits with him, treats him pretty much as an equal (albeit with some twinkly eyed indulgence).
Charlie X: Charles Evans was brought up by Thasians - but he's human. He's transferred to the Enterprise which is on course to a colony where his relatives live. He's rather emotionally disturbed; self-centred, violent and with destructive Thasian superpowers.
* The Menagerie, Part I: Captain Pike used to be Spock's CO. Some time later, Spock, along with Kirk and McCoy, diverts the Enterprise to a space station where he finds Fleet Captain Christopher Pike again. But Pike's promotion is a token promotion: Pike has been severely disabled and scarred by Delta radiation burns. He relies on a life-support wheelchair to keep his basic bodily functions in working order, he has a vicious purple burn scar down the right side of his face, and he communicates using a light. Once for "yes", twice for "no". His mind is undamaged.
Notes: And Captain Pike was the Captain Kirk figure in the pilot episode The Cage, which is where a lot of the uninjured!Pike scenes come from. He was a serious man devoted to his duty... making Spock's role rather unexceptional, as Leonard Nimoy has said. Anyway. Why is Pike shut in the one room you can't open non-manually? And why on earth can he not use Morse Code to communicate? It would make his life a lot easier if every request he wanted to make wasn't preceded by a game of Twenty Questions.
The Menagerie, Part II: Spock takes Pike to Talos IV so Pike can live "unfettered by his physical body".
Operation - Annihilate!: Spock is briefly blinded at the end of this episode when McCoy tries a new treatment for neural parasites. Spock remarks that swapping the pain he was experiencing for his eyesight was "an equitable trade".
* Is There In Truth No Beauty?: Dr. Miranda Jones, a telepathic psychiatrist, is blind. She uses a sensor web to move around more easily. She is a consort of the Medusan ambassador, who, as his(?) planetary name suggests, makes humans go mad at the sight of him. Advantage Jones.
Notes: The actress who played Dr. Jones, Diana Muldaur, went on to be the notoriously unloved Dr. Kate Pulaski in TNG. Captain Kirk seems very wary of Dr. Jones; because she's blind? Because she's a woman? Oh, Kirk.
* Plato's Stepchildren: Alexander is the only Platonian who does not have psychokinetic powers. He's also a little person who is made a servant to the other Platonians (he's also their jester and a general figure of fun in their community).
Notes: Alexander's actor, Michael Dunn, had spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia. IIRC, Kirk mentions to Alexander that he'd be treated much better in the Federation; Alexander leaves on the Enterprise at the end of the episode.
TNG: There's a couple of interesting characters here. Geordi La Forge, of course: the blind engineer who uses a VISOR. Unfortunately that's about all the character development he got. He's blind! He's black! He's an engineer! Did we mention he's blind? Oh, his best friend is Data*, the android-of-all-trades. Poor Geordi. In addition, every time it looked like he was about to acquire a girlfriend, what happened? She turned out to be a) attached (Leah Brahms) b) a convicted criminal who's going to be reassigned (Aquiel Uhnari) c) freaked out by his blindness (Hannah Bates). (Although, to be fair to Dr. Bates, I'm not sure he was romantically interested in her. They were friendly, and that was pretty much it.) Try The Enemy and The Mind's Eye (Gosh, that VISOR is incredibly dangerous, isn't it?)
Notes: It should also be noted that Geordi lives with chronic pain caused by the VISOR. He's seen taking it off in several episodes when he wants a bit of relief. Why doesn't he take it off more when he's not on duty? It seems like he only takes it off to sleep. Surely sensor webs still exist - he's described as wearing one as a child in The Eyes of the Beholders. I also wonder how he reads PADDs, given that the VISOR, for some reason, does not detect visible light but does detect infra-red and longer-wavelength EM radiation. If looking at an iPod screen while wearing sunglasses makes the screen look funny (and it does, trust me), I don't want to know what Geordi sees when he looks at a PADD. Geordi La Forge and Ablism Bingo is an interesting discussion largely about this character.
*Does Data make anyone else think of Asperger's syndrome? He's incredibly intelligent but lacking in some of the more subtle - and some of the more obvious - nuances of social behaviour. Try Data's Day.
