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| Ro and Guinan, age 12. |
Picard, Guinan, Ensign Ro, and Keiko O'Brien are returning from a relaxing botanical/archaeological expedition when their shuttle is engulfed in an anomaly. The Enterprise beams the four to safety - but when they materialize, the four are transformed. Their minds remain intact, as do their memories and experiences... but they now have the bodies of twelve year olds!
Dr. Crusher pores over medical scans of the four, trying to determine what happened and how to reverse it. Meanwhile, the ship responds to a distress call from a Federation science station. It's a trap, however, and theEnterprise has soon been incapacitated by a band of renegade Ferengi, who begin beaming all able-bodied adults to the surface of the planet below to act as slave labor.
All able-bodied adults, however, does not currently include Picard and his companions, who set about making a plan to retake the ship!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Deals with the situation with even more intellectual detachment than is his norm. The 12-year-old Picard (David Tristan Birkin) hesitates to relinquish command, his first impulse being to go straight to the bridge. He does relinquish command with a nudge from Dr. Crusher, acknowledging that no one will be able to take a 12-year-old captain seriously. Even then, he ponders what he might do while waiting to grow to an adult again. Taking a sabbatical from Starfleet to focus on archaeology is tempting to him, but not enough for him to even hesitate about returning to normal once a solution has been found using the transporter.
Riker: Takes over command of the Enterprise, only to lose it to a bunch of Ferengi. That has to be a bit embarrassing for him. He deals deftly with the Ferengi, however, learning that they are not affiliated with the Ferengi government and playing along with Picard's ploy to retake the ship. The scene in which Riker bamboozles a Ferengi with Technobabble is quite funny, both as a screwball comedy nod and as a send-up of Trek Technobabble in general.
O'Brien/Keiko: It goes without saying that having his wife returned to him as an early adolescent (Caroline Junko King) makes things awkward for O'Brien. It doesn't help matters that Keiko goes into denial about the situation, trying to resume their marriage as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Only when their daughter calls for "mommy" to read her a story, then rejects the youthful Keiko for not being her mother, does Keiko realize how untenable this new situation is. Of the four, she's probably the one most eager to return to normal at the end.
Guinan/Ensign Ro: The young Ro (Megan Parlen) and Guinan (Isis J. Jones) make an entertaining pair, and their scenes are my favorites in the episode. Ro reacts to this situation as she does to just about everything: with outrage. Something altered her body without her consent, which she views as a violation. Guinan looks at the situation in a healthier way. She's a kid again, so she might as well have fun and play. She stubbornly sticks with Ro, refusing to allow the Bajoran the luxury of brooding alone. She coaxes Ro into actually letting herself be a child for probably for the first time in her life, given the state of her actual childhood, in scenes that are the most natural-seeming of the episode.
THOUGHTS
I was dreading Rascals. I've rarely been fond of child-centered episodes of Trek in the first place, and after Season Five's overload of them, I was gritting my teeth when this one came up in rotation. Child actors are brought in to playact the parts of the regulars. Wonderful. There's a return appearance by Worf's irritating son. Even better. And Ferengi too? A perfect storm of crap!
So it was actually a very pleasant surprise that the episode ended up being fairly enjoyable.
Don't get me wrong: Rascals is not very good Star Trek. The plot progression is obvious, with both the situation and its resolution depending on Technobabble involving anomalies and transporters. The Ferengi were always weak when used as villains, and it begs a huge suspension of disbelief that they can so easily take over theEnterprise, only to be so easily defeated themselves thereafter.
But the episode moves along briskly. The first half even has some intelligent writing, as we see the impact of this situation on the four. I liked that each of the four had a different response. Picard intellectualizes it, and comes around to thinking of alternative paths for himself if it can't be reversed. Keiko's situation is the worst, as all of her life's major aspects - marriage, motherhood, and career - are unavailable to her in this state. Meanwhile, Ro and Guinan are the least affected - Guinan, because of her general outlook on life and the perspective granted by such a long lifespan; Ro, being given the chance at a childhood that life denied her the first time around.
It's all surface-level, with any serious exploration of these issues curtailed by the Ferengi plot in the second half. Still, Rascals has a handful of charming moments, including a lovely little tag between the adult Guinan and the child Ro, and it's never actually unenjoyable. It's certainly a lesser episode. But to my surprise, it is a highly watchable one.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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