“Rascals”
Written by Ward Botsford & Diana Dru Botsford and Michael Piller and Allison Hock
Directed by Adam Nimoy
Season 6, Episode 7
Production episode 40276-233
Original air date: October 26, 1992
Stardate: 46235.7
Captain’s Log: Picard, Ro, Keiko, and Guinan are on a shuttlecraft, returning from Marlonia. Picard is geeking out over some archeological thing or other, while Ro recognizes the plants Keiko is bringing back (to everyone’s surprise). The shuttle then hits an energy field that’s about to destroy it. O’Brien barely manages to get a pattern lock, and he beams them over – concerned that there’s a 40% drop in mass, so he may have lost one of them.
Then it turns out that nobody was lost – but all four occupants of the shuttle are now twelve-year-old kids. (Also, their clothes shrunk with them for reasons never adequately explained by the script. Then again, neither does it explain much of anything else, as we’ll see.) Crusher and Troi both examine the four of them, and their minds are the same as ever, but their bodies have been changed to pre-adolescence.
Picard naturally keeps acting as if he’s the captain—and why shouldn’t he?—and Riker and Crusher both respond as if he’s an annoying kid interrupting them. Picard then orders Riker to accompany him to the bridge, where everyone has a hard time taking orders from a twelve-year-old kid. Crusher comes to the bridge and speaks to him in private. She’s concerned that this is the first stage in a process that may affect his mind – there’s no evidence of that, Picard counters, but eventually he realizes that he can’t continue to act as captain until they know more about what happened to him. Reluctantly, he leaves the ship in Riker’s hands (and boy, will he be sorry he did that…).
Guinan tweaks Ro, who has no interest in re-living her childhood, which was spent in a refugee camp, and she just wants to go back to work. But they’ve all been relieved of duty, which just pisses Ro off—she wants to do something—whereas Guinan is thrilled, since it’s been centuries since she was a little kid and she intends to enjoy it.
Cut to the O’Brien quarters, where the awkwardness is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Keiko tries to act as if nothing’s changed, while O’Brien is uncomfortable, and acting as if Keiko is some strange kid in his cabin. They have a tense conversation about what this will all mean for their marriage, which is interrupted by Molly, demanding a story from Mommy. When Keiko offers to read to her, Molly cries, “No! I want Mommy!”
Keiko is devastated that her own daughter doesn’t even know her now, and runs from the room. All of O’Brien’s awkwardness immediately falls away and he goes after Keiko and hugs her, promising his wife that they’ll find a way to get through this.
The Enterprise arrives in the Ligos system, answering a distress call from a Federation science outpost. Meanwhile, Picard is in his quarters, enjoying the hair that has returned to his head, but not all that happy with how big his uniform jacket fits. Looking at himself in the mirror, he finds it impossible to take himself seriously (a problem with which the viewing audience can identify).
Troi checks up on him. They discuss options for what he could do if the condition remains permanent and he has to grow up all over again: going back to the Academy, take a leave of absence to pursue archaeology.
Crusher has figured out what happened to the foursome: the part of their genetic code that determines what people will change into at adolescence—Crusher calls it “rybo-viroxic nucleic” or RVN—was wiped out during transport. Keiko’s plants were similarly affected—they all became seedlings—and by accelerating one plant’s growth, Crusher learned that they will all likely grow up normally in the course of time. They might be able to use the transporter to put back the RVN, based on the patterns from previous genetic scans.
Guinan continues to tweak Ro, who finds the whole idea of reliving childhood repugnant, but whom Guinan eventually convinces to start jumping on the bed.
La Forge and O’Brien have determined that the shuttle was hit with a reversion field that turned the shuttle hull alloys into their component metals, and which also probably affected the people on board. Crusher is more optimistic now about being able to get them back to adulthood via the transporter.
However, first things first: they’ve arrived at Ligos VII, the source of the distress call. Two surplus Klingon Birds of Prey decloak and attack the Enterprise. Somehow, the ships manage to do critical damage to the Enterprise – it helps that the Enterprise only fires one shot, which inexplicably does no appreciable damage to the Klingon ship on which it fires. Ferengi start beaming on board and rounding people up. Two transport onto the bridge. Worf—who has much more time to set up his completely clear shot – somehow misses the Ferengi, while the Ferengi gets a clean hit on Worf, even though half his body is protected by the tactical console. Within minutes, the Ferengi have taken over the entire ship, but the one competent thing Riker has done is lock out command functions, so while the Ferengi have the ship, they can’t actually do anything with it.
The Ferengi beam most of the crew down to the surface, and toss the children into a single room – but that number includes Picard, Ro, Guinan, Keiko, and Alexander. Picard starts discussing options for how to take the ship back – Ro has some mediocre suggestions (and Picard goes along with them – the element of surprise? really?), but it’s Guinan who points out that, since they look like children, their best bet is to act like children.
Riker meets with the Ferengi DaiMon, who has already taken Ligos VII, and put both the scientists on that outpost and now the Enterprise crew to work mining it.
Picard—after having trouble navigating the kids’ computer—sends Ro and Guinan to crawl through the Jefferies Tubes to get to engineering. Then he and Keiko go on a mission of their own to the transporter room, accompanied by a remote-controlled robot belonging to Alexander. They use the robot to lure the Ferengi out of the transporter room – which has phasers and combadges stored in it. Now they’re armed. Alexander gets in on the act, distracting the Ferengi in sickbay long enough to steal two hyposprays.
Ro and Guinan are in position outside engineering, they have their weapons and hypos, now Picard just has to get onto the bridge. And the only way he can think of to accomplish that is to throw a temper tantrum saying he wants to see his father – Commander Riker. While Riker is flabbergasted, he plays along in short order. Picard tells him that he and the other kids want to play games in the schoolroom, and can they please turn on that computer at least?
The DaiMon then threatens to kill the children if Riker won’t release the computer, which he agrees to. While he blinds the Ferengi with technobabble as to how the computer works, he activates the computer, giving Picard access.
Ro, Guinan, and Alexander are able to put combadges on the boarding party, enabling Picard to transport them to a secure location. He takes care of the two on the bridge himself, with Riker’s help.
Then they try to reverse the de-aging. Picard goes first, and is restored. The first thing he does is check his head for hair.
The only one not in the transporter room is Ro. After being restored to adulthood, Guinan goes to Ro’s quarters, where young Ro is drawing pictures, including one of her mother. She decides that childhood isn’t as bad as she thought, and rather than go immediately to the transporter, she and Guinan draw together for a while.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: RVN is bogus. There is no such thing in genetics, and the writers pulled it directly out of their posteriors in order to make the plot, for lack of a better word, work.
Speaking of bogus technobabble being pulled out of posteriors, Riker lets loose with a heroic stream of nonsense when he “explains” the computer to the Ferengi, going on about melacortz-ramistats, bilateral kelilactarals, isopalavial interfaces, Heisenfram terminals, and the firomantal drive unit (which should, under no circumstances, be touched).
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi reminds Picard that he has the chance to do something people never get to do – have a second childhood, without the pain of growing up again.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: The episode raises really awkward questions for the O’Briens, since O’Brien doesn’t really feel comfortable sharing his marital bed with a twelve-year-old.
The Boy!?: When Troi is talking seriously about Picard going back to the Academy, Picard takes the piss out of her by adding, “And be Wesley Crusher’s roommate?”
Syntheholics Anonymous: Guinan comments that the archaeological ruins that Picard found on Marlonia are the same age as her father. She also jumps into being a kid with both feet (literally, at one point, on Ro’s bed), probably because she has the most perspective on it, not having been a child for centuries.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf has apparently lost his ability to fire a phaser accurately – or maybe the Ferengi just provide too small a target.
