American actor, singer and dancer, a Tony winner for Pippin, who played Commander Edward M. La Forge, Geordi's father, in the seventh-season Next Generation episode Interface.
Ben Vereen is an American entertainer who won a Tony Award for Pippin, appeared in the film All That Jazz and played Chicken George in the television epic Roots, in which LeVar Burton also starred.
In Interface he plays Dr Edward La Forge, a Starfleet exozoologist and Geordi's father, who speaks to his son by subspace after the USS Hera, commanded by Geordi's mother Silva, disappears.
Edward has accepted that his wife is gone and gently urges Geordi to do the same, advice the younger man is not ready to hear. The appearance is a short one, a reunion of two Roots players.