It’s hard to do justice to the impact LeVar Burton has had on generations of children and adults. As the creator and host of the radical and popular children’s literacy program Reading Rainbow, he taught — and still teaches — millions of children about the joy of books and language. Who can forget his early-career portrayal of Kunta Kinte on the acclaimed miniseries Roots? And, as Chief Engineer Giordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation and, currently, Star Trek: Picard, he’s the embodiment of enduring hopefulness and cool-headedness.

In Picard, whose season finale takes place this Thursday on Paramount, there’s a real sense of nostalgia — and of a career coming full circle, as a storyline reunites Burton with his fellow Next Generation castmates and brings his real-life daughter into the mix. Throughout the course of the season, the crew gets back together on their version of the Starship Enterprise, which Geordi has personally restored like a classic car in an outer space garage. The person who helped him in this project? Geordi’s daughter, Alandra La Forge, played by real-life daughter Mica Burton. As the season unfolds, the crew quite literally has to save the next generation from a cybernetic alien threat targeting the younger crew members. The plot and nostalgia is so on the nose for those of us who grew up with Burton and now have kids of our own that, well, we had to talk to him about it.

Fatherly not only got to sit down to talk with Burton about his career, the deeper meaning of Star Trek and Reading Rainbow, his outlook on fatherhood, and what he learned from Fred Rogers, but we got to capture Mica and LeVar — in photo and video — laughing and chatting about her childhood. But, as Burton became famous for saying, “you don't have to take my word for it.”