In the Driver’s Seat: Ro pilots the shuttle right into the technobabble energy field that starts the whole mishegoss, while the Enterprise conn is staffed by one of the unnamed female extras.
I Believe I Said That: “How much farther do we have to go?”
“About fifty meters. Don’t tell me you’re tired.”
“I’m not as young as I used to be.”
Guinan and Ro crawling through the Jefferies Tubes, with Guinan making a funny.
Welcome Aboard: Two of the guest children had existing connections to the actors/characters they played the youthful versions of. David Tristan Birkin (young Picard) played Picard’s nephew René in “Family,” and Isis J. Jones (young Guinan) also played the younger version of Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Sister Act (also released in 1992). Megan Parlen and Caroline Junko King round out the kid cast as young Ro and young Keiko, respectively.
Mike Gomez, Tracey Walter, and Michael Snyder play the Ferengi—all three played different Ferengi in the past, Gomez and Walter in “The Last Outpost,” Snyder in “The Perfect Mate.”
Plus we’ve got recurring players Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao, making their final TNG appearances before moving over to Deep Space Nine, as well as the only TNG appearance of Hana Hatae as Molly, a role she’ll continue on DS9 as well.
Trivial Matters: This is Ro’s only sixth-season appearance, and she won’t appear again until the series’ penultimate episode, “Preemptive Strike.” Until that seventh season appearance, there were rumors that Ro never went through the transporter and remained a child, which is why we hadn’t seen her since.
This episode was the directorial debut of Adam Nimoy, whose father is someone you may have heard of. He’ll be back to direct “Timescape” later in the season, and continue a TV directing career that would include episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Sliders, and two episodes of Babylon 5. (He also directed his father in the “I, Robot” episode of The Outer Limits in 1995.)
Diana Dru Botsford, the co-writer of the episode’s story (and who is, in the interests of full disclosure, a good friend of your humble rewatcher), has worked on several shows and films as a producer (including Terminator 2: Judgment Day, From Dusk Till Dawn, Inspector Gadget, and the 1989 remakes of both Dragnet and Adam-12), and is currently the producer of the science fiction web series Epilogue, which she produced with her screenwriting students at Missouri State University. She also wrote an excellent Stargate SG1 novel Four Dragons.
Birkin appears to be the only one of the four child actors still working as an actor. Parlen is now a documentary filmmaker, King is an animator and anime director in Japan, and the only credits listed online for Jones are her two roles as a younger Whoopi here and in Sister Act.
In the “Bar Association” episode of DS9, Odo will throw the events of this episode in Worf’s face when listing security breaches on the Enterprise during the Klingon’s term as security chief.
This episode bears some similarities to the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident,” in which Kirk and his crew were also changed into kids.
O’Brien’s love of black coffee, double sweet, is established in this episode. That will become a plot point (sort of) in the DS9 episode “Whispers.”
Make it So: “He’s my Number One Dad!” When the sixth season first aired in 1992, this episode cemented my fear that TNG had outstayed its welcome. They were now reduced to doing the crew-gets-turned-into-little-kids plot. My fears turned out to be unjustified—after the “Chain of Command” two-parter, things got a lot better, and some of TNG’s finest hours are in its sixth season—but at this point we’ve had a dreadful cliffhanger resolution, Barclay, and Q episodes that don’t rate among those characters’ best guest shots, two weak-tea horror stories, and “Relics.” And then this. One watchable episode out of seven isn’t exactly encouraging (and the next two episodes didn’t help matters, but we’ll get to that next week).
Having said that, this episode does have its positive aspects, however meager. For starters, all four child actors are to be commended for magnificently channeling their adult counterparts. Isis Jones in particular does a wonderful job with a Guinan who still is trying to help her friend Ro Laren like she did in “Ensign Ro” (and I love the way she embraces being a kid far more than the others).
Indeed, all of Act 1 is rather compelling. The crew’s difficulty taking orders from a little kid, Ro’s cantankerousness, and Guinan’s philosophical joy are all well played. But the high point of the episode—the thing that almost comes close to the possibility of maybe redeeming this nonsense—is the scene in the O’Briens’ quarters. O’Brien trying desperately not to feel like a pedophile, Keiko trying desperately to act like nothing’s changed (I love how matter-of-factly she grabs a stool when she realizes that something’s on a shelf that’s now too high for her). And then that awful, heartbreaking moment when Keiko realizes that her daughter doesn’t think she’s Mommy.
If the episode had just stuck with that—with how the O’Brien family dynamic is altered, with how Picard has lost the authority he’s more than earned solely due to his physical appearance and voice, with how Guinan totally embraces this and Ro totally doesn’t—then it might have been at least a fun, diverting, if ridiculous, episode. Yes, the science is total horse manure (again, no such thing as RVN), but, as the O’Briens’ scene indicates, you can make a pretty flower from that fertilizer if you work at it.
But no, we had to add the Ferengi taking over the ship.
It’s difficult to put into words how appallingly stupid the entire episode becomes from the moment the Birds of Prey decloak to the end. First off, the Ferengi are in what is described by the DaiMon as “surplus” Klingon ships, so they’re probably the same crummy BOPs that we saw in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and commandeered by Kirk and the gang for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – y’know, the ship that was outgunned “ten to one” by Kirk’s Enterprise, and has a crew of twelve? Yet somehow, two of these ships can take out most of the Enterprise-D’s systems.
Of course, it helps immensely that the Enterprise only fires back once, and that shot does negligible damage. Apparently, that’s all the flagship can manage against the spacefaring equivalent of two VW microbuses. Then the Ferengi board and are met with absolutely no resistance from the crew of a thousand, except one Klingon firing his phaser badly. This is the second time Riker’s been left in charge of the ships and screwed the pooch; last time it was getting his chief engineer kidnapped by doofuses, this time it’s getting his ship captured and most of his crew made into slave labor by doofuses.
And doofuses they are, as the Ferengi in this episode are so spectacularly idiotic, it’s a wonder they were able to operate the Birds of Prey, much less use them to take over the Enterprise. Not only that, but Picard’s entire plan depends on the Ferengi being dumber than a box of hammers. What if the guy in the transporter room didn’t follow the robot into the hallway? What if the guy on the bridge saw through Riker’s technobabble? What if the guard on the schoolroom ignored the tantrum and sent Picard back inside without seeing Riker? All of these were distinct possibilities, and if any of them had happened, Picard’s entire plan would’ve fallen apart.
Bluntly, the entire crew should’ve been forced to retire after this, as they prove themselves to be spectacularly incompetent at the fundamentals of their job. It certainly explains why it took another ten years for Riker to be offered another command, and they were probably regretting offering him the first three….
Having four of the cast turned into kids would’ve been bad enough, but they managed to make it so much worse. Just awful. It only gets as high as a 2 due to the O’Brien family scene.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido is still a child at heart. Or has a child’s heart. He always gets those two confused.
Does it seem to anyone else that the voice for child-Guinan had been dubbed in? There were several places where the audio sync seemed to be off, but only for her character.
I’ve always liked that they used the actor who played his nephew to portray a young Jean Luc. It was also lucky that he had at least some ability to portray his no-nonsense attitude at a young age.
Edit: I had to add something… after looking at the picture of the classroom computer, it occured to me. Didn’t Picard ask Riker to unlock the classroom EIGHT computer? Did the Ferengi guard just allow them to wander from classroom to classroom? Or have I forgotten dialog I listened to just this morning?
This was a fun episode on first watch, even though it makes no sense. The child versions were particularly well written and well played. DS9 could have probably done the entire episode as a character study, TNG, unfortunately, had an apparently ironclad rule to tack a danger plot onto every episode.
Hahaha, I have been waiting for this review.
