Rascals
- Episode aired Oct 31, 1992
- TV-PG
- 45m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
3.3K
YOUR RATING
An emergency beam out renders four crewmen down to childhood shortly before renegade Ferengi take over the Enterprise and offload the adults.An emergency beam out renders four crewmen down to childhood shortly before renegade Ferengi take over the Enterprise and offload the adults.An emergency beam out renders four crewmen down to childhood shortly before renegade Ferengi take over the Enterprise and offload the adults.
David Birkin
- Young Jean-Luc Picard
- (as David Tristan Birkin)
Isis Carmen Jones
- Young Guinan
- (as Isis J. Jones)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis is the first of two "Next Generation" episodes directed by Adam Nimoy, the son of Leonard Nimoy. The other is Timescape (1993).
- GoofsWhen the boy Picard sits at the classroom computer devising his plan to retake the ship, he shows to the girl Ro and the girl Guinan the path they need to take to get to Engineering. He shows them that they will have to travel through a Jefferies tube and then cross an open corridor to get to their destination; however, the diagram the computer displays is clearly of a slice of the saucer section, port side. Engineering is in the secondary hull, below the saucer section, some 20-odd decks below where the children are.
- Quotes
[Picard, turned into a child and under the ruse of being Riker's son, accidentally calls him "Number One"]
Young Jean-Luc Picard: He's my number one dad!
- ConnectionsFeatured in Top 10 Star Trek Technobabbles (2008)
- SoundtracksStar Trek: The Next Generation Main Title
Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage
Featured review
Great premise for both serious commentary about age and childhood fun BUT...
It was a great premise that's let down but the writing.
It was hilarious to see the four crew appear on the transporter pad as children but this scene is both inconsistent and illogical. As Sci-Fi viewers, we'll readily accept that a transporter malfunction can turn us into children but the changes need to be consistent. It would have been so simple to place the child actors in the adult costumes but instead they made inconsistent costumes. Keiko and Guinan's and Picard's only had slightly long sleeves and pants whereas Ro's were way oversized. There's no reason for that incongruence, so many viewers will be annoyed.
In contrast, many viewers know that Picard has an artificial heart and will recognize that it would be too big for a child but most will readily ignore that for the sake of a good story.
The writers could have had all oversized clothes and made a joke of it, and could even have young Picard to have chest pains or trouble taking a full breath because of his oversized heat.
There was no reason to clutter the opening scene with the distress call. It didn't add anything. It would be more interesting if that call came in just before or while young Picard was first visiting the bridge and the confusion as to whether Riker or Picard was in charge of responding.
It was odd that young Picard stepped to each of the stations on the bridge to give his orders. I haven't seen Picard do that before. I didn't feel that the actor played a young Picard very convincingly but that's certainly a difficult task for a teen.
We all laugh at how easy it is to take over the Enterprise and accept that it's necessary for interesting plots, but, again, make it plausible. For example, have the two Klingon ships both focused on hitting the shield generators, lose the aft shields and then have reports of people disappearing because they're being beamed down to the planet. Then, lose the forward shields, Data says "we're now losing many people from the saucer section ..." and then he's beamed away (ideally mid sentence), the Ferengi beam onto the bridge, Warf raises his phaser and is beamed away before he can shoot. That would make far more sense than capable warrior Warf missing a 5 meter shot! It would flow.
It annoyed me that young Picard retained his 4 pips because as soon as he realized what was happening he should have removed them, so that the Ferengi didn't realize his importance. In fact, he and Ro shouldn't even have their uniforms once relieved of duty.
It's disappointing that we didn't see Ro discover childhood and contemplate doing it again so that she could experience the things that she missed during her childhood. Rather than the contrived jumping on the bed with Guinan, she could have found joy playing with the children, doing something that she never had the chance to do when she was growing up during a civil war. I suppose that we did get a moment of that with the crayons at the end but would have been more profound if introduced earlier. For example, if a child had asked her to draw and she initially said "no", but then did draw with the child, have fun, and then reprise that at the end as a discovery of the joy that she missed.
If they were in civilian clothes, then the other children would not know who they are and invite them into their world. This could happen at a chance encounter in the hallway when a child says "I haven't met you before, would you like to join me doing ..."
Mile's challenges relating to an apparent teenager Keiko was very good. There could have been much more exploration of the issues involved in a teen with an adult mind and experience.
I haven't watched the fan-made episodes of Start Trek but now perhaps I should go see how fans do it. I'm curious, if the fans were given the same premise as an existing episode, how would they do it differently?
It was a good episode, but it could have been more.
It was hilarious to see the four crew appear on the transporter pad as children but this scene is both inconsistent and illogical. As Sci-Fi viewers, we'll readily accept that a transporter malfunction can turn us into children but the changes need to be consistent. It would have been so simple to place the child actors in the adult costumes but instead they made inconsistent costumes. Keiko and Guinan's and Picard's only had slightly long sleeves and pants whereas Ro's were way oversized. There's no reason for that incongruence, so many viewers will be annoyed.
In contrast, many viewers know that Picard has an artificial heart and will recognize that it would be too big for a child but most will readily ignore that for the sake of a good story.
The writers could have had all oversized clothes and made a joke of it, and could even have young Picard to have chest pains or trouble taking a full breath because of his oversized heat.
There was no reason to clutter the opening scene with the distress call. It didn't add anything. It would be more interesting if that call came in just before or while young Picard was first visiting the bridge and the confusion as to whether Riker or Picard was in charge of responding.
It was odd that young Picard stepped to each of the stations on the bridge to give his orders. I haven't seen Picard do that before. I didn't feel that the actor played a young Picard very convincingly but that's certainly a difficult task for a teen.
We all laugh at how easy it is to take over the Enterprise and accept that it's necessary for interesting plots, but, again, make it plausible. For example, have the two Klingon ships both focused on hitting the shield generators, lose the aft shields and then have reports of people disappearing because they're being beamed down to the planet. Then, lose the forward shields, Data says "we're now losing many people from the saucer section ..." and then he's beamed away (ideally mid sentence), the Ferengi beam onto the bridge, Warf raises his phaser and is beamed away before he can shoot. That would make far more sense than capable warrior Warf missing a 5 meter shot! It would flow.
It annoyed me that young Picard retained his 4 pips because as soon as he realized what was happening he should have removed them, so that the Ferengi didn't realize his importance. In fact, he and Ro shouldn't even have their uniforms once relieved of duty.
It's disappointing that we didn't see Ro discover childhood and contemplate doing it again so that she could experience the things that she missed during her childhood. Rather than the contrived jumping on the bed with Guinan, she could have found joy playing with the children, doing something that she never had the chance to do when she was growing up during a civil war. I suppose that we did get a moment of that with the crayons at the end but would have been more profound if introduced earlier. For example, if a child had asked her to draw and she initially said "no", but then did draw with the child, have fun, and then reprise that at the end as a discovery of the joy that she missed.
If they were in civilian clothes, then the other children would not know who they are and invite them into their world. This could happen at a chance encounter in the hallway when a child says "I haven't met you before, would you like to join me doing ..."
Mile's challenges relating to an apparent teenager Keiko was very good. There could have been much more exploration of the issues involved in a teen with an adult mind and experience.
I haven't watched the fan-made episodes of Start Trek but now perhaps I should go see how fans do it. I'm curious, if the fans were given the same premise as an existing episode, how would they do it differently?
It was a good episode, but it could have been more.
helpful•23
- wwcanoer-tech
- Feb 5, 2022
Details
- Runtime45 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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