Let’s just say that “Rascals” was both-halves bad, but for different reasons: The rejuvenation was bad because it opened a huge society-changing kettle of worms that no one wanted to deal with so they ignored it, and the Ferengi plot was bad because it was the most embarrassing alien encounter since Pakleds came along.

And then, in a twist, let’s just imagine that the 6th season episode “Rascals,” in which the crew accidentally discovers the Fountain of Youth and works hard to reverse it, never happened, because this time out they’ve discovered another Fountain of Youth, and it’s really really important.

Heh. Called it!

Seriously, though, “Rascals” was only half bad as episodes go; and the bad half was the implausible Ferengi takeover, not the Fountain of Youth part. Star Trek movies would have been a lot better if they’d used their big budgets to follow up on things like that from the TV episodes instead of ignoring them and pretending they never happened. Of course, if they did that with some things, like the “rejuvenatory transportation” discovered in that “Rascals” episode, that might lead to a lot of plot-breaking problems, sort of like when How It Should Have Ended put those super-long-range transporters and the death-curing “super blood” from Star Trek: Into Darkness to good use.

The curse of episodic TV. (The original series did it too, of course — everything from easy time travel to instant psychokinetic powers.)

To be fair, I think most of the fans imagine that “Rascals” never happened.

Though come to think of it, they also used the transporter to reverse aging in “Unnatural Selection” (granted, artificially induced aging, but I can’t think of any reason that the same technique wouldn’t work for natural aging, injury, or disease as well). I could swear there were also a bunch of other miracle cures used in one episode and then forgotten.