I will give the episode a few good points – I thought the child actors were really quite good, and I found the technobabble scene kind of funny.
But first of all – everybody has their ‘flying snowman’, and since my background is genetics and genomics, I just can’t tolerate the whole RVN thing, or the idea that genetic changes immediately result in phenotypic changes, etc. I know there is loads of bad science in Star Trek but for me this is incredibly glaring. Still not as bad as Genesis, but bad. To say nothing of how the hell did their clothes shrink, or their BONES for that matter, I mean SERIOUSLY. And if their bones shrank, why not their brains and frontal lobe development?
2)I hate, hate, hate, hate Ferengi. I was also willing to enjoy this episoide for what it was, and the more psychological aspects of what could happen if you go back to childhood, and when the Ferengi appeared, I just groaned (I think my husband was waiting for my response). Ferengi mean hijinks will ensue, and I hate hijinks. Are they this bad in DS9? Because this has pretty much made me NEVER want to watch that show.
Yeah, this is pretty much the epitome of Riker’s complete incompetence, although I suppose loosing the ship to just one even older Bird-of-Prey might be worse. At least then he had the excuse of shield trouble, but he still showed the same problem with shooting back more than once. Remember that time Worf fired a dozen torpedos and phasers at once and blew up half a Borg cube? Try hitting that button again and see if things work out better.
Also, they just discovered the fountain of youth, with no sign of any drawbacks beside mild creepiness. Put a little clinical testing into this odd event, maybe cap the de-aging at twenty or so, and you can easily heal illness and elimiate death due to old age. I’m not an advanced 24th century human, but if I were Picard you’d have to force me back into the transporter at gunpoint. If Riker and company have trouble taking orders from me because of appearance, they’d be off the bridge faster than you can say “insubordination” and “age discrimination”.
@3 Lisamarie
I was wondering about Picard’s heart, myself. How does his artificial heart fit into a 12-year old boy’s chest?
Ahh! I don’t know!!!! I did not think of that!
#4, hah, for real. I kind of thougt Crusher’s reasons were BS, myself.
Lisamarie: The Ferengi are occasionally irritating in DS9, but also sometimes brilliant, Quark is a great character, and Nog is a character who developed more than any other single character in Star Trek history. Not watching DS9 because of TNG Ferengi episodes is like not watching The Hunt for Red October because you ate a bad fish once.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
KRAD isn’t the first person I’ve heard complain that the transporter inexplicably alters the away team’s clothing as well as their physiological age. Given the stratospheric ludicrousness of the various concepts in the episode’s premise, however, a little mid-transport tailoring seems the easiest to swallow. If you watch the episode carefully, though, all four characters are wearing their baggy adult size costumes when they first appear on the transporter pad (it’s not as obvious on Keiko but very clear on Guinan and Ro). After the opening credits we see them in sick bay being examined by Crusher and they’ve all changed into child-size versions of their clothes. Replicating better fitting duds would seem a low priority after such a dramatic accident but there it is. Also when young Picard steps onto the transporter pad to be restored to adulthood in the last act he’s wearing the full size uniform in anticipation of filling out.
Agreed. Weak. Has some fun moments but should’ve ditched the Ferengi plot and focused on the relationships. The intent here was obviously comedic. Imagine if it were dramatic? Also, Isis’s ADR bothered me.
Quark is such a well rounded character that he almost seems like he’s the Picard of the entire Ferengi race; I guess every show needs its cardboard recurring bad guy but, yeah, so many are just so, as krad put it – dumb.
I really liked the interplay between the kid actors and the regular adults. I got a kick out of seeing how awkward Riker was when Picard tried to play as his kid but I wholeheardedly agree that if they’d just spun off with the drama of the adults-turned-kids, would’ve been a much better episode.
The one thing that annoys me most of all about this episode (and there are clearly many) is picard lamenting the loss of his hair. My understanding is that roddenberry stuck to his guns when the studio didn’t want a bald captain by saying it’s not that there’s no cure in the future it’s that nobody will even care. So i always liked the idea of picard choosing to go bald because it looks good! Not bothering himself with our 20th/21st century anxieties.
Amusingly, I can’t help but read “Two surplus Klingon Birds of Prey” as “two more Klingon Birds of Prey than we needed.”
Nicely punned, if deliberate.
The problems with the four characters getting younger have been thoroughly addressed, but they tend to obscure the fact that Molly O’Brien has inexplicably gotten older than she ought to be. This is the seventh episode of season 6; Molly was born in the fifth episode of season 5. Since the show generally tends to go in real time (“All Good Things…” is explicitly 7 years after “Encounter at Farpoint,” and the upcoming “Chain of Command” is two years after “The Wounded”), that means Molly should only be a bit over one year old at this point. Yet she’s played by a 4-year-old child here and has the verbal skills of at least a fairly advanced 2-year-old, I’d say. This problem with her age continues into DS9; Sisko said Molly was three in “The Nagus,” which aired just five months after “Rascals.” And by late season 6, less than seven years after her birth, Molly’s said to be eight. Yet nothing else in the shows indicates that the elapsed time is longer than the real time between episodes.
As for “Rascals,” yup, it’s a mess, but the child actors do an okay job. For me, the high point of the episode is Picard yelling “Daddy!” to Riker. That really cracked me up. And the writers poking fun at the show’s own excessive technobabble was cute too.
I apparently need to start organizing my own thoughts when I watch the episodes, so I can quit making multiple comments.
When Riker was letting loose with his technobabble diversion, I suddenly wanted to watch him sitting down with Jim Kirk for a game of Fizzbin.
I also really liked the O’Brien family storyline. At first, I admit, I was totally creeped out and completely nervous that it would go down in Trek history as the ickiest thing ever — similar to how sometimes this delightful show can be so cluelessy sexist/racist (even though the intentions may be good). But it was surprisingly well handled and well acted, and I give the writers big credit for actually “going there.” It developed a rather uncomfortable, awkward, and taboo-ish storyline in a thoughtful way that reminded me of 2012-era edgy cable show, and not a late-season ep of TNG.
And then the Ferengi showed up…
Hey now the Fargani are freakin geniuses! think about how much brain power it takes to figure out exchange rates every time you fall though some random wormhole!
F’n Ferengi!
I’ve always had a super soft spot for this episode – probably because I was just about young Picard’s age when I first saw it. But in its defense, this is a funny, funny episode. All the stuff between Riker and the Kid Captain is hilarious, and as someone pointed out above, it was a nice touch for the writers to spoof their own technobabble. And I agree – all the interaction between Guinan and Ro is good, solid character work.
It is definitely annoying when advancing the plot requires incompetance from a main character. Two “surplus” Birds of Prey would not be a serious threat to a Galaxy-class starship unless someone incompetant were in command. This isn’t the only case of it, but it is one of the worst examples. The only worse case is in the movie when Riker actually loses the entire ship to a single Bird of Prey.
Seriously, in the movie when Worf reported “They have found a way to penetrate our shields!” Riker’s next order should have been “Return fire, all weapons.” That Bird of Prey would have lasted all of 2 seconds against the sustained firepower that the Enterprise was capable of dishing out.
As for the episode at hand, for all it’s flaws, I enjoyed it. Rediculous in premise, faulty in execution, but still an entertaining hour.
This isn’t the first time the audience has to suspend disbelief over clothing being unaffected by the transporter when its occpants were. In “Mirror, Mirror” the USS Enterprise’s landing party transports to the ISS Enterprise wearing ISS Enterprise uniforms, and vice versa. The people made the transition across the universes but their uniforms didn’t. Of course this was a necessary plot device otherwise each of the Spocks would have immediately realized that the landing party they had just beamed up were the wrong people.
