Star Trek: Rascals

Episode: "Rascals"

Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 6, Episode 7

Original Air Date: November 2, 1992

via Memory Alpha

A transporter accident transforms Picard, Guinan, Ro and Keiko O'Brien to physical children, maintaining their adult minds.  While the Enterprise crew struggle to reverse the process, pirate Firengi take over the ship.  While the adults flounder, the kids hatch a plan.

"Rascals" is routinely panned by both critics and production staff.  But as much as I usually detest Trek stories about children, I don't hate this one - faint praise, I know.  For starters, the young actors work and they are due full credit as the producers still whined about having to work with kids.  I especially enjoy Isis J. Jones as young Guinan.  Of the group, I think she mimics her adult counterpart most successfully.  Jones also played a younger version of Whoopi Goldberg's character in Sister Act, released the same year.  In a pleasant surprise, the story also provides meaningful development for Ro, even though it happens in her 12-year-old body.

Acting Notes

via Memory Alpha

David Tristan Birkin played the part of young Picard.  In "Family," he played René, Jean-Luc's nephew.  He was born in 1977.

His professional acting career was a relatively short one.  Films include The Return of the Musketeers, Impromptu and Les Misèrables.  As an adult, he works in photography and performance art.  He graduated from Oxford in 1999, then got an MA from the Slade School in London.  War is a major theme of his artwork.  Check out his website here.