“Rascals” (6×07)
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It’s kind of a ridiculous lark of a concept, but the writers mine it for some good character work and a satisfying resolution to the Ferengi’s hare-brained plot. You need a lesser quality villain for this story; because otherwise you run into the Phantom Menace problem of asking the audience to believe that children could take out a threat that is meant to be deadly and formidable. The Ferengi are already kind of a joke, so the suspense becomes how they’ll be defeated, rather than a darker plot about the potential slaughter of a bunch of innocent children potentially being slaughtered.
This era of Trek doesn’t have a great track record with child actors, but this episode fares better than most.
David Tristan Birkin had already acquitted himself pretty well as Jean-Luc’s nephew René in “Family” so it made sense to bring him back as the prepubescent Jean-Luc here. Both his speech patterns and certain tics like straightening the wrinkles in his uniform eerily mirror Patrick Stewart’s performance. The only think that didn’t quite work for me is that he is too tall to be plausible as a twelve-year-old, not much shorter than Patrick Stewart himself. Especially with the other child actors who are closer in age to the age their supposed to be playing, he stands out as being a bit too mature.
Isis J. Jones is a marvel as the young Guinan. Jones previously played a young version of Whoopi’s character in Sister Act, which I don’t believe had come out yet when this episode was shot. Guinan is a very different character than Deloris Van Cartier, and Jones gives a very different performance here. She captures both the tone and rhytyms that Whoopi brings to Guinan but also the feel of the character. Even as a twelve-year-old, Guinan feels ancient. And she sees what Ro was denied as a child, and coaxes it out of her. Jones conveys both Guinan’s strategic thinking and her genuine joy at being a child again.
Megan Parlen and Caroline Junko King are a bit more wooden as the preteen Ro Laren and the preteen Keiko O’Brien respectively. But they’re no worse than the norm for TNG child actors, and director Adam Nimoy does coaxes some genuine moments out of them. Parlen, in particular, loosens up a bit and feels more natural when playing off of both the child and adult versions of Guinan.
And in fairness, it’s a tricky ask in both cases. What experience can a child bring to scenes where a mother is rejected by her child? And presumably Parlen didn’t grow up in a refugee camp, so what would she know about Ro Laren’s childhood?
But given the laughable presence, there is more meat on the bones here than we probably had any right to expect.
My one issue with the episode is that it makes Riker look a bit incompetent: He’s acting captain for less than a day, and the flagship of Starfleet gets outmatch by Ferengi in two ancient Klingon Birds of Prey. He does redeem himself later, with that genuinely funny and pretty meta technobabble scene, but I didn’t buy that he’d let the Enterprise get into such dire straights to begin with.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
This episode begins to explore how the Cardassian occupation of Bajor led to so many Bajoran children growing up without a childhood, something that will get a lot more play during DS9. To understand why Ensign Ro is the way she is, you have to understand what she was deprived of growing up. The fact that she isn’t ultimately in any great rush to grow up again is both poignant and tragic.
I believe this is the first time we’ve seen Hana Hatae as Molly O’Brien; she would reprise the character roughly a dozen times on DS9.
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