The transporter can be more trouble to script writers than it’s worth, but sometimes you just say what the heck and roll with it.
Agree that the science is ridiculous and the Ferengi are annoying, but this episode is so much fun! The Guinan-Ro relationship is especially good; it’s nice seeing Ro have some fun for a change. I wish they had managed to keep her for DS9, which is my favorite of all the Trek shows, not least because in it the Ferengi stopped being annoying and stupid and started being real people.
While I mostly like the kid who played the young Picard, he overused the tunic-tug as a Picard-identifier–but then so did Patrick Stewart, who tugged his tunic just once as Prospero and got a huge laugh.
The O’Brien scene is creepy as all hell, and I completely understand where Miles was coming from. Ro and Guinan jumping on the bed is delightful.
The science is, of course, pure bullshit.
I’ve been waiting and waiting for this episode so I could just pretty much let loose, but everybody else has already said pretty much everything I was going to. Instead of saying, “Damage report,” Riker needs to say, “Fire all weapons” like Picard has done on several occassions. And I think that if I were running a ship with that many people on board, I’d have security teams whose battle stations were the armory, and whose security codes could override command lockouts for the case of intruder control circuits.
And krad, Worf doesn’t just miss the Ferengi…the Ferengi DUCKS! He ducks a phaser blast! And Data doesn’t move until AFTER that whole exchange has taken place…Data, who believeably had the reflexes to anticipate and dodge phaser blasts, and who could’ve easily taken out the Ferengi while he was trying to fire back, since he was RIGHT THERE.
And it’s one thing for the adults in kids’ bodies to be sneaking around doing stuff, but sending Alexander, an actual kid, to distract one of the armed guards?? That’s pretty low, Picard. Not to mention risky. This episode just needed Macaulay Culkin starring as one of the kids to help take back the ship with some paint cans on a string.
It was shocking to see this again and realize the reason for the de-aging was some transporter technobabble malfunction. I had remembered this episode as having the anomaly the shuttle goes through be entirely responsible for the change, instead of just masking some made up part of anatomy. That would’ve worked better, I think, just leaving the explanation up to some mysterious anomaly.
I love O’Brien’s scene with his child wife wonderfully acted but this episode makes me wish the cast of TNG would have done an episode of Sesame Street. Seriously, I look at this episode and find myself imaging the adult cast doing a whole program with the Sesame characters on the Enterprize set. Image Picard gudgingly doing a piano duet with Kermit. Miss Piggy flirting with Riker and Troi consuling characters on self esteem. Data would pair with the Count and they would count. Gordi would be with Big Bird. And Worf would teach kids what Klingon children do when a stranger trys to grab them. Scream and run for help like a Klingon. Missed opertunity totally.
Yes, Troi would be with Elmo and Crusher would end up with Cookie Monster who has a stomach ache. Cheers all.
The story about 2 nuns in Idaho or What Really Happened to Rascals
Oh, and there was NO TRANSPORTER accident in our version, either. None. Nada. Zip.
@26: Thanks a lot for posting, Diana. I always like when the authors come and post on here, because then you get the perspective from someone who really knows. I found the blog post you wrote really interesting. And hey, Keith gave you a good plug for your SG-1 novel, so I might check that out now.
Diana – definitely a perspective and an explanation that doesn’t get around as much as it should.
@@@@@ChristopherLBennett: In their page on Molly, Memory Alpha has this to say about her age:
Molly’s age appears to be an example of a continuity error known as “Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome“. However, the error itself relies on a non-canonical (but widely believed) fact: that each broadcast year corresponds to a narrative Earth year. If one believes, as do writers Gene Roddenberryand Ronald D. Moore, that stardates are a means by which to avoid giving specific dates, then Molly’s age presents less of a logical conundrum. However, trying to establish the exact passage of years without relying on stardates is one that involves non-canonical speculation of its own. Molly’s age may be then seen as proof of the non-alignment of stardates to calendar years.
I’m hardly an expert on Trek, though, so I’ve don’t know how seriously I should take what they say here.
CrazyDroid- yes, this episode was home alone on a starship!
First, the good. The actors playing young Ro, young Guinan and young Keiko were awesome. The obriens subplot was actually very interesting and almost makes me wish that they hadn’t gotten changed back so quickly. Key word in that sentence- almost.
Other than that, this episode was terrible. The completely implausible and incompetent defense of the Enterprise was redonculous. Riker should be relieved for that. Warrior Worf, do nothing data and the rest of the crew should probably be gotten rid of too. Then the fact that 1000+ adults remain captive with no attempt to escape? Especially while their children are being held captive? Everyone is shipped down to the planet? How do you get 1000 people from ship to planet when the capturing force has a couple dozen at best and still needs to run a very very big starship?
While the science is completely bunk I don’t completely dislike the premise…can you take the captain seriously of he was 12? The takeover plot was the wrong choice. Why not have it be a diplomatic situation where captain Picard has been requested only to have his 12 year old self show up? Again, can you be a leader even if you dont look like one?
It’s a cute premise but that’s all it is, a premise.
@29: It would’ve been great if the stardate system allowed the passage of time to be ambiguous, and we could believe that some seasons may stretch over the course of three years. I think it would leave more room for all the adventures of the tie-in fiction and comic books and such, and still let you believe that the Enterprise also does routine missions sometimes, and also spends the required transit time to travel from star system to star system. It might also make the episodic nature of the show more palatable to present day audiences. But there are numerous places where characters refer to an event “such and so many years ago” and it corresponds precisely to the number of seasons ago.
Add “the transporter can accidentally turn adults into little kids” next to the revelation that it creates perfect duplicates of a person (which by implication are killed almost every time the device is used) to the long, long, long list of “Things they should have considered the full implications of before making it canon.”
@crzydroid: I’m pretty sure that incrementing stardates by 1000 (which they do once a season) counts as a “year”, but also that incrementing stardates by 1 counts as a “day”. Which would lead to a brilliant piece of fanwankery which stretches things out in just the way you want (who says “year” has to mean “Earth year”?), except that I think there are also multiple references to the ordinary Gregorian date across the shows that pin things down a little too much…
I pretty much liked the young Jean-Luc when I watched this the first time and when I watched it last week. And that’s really all I can say about it…….
Best thing about it: Keiko and O’Brien. You could make a whole dramatic movie about something like that if you could set the premise successfully.
Guinan… I think the dubbing bugs me more than it should. That being said, she’s cute… and a little creepy but I think that’s just the dubbing effect.
PICARD’S KID VERSION DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!
WHAT KIND OF PERSON PRONOUNCES THEIR OWN NAME ONE WAY WHEN THEY’RE A LITTLE KID AND A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY WHEN THEY’RE AN ADULT!!? AAAArgh! Worst 2 seconds of this show is when the kid mispronounces his own name… >.
For me, the best part of this episode is the relationship between Guinan and Ro. And especially the ending, when they fade away with them coloring with crayons. That’s what this episode was really all about IMO: Ro’s continued healing of her terrible childhood.
@35 Fish Jones
Even if he did change the pronounciation of his name from when he was a kid, in his mind he’s not a kid, and he’d speak the exact same way he did before the transporter accident. So yeah, he definitely wouldn’t mispronounce his own name.
Dumb, horrible, ridiculous episode, that I can’t seem to RESIST AT ALL when it plays on TV. I hate myself for loving it so much. It is just so f-ing adorable!
Although unlike most here, I thought the ro-guinan thing was horrible. I do LOVE the scene where Riker is technobabbling the ferengi though.
