Oh crap, i have an “um actually” for that too…
Dr Pulaski offered to clone him some new eyes, but they wouldn’t have the details or range that the visor does. As a Chief Engineer, I’d keep the extra visual spectrum, dude can see heat!
I’d imagine it’s sort of like how a lot of people prefer to wear glasses even if they’re a good candidate for laser eye surgery. Personally I like how my glasses protect my eyes from debris and radiation, and I like wearing them.
One of my favorite scenes from First Contact is when Barclay brings him a copper coil to look over and he literally eyeballs it going “yeah this’ll do” because his eyes can see the micro fractures and imperfections in the material, something even Data can’t do. I’d be pissed if someone told me they were taking that away from me!
True, but couldn’t they make a visor that could do that for normally functioning eyes? Like, he could wear it as needed and see the world like normal too?
You would have to lose some sort of color if you use regular retinas to see a larger spectrum. You’d need new retinas with more cones to get new colors. Fun part is, you could have those colors all be translated into visual light if you do have more cones. More cones let you differentiate color better and thus gives you more discernable colors. Tetrachomats can interpret a broader spectrum that way.