Star Trek Gripe: Casting Child Actors

Star Trek Gripe

Star Trek can't cast child actors (especially recurring characters) age appropriately.  Especially if the character is nonhuman or half human, TPTB always cast the role waaay too old.

Example 1: Alexander Rozhenko.  We know he was born during TNGs 3rd season.  When the characters is introduced (season 4, played by Jon Paul Steuer then 5 years old) he looks about 2-3 years old.  When next we see the character (mid-season 5), he's played by Brian Bonsall (then 10 years old), and looks to be at least 6-7.  By the end of the series Alexander looks maybe 8 or 9 years old.  When we see the character some years later on DS9 season 6, he's played by Marc Worden, and looks to be mid-late teens.  TNG season 3 was 2366, DS9 season 6 is 2374 (8 years).  At 8 years old he's already serving on a Klingon ship during a time of war.  Yeah, right.

Example 2: Naomi Wildman.  We see Naomi's birth in the Voyager season 2 episode Deadlock (middle of the season).  The first time we see the character played by Scarlett Pomers (then 9 or 10) in early season 5, she looks to be 4-5 years old.  By the end of the series she looks to be 8-9, while the actress was almost a teenager.  Naomi would be about 5 1/2 years old when voyager returns home.

Just because the character is non-human (or half-human) does not mean that they always have to be unrealistically old and/or age unrealistically fast compared to humans.  This is way characters like Wesley Crusher and especially Jake Sisko are so refreshing, to see a child character cast the right age and grow up at the right rate.  It just feels like with nonhuman/half human child characters TPTB are lazy.