By the way, thanks Keith, for the reassurance. It wasn’t JUST this episode that made me wary of DS9, but pretty much every Ferengi-hijinks episode (OMG, I’m a Ferengi, I’m greedy and dishonest and cackly, I’m going to climb on top of this unstable stack of barrels and knock stuff over!) that gave me pause, since I know they are actually main characters in the other series. I was hoping they got a little more nuanced ;)
Lisamarie, not only do they get more nuanced, they keep getting more and more complex as the other series progresses. For example: the young Ferengi Nog and Jake Sisko start to hang out in one episode, to the great distress of both families. The ending of that episode makes me tear up just thinking about it now.
re: 26. Diana Botsford, thanks for sharing that… I think I see why one part was changed though: if Picard had been in that situation on the Stargazer, “Disaster” should’ve played out very differently, shouldn’t it? In fact it sounds kind of similar and I can see them not wanting to confuse people (it’s not only smart people that watch Star Trek), and either way I’d think getting out of it with everyone alive should’ve helped him get over an experience like that, leaving it as less of an obstacle.
Anyway, seeing this episode when I was 13 or so, I thought it was awesome, and even though I can see all these flaws now, it still has a specialness to me, because it’s from that time (that is, that time in my life, it actually came out when I was 4) and because it rings true in certain ways.
The child actors are so fun to watch! Birkin, who plays Picard, mimics his mannerisms so accurately! He does an incredible job. I really enjoyed how they explored the impact of this physical change on the marriage of Keiko and O`Brien. Guinan`s character is awesome too! I think she does an amazing job portraying Guinan`s calmness and wisdom. Ro`s prickliness comes through as well!
I don`t know guys – yeah there`s some silly stuff, but the child actors make it all worthwhile!
Although I think these kinds of discussions are fun, where episodes are dissected down to their molecular level (“Kid Picard” spells his own name wrong – the horror! lol), I tend to allow myself to watch the episodes as stories, and purely as a story, this one is interesting. If I have a serious gripe it’s to join the others who suggest it’s rather embarrassing for characters we have grown to admire as masculine heroes (Worf and Riker) to be so inept in defending the Enterprise from a silly group of Ferengi pirates. That said, I enjoyed watching this, as I do most TNG offerings…
I meant to say Kid Picard pronounces, not spells… >sigh
When I first saw this episode, I was 7. I thought it was really cool. 1 regular and 3 semi-regulars get turned into kids not too much older than me, then the “scary” Ferengi show up and there’s shooting and talking and punching. Rewatching this episode when I’m 27… Horrible. From the technobabble of how the four adults were turned into 12-year-olds, to the different reactions of the crew (Riker being awkward, O’Brien feeling icky, Troi trying to be constructive, Crusher being sympathetic), to the different reactions of the four impacted (Laren steely and collected, Jean-Luc rational and logical, Gunian cool and collected, Keiko steely and stoic) the plot felt like the awkward pauses whenever another crew member had a conversation with one of them. Then the FERENGI show up in two broken-down birds-of-prey that Kirk’s Enterprise was supposedly a match for. Oh my God. How many Ferengi were on these two ships anyway? In Star Trek III, it were said to have about “a dozen officers and men”. 24 Ferengi against 1,000 fully trained professionals on the fully-armed and manned Federatiion flagship. It was horrible plotting (by the writers). Of course the plot let the kids help save the day, but oh my God. One of the worst episodes of TNG ever filmed, inculding the 1st and 2nd seasons. Actually it feels like this was supposed to be a 1st season episode, the last time anyone really took the Ferengi half-seriously as villains. By the 3rd season, with episodes like “Captain’s Holiday” and “Menage a Troi`” they had become more annoying than anything (as Picard remarked to Solok in the former episode). This episode acts like the Ferengi are competent, though from the moment after they shoot Worf until the end of the episode, it’s clear they aren’t.
Look, I know this episode is just an excuse for a daft and sometimes enjoyable Enid Blyton-esque romp with a bunch of kids saving the day, BUT … did anyone else wince at the ease with which everyone including Picard accepted that he should resign his post because he looked like a kid? I mean, why should superficial appearances matter? It was pure discrimination. Pure ageism.
The thing is, you can say its only a TV show. And it was made back in the unenlightened 80s. But this is Star Trek. A show that was way ahead of its time with its agenda of being anti racist and anti discriminatory. Creatures of every shape and hue walk the Enterprise and are all accepted as equals. Unless, it appears, they look like children. Yes, I know they needed the plot device of Picard being banished to the playroom for the story to work. But doing it they way they did undermines everything Gene Roddenberry fought for.
My main beef with this episode was that I knew what the solution to the problem was the INSTANT the original accident happened. I immediately thought of “Unnatural Selection” and said “just run them through the transporter again, using their old trace patterns.” Forty-six minutes of technobabble later, the highly-trained, top-of-their-classes crew of the Federation flagship FINALLY arrived at a solution that took me about three seconds to formulate.
When Riker is stalling the guy with technobabble, he points out computer controls using his middle finger.
There’s just so much to hate about this horrible episode. The Ferengi had already threatened to kill the entire crew, so why would they hesitate to kill mini Picard when he started acting up? And if the Ferengi were just bluffing about killing everyone, then what were the crew so afraid of? Data should have been able to take out 20-30 Ferengi all by himself. And once the kiddies managed to obtain phasers, why on earth didn’t they use them rather than just pin transporter pins on the Ferengi and beam them into that odd transporter platform/makeshift jail cell? Shudder….
To split a hair, in Star Trek III Kruge made the “ten to one” comment after his ship had taken two direct hits and right after he stops someone firing the “emergency tube”. It probably doesn’t reflect the ship’s full strength. Not really important but there it is.
The ensign of the week looks a fair bit like a twelve year-old herself.
Another cute little joke was the Ferengi captain fiddling with Picard’s mysteriously inaccessible fish tank. How does he feed that thing?
A bunch of Ferengi idiots capture the Federation flagship using two clapped out Klingon jalopies in the space of a few minutes. That plot makes perfect sense. Wink, wink.
I’m guessing that the main reason that this episode was made was to give Patrick Stewart some time off. I would have paid good money to have seen Stewart perform the scene in which the 12-year-old Picard (a) has a temper tantrum and (b) hugs Riker with a huge grin on his face.
I agree that the first half of this episode is pretty good. The rest, however, is intensely stupid, much like DaiMon Lurin’s crew. I will say though that I did like performances of all of the child actors, particularly Megan Parlen. I had a big crush on her (as Mary Beth Pepperton in Hang Time) when I was a kid, incidentally. As I said on the rewatch page for “Imaginary Friend”, TNG has a dodgy track record when it comes to child actors but this episode was another exception. It’s one of the things that makes this episode more bearable, at least for me.
Never had a problem with wonky science in good sci-fi and I don’t have a problem with it in bad sci-fi. The turned-into-kids storyline may be a cliché but it did lead to “Fragile Balance”, one of my favourite Stargate SG-1 episodes. The key difference was in the execution. Stargate tended to have more fun with that kind of plot than Star Trek and I think that that attitude served them very well in that instance.
While many comments here rightly ridicule the execrable performance of the Federation’s most elite crew, I’m surprised that I haven’t see any mentioning that Worf is left for dead on the floor and then completely forgotten.
I also love how effective MIniPicard’s words are at assuaging MiniKeiko’s worry about Molly’s fate: “I wouldn’t worry.” and so she doesn’t. Voila!
By now, I am so fed up with how awfully written the whole race of Ferengi is, that I really don’t want to waste any more words on it. I just rate every ‘Ferengi episode’ a big fat 0 and move on.
Hannes: there are several Ferengi focused DS9 episodes that are quite good: “The Magnificent Ferengi,” “Family Business,” “Body Parts,” “Bar Association,” “Business As Usual,” etc.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@53 – can confrm krad’s statement here. I also hated the Ferengi (like, a lot) and was actually a little reluctant to even watch DS9 because I knew there was a bit of a focus on them, but they do a much, much better job with them there (and actually explore some of the more unsavory parts of their culture).
