Making him gay added nothing. Scotty was there for comic relief.
Actually, no, he was mostly there because the episodes required someone to pull a technical miracle to save the situation they were in. That is usually the function of a chief engineer characters.
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"I canna change the laws of physics for you this week, Captain! I know I changed them for you last week, but two weeks in a row is kind of pushing it!!!"
Making him Gay or Blind or Scottish or an Irish Family Man who keeps getting wrongly thrown into prison (seriously , Poor O'Brien) just gives the character more depth.
Now, if anything is kind of off, it's that almost none of the Trek Characters are married. No one has a spouse in TOS, or TNG. In DS9, Sisko was a widower and O'Brien was married. No one was married on Voyager until Paris and Torres got married in I think it was season 6, but who cares. It's Voyager.
LaForge was there to show advancement in tech that allows blind people to see.
Except that stopped being a major plot point after Season 2 when they made him Chief Engineer. (Season 1 he was the helmsman. Then they realized they needed a chief engineer character more to move plots along.) In the wonderful "Nitpickers Guides", the author points out there are numerous episodes were Geordi should have been able to tell someone was lying or detect something, but he doesn't. Because the writers forgot about it.
Half Klingon and half Vulcan to show both human and alien sides.
Um, it was a major plot point with Spock... Torres, not so much, other than her character had a temper and she really didn't love her Klingon heritage. TNG and DS9 did vastly better jobs with the Klingons.
They made Sulu gay in the new Star Trek movies too. Added zero to his character development.
Actually, they made him gay in the movies because the actor who played him in the original series is gay. I'm not sure what the new movies were even there for, honestly, they are awful and fandom is largely trying to pretend the Kelvin Timeline didn't happen.
Again, you asked. I answered and you look stupid. Thanks for playing.
I asked, you blurted out your homophobia, and looked silly.
Hey, ever notice there are no Jewish characters in Trek. I mean, there are Jewish actors, but not characters.
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No, the Ferengi don't count.