3 Christmas episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to watch

Christmas Episode 2: “Rascals” (Season 6, Episode 7)

Sure, lots of people claim they “feel like a kid again” at Christmas. But Captain Picard, Guinan, Keiko O’Brien, and Ensign Ro actually became kids again in this early sixth-season TNG installment, which makes a pretty good Christmas episode if you squint at it the right way.

Thanks to one of the strange energy matrices that seem to populate the Star Trek universe at every turn, these four crewmembers beam aboard the Enterprise as significantly younger versions of themselves—just in time to help save the starship from greedy Ferengi as only young whippersnappers can. Bonus points to young Jean-Luc for crying out to Riker as his “daddy,” in much the same way that kid on Sigma Iotia II cried out to Captain Kirk in the original series episode, “A Piece of the Action.”

“Rascals” has never actually been one of my favorite TNG episodes. For my quatlooos, it is the culmination of late TNG’s tendency to become focused on small, domestic matters at the expense of intelligent science fiction. Sure, Picard and the others are de-aged and then re-aged by science fictional mechanisms, but its all so much technobabble and handwaving, simply so we can have the ostensible “fun” of watching them save the ship as children.

But when I introduced my daughter, when she was in fifth grade or so, to TNG, and showed her “Rascals,” she immediately fell in love with it. It isn’t hard to figure out why. She loved “Rascals” because it was an adventure about characters who were—if only temporarily—her age. She could relate to young Picard, young Ro, young Guinan, and young Keiko. She had a blast watching them get the best of the grown-ups. And, watching it with her, I finally had fun with the episode again, too.

The man whose birth Christmas commemorates taught his followers, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10.14-15, NRSVUE).

Jesus wasn’t romanticizing childhood. He wasn’t talking about innocent trust or childlike wonder. He was telling his followers that heaven is on the side of those who are vulnerable, those who are at others’ mercy, those who are often dismissed as “weak”—as too many children continue to be in our own day and age.

“Rascals” can be seen as a parable illustrating Jesus’ values. It is, after all, the story of little children leading the way to salvation.