Then there is Reg Barclay who I will freely admit is my favourite character. Reg Barclay is an extremely talented engineer. He's also a hypochondriac, he has social phobia (amongst other phobias), and he also suffers from holo-addiction (because he can program a holodeck to produce a bunch of people who think he's the bee's knees). He learns to deal with these problems, and because he's far from perfect, unless most of the rest of the Federation, he's my favourite. He has problems and he copes with them. And he's also a really nice bloke at the heart of it. (Reg also turns up more than once on Voyager, still with his holo-addiction and still with Troi counselling him every step of the way.) Try Hollow Pursuits, Realm of Fear and Genesis.
Too Short a Season: Admiral Jameson has Iverson's Disease, which ages the body but leaves the mind in perfect working order. Admiral Jameson uses an anti-gravity wheelchair and generally exhibits signs of extreme aging; he becomes addicted to treatments that reverse this process.
Notes: I would have seen this but it's from the notoriously dodgy first season of TNG. I really must get over it.
* Loud as a Whisper: The Enterprise is sent to pick up a famous mediator to sort out some terrible intraplanetary dispute. To Picard and Worf's surprise, the mediator, Riva, is deaf, and communicates using three telepathic aides, who represent his id, ego and superego. Or reason, balance and passion, if you're not into Freud. Simple? Oh no, for as soon as they get on the Civil War planet the aides are disintegrated by some ray gun (though it looks like a Dalek did it, judging by the visual effects). Riva is distraught; the only way he can communicate now is through a sign language, which no-one on the Enterprise understands. But wait! They have Data! Data learns the sign language to communicate with Riva; Riva decides to turn his perceived disadvantage into an advantage, and decides to teach the two warring races sign language to solve their differences.
Notes: The actor who played Riva, Howie Seago, is Deaf, and had a hand in the ending of the episode that was broadcast (the first draft ended with Riva learning to speak, AFAIK). Considering this episode is from the second season of TNG (which was also not that great), it's pretty good - it's hard to believe that it was the next episode after The Outrageous Okona, which was bad enough to be recapped on The Agony Booth. Both Worf and Picard seem wary around Riva because of his deafness. Geordi states in this episode that his blindness and VISOR are part of his identity and refuses Dr. Pulaski's offer of ocular implants.
* The Loss: There's a fair bit of Enterprise trouble: Counsellor Troi loses her empathetic Betazoid powers and feels like she's lost her purpose in life.
Notes: We make a foray into the world of fantastic disability here. (Like Fantastic Racism. Troi's powers of mind-reading telepathy and empathy are destroyed; she considers herself disabled, she's distraught, and she plans to leave the ship. (Let us ignore for the moment that her powers, such as they are, could be effectively replaced if every member of the crew wore a mood ring.) Picard - I jest not - tries to persuade her to stay by saying "I knew a person in a wheelchair, once, and she was great!". This is paraphrased. Riker - her romantic interest, despite the fact that every species in the quadrant wants to date Troi - tells her that he feels more comfortable when she doesn't have her powers. A bit of a dick move. Dr. Crusher points out that Troi is now on the same footing as the other human crew members and accuses her of ignoring her human side. And Guinan says - again paraphrased - "Oh, you're not going to be the ship's counsellor any more? Good, I'll go for the job." I suppose it's meant to be tough love, but poor Troi! But the Reset Button is in full force here, so Troi is back to her mind-reading self by the end of the episode. I mean, if she hadn't got her powers back, she might have had some character development instead of being a walking mood ring! She can be awesome without really using her powers... why couldn't she do more of this?
* Ethics: Worf is paralysed in an accident in the cargo hold of the Enterprise. Because he's a Klingon, the traditional course of action to take in this situation is ritual suicide; he asks Riker to kill him with a special blade. Riker refuses on the grounds that he's being selfish to assume his life is over and he also has a son, and points out that Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko, who is about ten or something, is technically the one who should be wielding the blade. Worf agrees to go through a risky and somewhat unethical procedure to regenerate his spinal cord (which he only survives because as a Klingon, he has lots and lots of redundant backup organs); at the end of the episode he is shown learning to walk again.