Yes, Ferengi get a bad rap.
@Lisamarie As a Trek fan that has never seen more than a few scattered episodes of DS9, and whom has been dreading getting there with my chronological watch because of the Ferengi presence, it is endlessly reassuring to see you have the same doubts back when these reviews were posted and then have you confirm their improvement a mere month before I got here. So thank you very much!
This reminds me of an early Enterprise episode where an ion storm forces the crew to take shelter in shielded conduits at the center of the ship. They are bored and uncomfortable and a lot of character development occurs, the the Ferengi take over the ship. Oh God.
@58/roxana: You’re conflating two different episodes — “Acquisition,” where the Ferengi gassed the crew unconscious and looted the ship, and “The Catwalk,” where the crew sheltered in one of the warp nacelles to ride out a storm and the ship was taken over by a one-shot alien race called the Takret.
Ah. Thank you. It’s obviously been a while. Apparently I found both episodes about equally irritating. I remember being annoyed at the intrusion of the Takret because I thought the claustrophobic soul baring was interesting enough. Of course nobody needs an excuse to be irritated by Ferengi.
My son hated the Ferengi while we watched TNG, and grew to LOVE them with DS9.
I would actually say that Rom became one of my favorite characters, go figure :)
Yeah, my son loves him too.
@13/ChristopherLBennett: I agree, but there was a problem I’ve had with the episode. In the Thundercats episodes Time Switch, ThunderCubs parts 4 & 5 and Return of the ThunderCubs Lion-O was enveloped by the gasses from the capsule that transported him to Third Earth not only did his clothes shank with him but his mind is both switching back to immaturity but he remembers his being as lord of the ThunderCats. Also when Panthro, Cheetara, Tygra, Snarf and Snarfer went to the Canyon of Youth and turned to Cubs, their clothes shrank with them but their memories as adults were reduced. But in The Real Ghostbusters episode called Three Men and an Egon avert this by making Egon turning into a baby and his clothes did not shrank with them.
@13/ChristopherLBennett: At least in Rascals Captain Picard kept his mind intact and he had spare clothes to change into.
@@@@@5 Actually, Picard should have dropped dead on the transporter pad. The shuttle’s parts were reverted into their component elements and so should have Picard’s artifcial heart.
@@@@@ the RVN debate Let me get this straight, because this episode has some technobabble that is more made up than usual, it deserves our scorn? I acknowledge this is a bad episode, but accusing a Science Fiction episode of bad science is laughable. The rating for this episode is appropriate, but the RVN nonsense has no bearing on that for me.
@66/thierafhal: You can’t generalize about science fiction like that. Different works of science fiction hold themselves to different standards of scientific plausibility. If a particular work aspires to be scientifically plausible, then it is valid to criticize it for a scientific error that would be easily excused in a different work that was more overtly fanciful. Because in that case, it’s falling short of its own chosen standards.
Originally, when Star Trek was created, Gene Roddenberry’s aspiration was to make it more plausible and grounded than anything else in SFTV at the time. He was one of the first SFTV producers ever to consult with real scientists and engineers and think tanks in an attempt to make his show plausible. And when he came back for TNG, he strove even harder for plausibility, and the early seasons of TNG were thus the most plausible in the franchise’s history. With that having been set as the original standard the series aspired to, it is perfectly valid to criticize later seasons and series for falling short of those standards of credibility. Granted, by now the bad science in Trek considerably outweighs the good, but at the time this episode was made, that was somewhat less the case than it is now.
@67 I see your point, but this is season 6 of TNG. While it was not at the ludicrous level of Voyager in terms of made-up science; it is still at a point in the series where technobabble; some good, but increasingly bad; was a huge part of our weekly dose of TNG. I’m all for having the science in Sci-Fi having some legitimacy, but as I said, it had no bearing on my opinion of this episode.
@68/thierafhal: Yes, exactly. It’s a specific season of a specific show, so please don’t attribute its sloppy science to science fiction in general. It’s very insulting to the genre as a whole, and to SF writers like me who strive for plausibility, to say that bad science should be taken for granted in all science fiction.
@69/ChristopherLBennett: My original comment was written badly. After re-reading it, I see how you would have the opinion that I was generalizing all Sci-Fi; that was not my intent. What I was trying to get across was that in season 6 of TNG, Star Trek had taken liberties with science increasingly up until that point, slowly deteriorating to what we saw in Voyager week in and week out. As a “Science Fiction” episode, Rascals offended me in no way with its bad science. Had the science been plausible, it would still have been a silly episode. Perhaps I should have written: “accusing a Star Trek episode of bad science is laughable”.
@70/thierafhal: I don’t think it’s laughable. As I said, ST was originally one of the only SFTV franchises that aspired to scientific credibility. If it falls short of its original aspirations, I think we’re perfectly entitled to express dissatisfaction with that. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but different people have the right to bring different standards to their interpretation of fiction, and it’s rude and obnoxious to try to dictate to other people how they should be allowed to criticize a thing. You just focus on expressing your opinion of the show and kindly stop trying to police other people’s opinions.
@71/ChristopherLBennett: In what way am I policing opinions? It seems more like you’re trying to police my opinion. I wasn’t intentionally trying to insult anyone, I mearly strongly disagreed. Perhaps “laughable” was on the harsh side, but hardly what I would call rude and obnoxious; I guess we have different interpretations.
I’ve already admitted that what I said in my original comment was written badly and thus taken out of context of what I meant. However, I’m not going to back off of my opinion that this episode’s technobabble is being unfairly maligned based on the standards of this era of Star Trek.
@71/Christopher: “ST was originally one of the only SFTV franchises that aspired to scientific credibility.”
They always had bad biology, though. Some of it was inbuilt from the start – the idea that most aliens look exactly like us. Then there’s the idea that everybody can interbreed (“Wink of an Eye”), the idea that “male and female are universal constants” (“Metamorphosis”), changes to the body like big blue boils or wrinkles disappear immediately after treatment (“Miri”, “The Deadly Years”), in reaction to a deadly virus, “nature built up […] natural immunising agents in the food, the water, and the soil”, which also lead to an extended lifespan (“The Omega Glory”), evolutionary development “beyond the need of physical bodies” (“Errand of Mercy”), and oh, this happens to individuals (“Transfigurations”). “Rascals” only continues this tradition.
@73/Jana: Don’t forget that this is television, not prose, so they didn’t have absolute freedom. The compromises TOS made were unavoidable for reasons of budget and technology. Humanoid aliens are necessary because actors are human. Earth-duplicate planets existed because reusing historical props and set pieces was the only way to make the show affordable. Telepathy and telekinesis were necessary because they’re easy to portray with minimal special effects.
And yes, there were individual examples of bad science, but there was also some good science. Here’s what you need to understand: Back then, TOS was just about the only SFTV show that had any good science at all alongside the bad. The standards were so low — indeed, effectively nonexistent — that any trace of basic scientific literacy or credibility was a standout. TOS was the only show that tried even slightly to acknowledge science rather than just making up totally random crap. Trust me, I grew up as a science buff watching SFTV in the ’70s and ’80s, and everything else frustrated the hell out of me with its incredible scientific illiteracy. Star Trek was the only thing that even paid lip service to real science. If you’re starving, then even a few scraps are a feast.
