The Star Trek franchise has featured few child characters, but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine offers its two best and most believable: Nog and Jake. Nog and Jake are introduced as early teens, and they develop throughout the series into young adults. While Nog and Jake take individual paths to adulthood, they continually influence and shape one another. Their shared journey offers an entertaining and moving look at what it’s like to be regular kids growing up in extraordinary circumstances.
Children frequently play central roles in individual episodes of Star Trek, usually when a starship encounters a child or children of another species, and the complexities of family and parenthood are recurring themes in every series. But there are few children featured as core characters, despite the fact that families are shown to live on Starfleet's vessels. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, this issue of children living on starships was explored, with Captain Jean-Luc Picard being famously uncomfortable with children; Picard’s tendency to avoid extended exposure to children seems fairly representative of the franchise.
Prior to Nog and Jake in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the only child character to regularly appear in a series was Wesley Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s famous boy wonder. There are moments when Wesley clearly acts like a teenager, but the show was so focused on his identity as a child prodigy that it spent little time developing his character outside of this identity. As a result, audiences rarely saw Wesley interact with other children; his central friendships were with members of the bridge crew. Star Trek: Voyager’s recurring child character, Naomi Wildman, while much younger than Wesley, was also intensely precocious. For most of the series, she was the only child on Voyager, which meant that, like Wesley, her interactions were largely with adult crew members.
What makes Nog and Jake stand out among Star Trek child characters is that audiences got to see them acting like kids. They hung around the Promenade, the space station’s version of a downtown; they obsessed about girls; they got into trouble; they had stupid fights with one another; and they argued with their parents. In a playful episode called “In the Cards,” Nog and Jake embark on a mission to secure a vintage Willie Mays card for Jake’s father, Commander Sisko, whose greatest love is baseball. The kooky scientist who owns the card insists that Nog and Jake acquire a long list of materials needed for his experiments in exchange for the card. Hijinks ensue as the two teenagers perform favors for the station’s crew in exchange for the requested items. Nog showcases the depth of his friendship in the episode by subjecting himself to hours of Klingon opera played at a blaring 82 decibels to filter out subharmonic distortions for Lieutenant Commander Worf — a difficult experience, to say the least.
Nog and Jake also represent one of the franchise’s most powerful friendships, and they face meaningful challenges together throughout the series. Commander Sisko initially opposes his son’s friendship with Nog, believing him to be a bad influence. Nog is a Ferengi, the most notoriously unscrupulous race in the Alpha Quadrant, and Sisko warns Jake that Ferengi have fundamentally different values. Nog and Jake go on to prove Sisko wrong by forming a deep bond and helping one another to develop into responsible adults. In early seasons, Jake is presented as the more mature figure, and Nog is often the one who needs guidance. But as the series progresses, Nog shows himself to be the more ambitious of the pair. He becomes the first Ferengi in Starfleet and fights bravely in the Dominion Wars. Rather than create tension between the friends, Jake is exceedingly proud of his best friend’s accomplishments and boasts about Nog’s heroism. Were it not for his friendship with Jake, Nog likely never would have aspired to join Starfleet, and were it not for Nog expanding his horizons, Jake may never have realized that there was more to life than following in his father’s impressive footsteps.
Nog and Jake offer welcome comedic relief on a space station beleaguered by almost constant conflict and warfare. They also embody the enduring hope at the core of the Star Trek franchise: that people of vastly different cultures can forge lasting relationships and meaningfully shape each other's futures.