Notes: Worf could presumably have used an antigrav chairhad the operation been a success: Doctor Crusher offers him motor assist bands and neural transducers, which would have restored 60% or 70% mobility. Riker and Picard discuss Worf's injury; Picard tells Riker to be more culturally sensitive. Oh hi there Picard, your security chief wants to KILL HIMSELF. Shouldn't you be, you know, worried? In DS9, when Worf tries to carry out the same ritual suicide thing with his brother, Sisko really tears a few strips off him. WTF, Picard?
* Tapestry: Picard dies because his artificial heart isn't quite as good as a real one when it comes to being phased in the chest. Q gives him the chance to live his life again; it would have been very different had he not been the sort of man who took risks...
Note: We learn that Picard has an artificial body part. Also, this is a fantastic episode. (It's also the episode from which the Picard And Q Have A Conversation That Implies They've Just Slept With Each Other At Last To The Delight Of Millions Of Slashers, Unless You Watch It In Context conversation in excerpted.) EDIT: Actually, I just found out the artificial heart comes up earlier in the episode Samaritan Snare; Picard has to take a journey to a starbase to have surgery on it. And he's Not Happy.
DS9:
Babel: Everyone gets a viral aphasia. It resembled Wernicke's aphasia from the script (fluent nonsense, not the "telegraph sentences" of Broca's aphasia).
* Melora: Ensign Melora Pazlar comes to Deep Space Nine. She is an Elaysian - from a low gravity planet. Because of this she finds it difficult to move in Earthlike gravity environments and uses a wheelchair or braces and a walking stick to get around the station. Dr. Bashir offers her a medical treatment that will enable her to walk in Earth-gravity environments, but not on Elaysia; she eventually declines it.
Notes: OK, I've only seen half this episode (my connection crapped out on me) - sorry! The writer of this episode, Evan Carlos Somers, uses a wheelchair. This episode, from what I've gathered, is not much loved, possibly because Melora is an intensely irritating character who is generally abrasive to everyone. No, I'm not a touchy-feely person but I like people. The general consensus on TV.com is that it's very moral-of-the-week: Disabled people are Useful!
Doctor Bashir, I Presume?: In this episode, it's revealed that Bashir is the man he is today because his parents genetically engineered him when he was seven to be super-brilliant. Before that, he was intellectually disabled or had learning disabilities (unspecified, from what I can make out).
Notes: It's apparently illegal to genetically enhance a child, but not to treat genetic diseases using similar techniques.
The Sieve of AR-448: Nog, the only Ferengi in Starfleet, loses a leg in a battle against Jem'Hadar soldiers.
It's Only A Paper Moon: Nog receives a biosynthetic replacement leg.
VOY:
* Year of Hell, Part I & Part II: Voyager has a bit of an argument with some angry, genocidal aliens, the Krenim who like blowing stuff up. Voyager is rammed and badly damaged due to a Timey Wimey weapon. While attempting to carry out some repairs in a Jefferies tube with Seven of Nine, Tuvok is blinded when a Chroniton torpedo (no, I don't know what that means either) explodes about halfway through the first episode, or on Day 47.
Notes: Voyager has a tactile interface on the bridge; Tuvok uses this to carry out his duties. Does that mean there are visually impaired bridge officers/crew in Starfleet?
ENT: The Aenar are a race of Andorians who only appear in ST:Enterprise. They resemble the blue Andorians found in TOS, TAS and Enterprise, but they have a condition resembling albinism, they are blind, and they have highly developed telepathic abilities which they use to communicate, amongst other things.
Daedalus: The inventor of the transporter, Emory Erickson, appears; Erickson became paraplegic in a transporter accident and uses a wheelchair.
Notes: Why do the transporters in other series have steps up to them? Maybe the antigrav wheelchair was only introduced after the 22nd century, and antigrav tech is so common by then no-one cares about steps any more. Still, I don't get why the transporters would have to be on a little platform. Might be awkward if you're beaming up an injured away team member.
Sources:
Memory Alpha - a lot.
These pages which have thematically related Trek episodes..
starbase_idic
TV.com
Wikipedia, which has, interestingly enough, chosen Star Trek VI as its article of the day on October 6th.
And, um, TV Tropes, of course.
All accessed 4th-5th October 2009. Oh, and the 6th.
There's an interesting couple of pieces of fanfiction here where Spock loses his sight: Eclipse and Reconciliation. You may not be able to access Reconciliation unless you have an account at fannation.com.