I mean, let’s look at interstellar travel alone. Star Trek understood that travel through space is limited by the speed of light and that going beyond it would require some kind of warping of space. It was essentially unique in that understanding. Most other space shows demonstrated no comprehension of that at all; interstellar travel was portrayed as simply a matter of hopping in a rocket and thrusting until you got there. Lost in Space made a token reference to hyperdrive in its aired premiere episode, but otherwise treated travel between planets as an easy and fast commute through normal space. Space: 1999 had the Moon blown out of orbit and drifting to a different star system every week, though there were a couple of token handwaves about space warps. Battlestar Galactica had the fleet pass through multiple “galaxies” (with no understanding of what that word meant) in no more than a year while achieving a maximum velocity of lightspeed. The only other pre-ST:TNG show I can think of that acknowledged the need for some kind of space warp for interstellar travel was season 1 of Buck Rogers with its “stargate” system (introduced in the second episode by the show’s story editor, SF/comics writer Alan Brennert), but season 2 mostly forgot about the stargates.
@74/Christopher: Oh, absolutely. And evolution having a purpose, or acting on individuals instead of species, was fairly common in SF in the day, too. I only wanted to say that “Rascals” isn’t all that bad.
@75/Jana: Compared to so much else in Trek, no, it’s not that bad. But I still say it’s legitimate to feel regret at Trek’s scientific inaccuracies. As I said, it was practically the first (and for a long time, the only) SFTV show that even tried to ground itself in plausible science to any degree at all. That was its original aspiration, the goal it set for itself. So it’s unfortunate that it’s fallen so far short of that goal. Criticizing Trek’s bad science is not arbitrary or unfair, because it’s judging the show by its own creator’s self-imposed standards. To be sure, Roddenberry himself fell short of that aspiration both through the needs of dramatic license and budgetary compromise and through his own limited understanding of the scientific advice from his consultants, but at least he tried. He had a standard he aspired to, and the fact that he fell short of it does not mean the standard didn’t exist.
For me as a science-loving kid, Star Trek was the one and only oasis of even marginal scientific literacy in a desert of SFTV stupidity. So it’s sad for me to see that viewers today see it as just one more generically nonsensical sci-fi show, no different from any of the others. I guess the problem is that ST is a victim of its own success. It inspired successors that followed in its footsteps and even improved on it in various ways. In my youth, it was head and shoulders above everything else on TV, but now it’s just one of many and it’s no longer on the cutting edge. I should be glad of that on the whole, since it’s made SFTV so much better today, but it’s still kind of a shame.
Honestly, it’s pretty simple to me: if the story is good, nobody cares about how improbable the science is.
Take the transporter. I’ve said this before, but I’m going to admit this time I got this mostly from “The Science of Star Trek”… but the transporter, created to save costs in filming, is the closest thing to impossible in the Trekverse. Either if you’re annihilating the original person and creating someone out of whole organic matter on the other end, or if you’re splitting them apart and reassembling them elsewhere, the energy levels that would give out via e=mc^2 would probably blow up the ship. Its very existence, which makes the replicator reasonable by proxy, is kind of a game changer so big that writers for Star Trek prefer to just sidestep the implications. “Oh replicating a whole starship is … hard… somehow” is just one example. Yet usually, people just don’t CARE how difficult all this is.
And in THIS episode… my family hates me just a little for when I point stuff like this out, like when the guy from Glee saved Collins from Rent on The Flash from a lightning strike. In that very episode, time travel happened from Barry and I rescinded my objection, but the point remains, lightning, or phaser blasts, hit you at light speed. Ergo, by the time you see them THEY’RE EFFING THERE! The only cue someone could have for ducking is somebody moving their thumb. 2 millimeters. I mean, seriously, folks…
@77/wizard: Please don’t say “nobody.” Different people engage with fiction in different ways, and their individual tastes should be recognized and respected, not judged as wrong or treated as nonexistent.
@78. Thank you for saying that. I’m bookmarking that one. Oh yes I am.
}:‑)
@78 Well… I’m generalizing. Or, possibly, claiming that ‘if the story is actually perfect then actually nobody will care’. But truthfully I’m overgeneralizing.(Because I am egotistic AF. The sooner I admit it…) I probably should have put it, “It’s my observation that the better a story is, fewer people complain about the science”. But this episode was pretty bad, and it had a Ferengi dodging an energy beam, and I’m feeling like harping on that. Whereas that Flash episode, I didn’t push the problem I had with the people present and watching, at least not THAT much, because I was still drawn into the story. THAT is what I’m trying to get at.
I’d always thought of the Ferangi as gradually morphing into the Ferangi of DS9 throughout TNG (Season 3’s “The Price” and “Captain’s Holiday” certainly portrayed more of their conniving, money-loving side), but they remind me of “The Last Outpost” here. I’m not sure if they actually do anything smart the whole episode, or just catch the crew on an even dumber day. That said, if you wanted to take on the Enterprise on the cheap, I imagine a couple Birds of Prey could do it. Then, however, it’s not like the Enterprise would be cheap or easy to keep hold of or sell. The takeover plot is definitely the weakest element.
I have to say I had kind of a hard time with the child actors. I see a problem with replacing main characters with children rather than inserting them (a la “Disaster): unless they’re extremely well-cast and directed, it’s very hard to buy into. Not that it would have made sense in this case, but the approach in “Tapestry” of having Picard play his younger self worked much better. The O’Brien thing was probably the best part, but it’s touch-and-go.
Ultimately, it is a weak episode. I think there was potential, the premise has a lot of potential, actually (who hasn’t thought about what they’d do if they were a kid again?), but this episode is haphazardly thrown together. That doesn’t make it terrible, just relegates it to filler – I’d call it a 3, down to a 2 on re-watch.
Riker locks out all command functions, but the Ferengis can still use the transporters?
Now, a casual viewer might be excused for thinking that the transporters don’t work unless someone says “energize” first, but there has been so much unauthorized transporter use through the years, it’s boggling that they never required a password.
#50, Picard’s fish tank obviously has its own tiny replicator.
I can forgive bad science if it leads to a good story. I don’t encourage it but it doesn’t kill an episode for me. But I would agree with the extreme low rating of this episode just on the couple of minutes when the Enterprise came under attack. I could see the line in “Pitch Meeting” already:
“So then a bunch of Ferengi in a couple of old Klingon scout vessels take over the Enterprise.”
“Wow! Wouldn’t it be hard for them to beat the Enterprise?”
“Actually, super easy! Barely an inconvenience.”
I mean, why use Ferengi if they’re not going to try something sneaky? That would have made more sense than two puny clunker ships winning in a straight up fight.
I had to force myself to watch this episode once again on my current rewatch. For me this is the single worst episode in all of STNG, appalingly stupid and an insult to the audiance. I’d rather watch Lt. Barclay turn into a spider or relive Riker’s memories in ‘Shades of Grey’. It eludes me how this crap can get a better rating than ‘Man of the People’, which was badly done but was at least based on an interesting idea.
ThomasE: Two things.
1) The warp factor rating is the least important part of the rewatch.
2) “Rascals” at least had the bits with the O’Brien family, which were actually quite good, as well as Picard having to deal with the blow to his authority that being a kid brought with it. That’s two more redeeming features than “Man of the People” managed. Interesting ideas are all well and good, but they’re useless if the execution sucks.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad: I disagree. I can appreciate an interesting idea that somehow was screwed up during execution, but I get really, really angry if I am presented with such an appalingly stupid plot. But of course I accept that you and others have a different view on this matter.
Speaking of appalingly stupid plots: I’m also watching all the extra material on the STNG Blu-rays, and on several occasion authors describe how they pitched a story idea, how it was discussed and adapted in the writer’s room, and how all the scripts had to be finally approved by Rick Berman. This sounds like a good system of quality assurance, but obviously it failed miserably on several occasions. Was there no one in the writer’s room who stood up and said: “Hey guys, it’s completely implausible that two old Birds of Prey take out the flagship of the Federation and that a few dozen Ferengi board the Enterprise and overpower its crew of more than 1000?”
@86/ThomasE:
I guess seeing as this was an episode tuned towards the comedy side of the spectrum, it was considered an acceptable contrivance to get to the next act. Not saying I agree with it, mind you. Every TV series I’ve ever seen has clunkers that for whatever reason, made it through the creative process. I guess Berman was having a bad day.
So stupid that little JLP gets forced to give up command. He was doing fine, and I was disgusted by how his officers treated him after the transformation, like he was useless after just looking like a little kid. Seriously un-24th century like.
@@@@@88/Tonya: Not to say that this episode was great or anything, but considering all the dumb things about Rascals, I think the idea of Picard giving up command was at least reasonable. Dr. Crusher does say that although it seemed only the body had been effected by the phenomenon, it could have just been the beginning of a much more serious condition. I just think it was a prudent decision for Picard to step down. Ironically, the way the ship was captured by the Ferengi, made Riker look as incompetent mentally as the 12 years of age Picard was physically. However, that’s just the inherent weakness of the dumb script that calls for the Ferengi to capture the ship in the most contrived way possible.
As for how everyone treats Picard, the way the episode plays out, noone was expecting a 12 year old to step out of the turbolift and start giving orders. In fact, I thought everyone adapted pretty quickly considering. We aren’t really treated to a very long scene of 12 year old Picard in command before Crusher asks to speak with him alone which leads to him relinquishing command. After that business was taken care of, I quite liked the conversation Picard had with Troi about his situation and the potential rewards of living through a second childhood. It’s the kind of conversation that I would expect to see under a premise like this episode. Unfortunately, soon after this scene the episode goes off the rails.
I remember seeing an interview with cast/crew once that talked about how the Ferengi were originally created to be recurring antagonists for TNG, but they turned out to be so goofy looking that nobody could take them seriously as villains, so they were eventually rebranded as the sort of shady businessmen we know now.
At one point, I was thinking back to this episode (at the time, I’d only seen it once as a kid) and wondering if I was remembering it correctly, because why were the Ferengi commandeering the ship? By then I was more familiar with how they’re characterized in DS9, and I didn’t feel like this kind of piracy really fit their shtick.
@90/denise_l: Well, it’s good if an alien species is portrayed as having a variety of different factions and agendas instead of all conforming to a single racial stereotype. The thing to keep in mind is that the Ferengi we saw in TNG were mainly military personnel, while the Ferengi we saw in DS9 were mostly civilian businessmen and politicians. So it stands to reason that they’d act differently from one another.
I was also a bit taken aback at how the bridge crew was reluctant to adapt to Picard simply because his body was 12 years old. And I wasn’t particularly impressed with the handwave ‘it might just be the beginning of a more serious condition” to relieve him, even though there was no indication whatsoever that this was or could be the case other than Crusher saying it.. And it never did. And a fat lot of good that did them to have Riker relieve him, given that, as has been well-documented in the review and these comments, he turned out to be perhaps the most incompetent acting captain in the history of Star Trek for a single episode.
As for the Ferengi, other than Quark I never care for any of them. Even Nog was just kind of there for me. Quark I liked, because aside from his obsession with latinum, he wasn’t really a Ferengi at all.
@92/fullyfunctional: “Quark I liked, because aside from his obsession with latinum, he wasn’t really a Ferengi at all.”
Quark would be very offended to hear you say that. He prided himself on his loyalty to Ferengi values, and if anything he lived up to them better than other Ferengi such as Brunt (who at one point prioritized revenge against Quark above profit, a betrayal of Ferengi values), or such as the other members of his family with their progressive, even revolutionary ideas.
I’d say Quark just represented the writers’ choice to slant their portrayal of Ferengi in a more positive direction — not changing what they fundamentally were, but no longer caricaturing it as villainous or grotesque.
@92/93: During one of the last episodes, Quark even declared that the “old” Ferenginar would remain alive and well in his bar after he learned of Rom’s ascendance to the position of Grand Nagus.
@92/fullyfunctional:
Hmm, I never took it as a handwave at all. Just because there was no indication that it could turn into something more serious, doesn’t mean that wasn’t going to happen. There was no precedent for the condition so I think caution was justified.
Of course I do agree that Riker’s performance as acting captain left a lot to be desired and in hindsight, Crusher’s decision turned out to be unfortunate.
@93 / CLB:
I’d say Quark just represented the writers’ choice to slant their portrayal of Ferengi in a more positive direction — not changing what they fundamentally were, but no longer caricaturing it as villainous or grotesque.
And it was also necessary, given Quark was going to be part of the Main Cast.
To make him work, they had to strike the right balance between making the audience like and care about Quark…but also not forgetting Quark was shady and he could be a jackass.
It actually reminds me of the challenge that Stargate had with Rodney McKay after his transition from a recurring character on Stargate SG-1 to the Atlantis Main. David Hewlett and company had to tweak Rodney to make the audience care and like him…while also not sacrificing everything from SG-1 that made Rodney, well, Rodney.
@96/Mr. Magic: Yeah, I hated Rodney on SG-1. He was a total creep. While they presumably spun him off to take advantage of the actor’s talent, and while they did successfully make him an appealing character despite his beginnings, I did find it a questionable choice to spin him off in the first place — especially because he replaced the African-American character they originally intended to use.
@97,
I did find it a questionable choice to spin him off in the first place — especially because he replaced the African-American character they originally intended to use.
Yeah, as much as I love Rodney’s character…the optics of Hewlett going in to audition for a non-White character and the Producers not batting an eye were (and still are)…troubling.
To play devil’s advocate (or would this be Wraith’s Advocate, heh), though, I also think the Atlantis production team was also just desperate at that point.
They hadn’t found the right actor for Ingram and “Rising” was about to start filming (I think Hewlett was contracted and arrived on set one day into the Pilot’s shoot). Just casting Hewlett and swapping in Rodney was the easier choice for the production at the time.
I’m not sure why I feel the need to comment AGAIN on a fairly forgettable episode, but alas. The sheer stupidity of these hapless Ferengi capturing the Federation flagship and the equally hapless transporter malfunctionees taking it back, breaks down to something like this scenario (I’m appropriately depicting in child terms). Kid 1 grabs toy car from kid 2: “nana nana na, I stole, your car!” Kid 2 grabs it back: “nana nana na, I stole it back!”
I know the whole Ferengi plot is just insultingly awful, but despite the implausible biology/physics — Trek is after all kind-of “science fantasy” — all the crew-turned-kids stuff is disarmingly thoughtful and the Ro & Guinan subplot adorable to boot. Re the hair, Picard doesn’t have to feel in any way inadequate as a bald man to simply miss the look or the sensation, and someone who suddenly has a mop of it would surely run his or her fingers through it based on the novelty alone.
You always say the numerical rating is the least important part of the review, KRAD, and I understand, but come on now: This one’s at least a 2.5.
Late to the party, but one plot hole I just can’t get over is the sheer unworkability of the Ferengi plan.
They’ve taken over the planet and put the science team and Enterprise crew to work on it. But naturally, the Enterprise would have advised Starfleet Command about receiving the distress call and diverting course to lend aid, and so when the Enterprise failed to report in a day later or something, Starfleet would no doubt dispatch a ship to investigate. Unless DaiMon Lurin got all the mineral of the week mined by then, he’d be caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
The Ligosian science team itself don’t even make an appearance, and I really mourn the episode we could have had: Enterprise mounting a rescue, failing to save everyone, and instead of Crusher and Troi bullying Picard out of the captain’s chair, perhaps the disgruntled head of the science team could have blamed Picard for the deaths of some of his fellow scientists and tried to get him relieved of duty, with Riker/Data/Crusher/Troi advocating for Picard.
If only…