page_title: The Battle (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: The Battle (Star Trek: The Next Generation) / Reception
caption_attribution_description: A color photograph shows actor Patrick Stewart was among more than 20,000 soccer fans watching the All-Star game. Stewart sought an introduction to Staff Sgt. Alvy Powell (not shown) after Powell, a well-known opera singer, performed the National Anthem.&#91;1&#93;
context_page_description: "The Battle" is the ninth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and was originally aired on November 16, 1987, in broadcast syndication. The episode was written by Herbert Wright, based on a story by Larry Forrester, and directed by Rob Bowman.
  Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet crew of the Federation starship Enterprise-D. In this episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is given his former vessel, the Stargazer, as a gift by the Ferengi DaiMon Bok who intends to use it to take revenge upon the Enterprise captain.
  The Stargazer was to originally be represented by the movie-era Enterprise model, but producers were convinced to use a design which had appeared on a model in Picard's ready room in the series pilot. Several camera and compositing techniques were used by Bowman in filming the scenes aboard the bridge of the Stargazer, which was also a re-dressed movie-era Enterprise bridge set.
context_section_description: "The Battle" aired in broadcast syndication during the week commencing November 15, 1987. It received Nielsen ratings of 10.5, reflecting the percentage of all households watching the episode during its timeslot. This rating was lower than those received by the episodes broadcast both before and afterwards. Staff writer Maurice Hurley later said that the episode was "pretty good" because of the performance of Patrick Stewart. He originally didn't think much of the episode as it included the Ferengi, who he felt didn't work as an adversary at all.
  Several reviewers re-watched the episode after the end of the series. Zack Handlen reviewed the episode for The A.V. Club in April, 2010. He thought that the Ferengi were a "one note" opponent for the crew, but that in this episode they weren't as bad as they were in "The Last Outpost". He thought that the plot made the crew look a little silly, saying "Put it this way: if somebody showed up at your door and said, "Hey, we want to give you this weapon you used to murder a bunch of guys we knew years ago," wouldn't you be a little suspicious?" He gave the episode an overall mark of C+. James Hunt reviewed the episode for the website "Den of Geek" in November 2012, and said that it was the best episode of the series up until that point. He thought that little touches such as the Stargazer using the movie-era effect for warp drive was a cute touch as it was meant to be an older ship than the Enterprise but also pointed out that "it also means that the Picard Manoeuvre is completely invalidated, because you literally see the ship move from point A to B before the original disappears". He felt that the conflict between Picard and Bok was well realised, and that the characterisation was good.
  Keith DeCandido re-watched the episode for Tor.com in June 2012, saying that it was a solid episode and that Patrick Stewart did "a stellar job, modulating from pained to confused to nostalgic to frustrated to crazy, all quite convincingly." He said that the downside of the episode was that Troi and Wesley Crusher were not well used, while the revelation of the orb so early in the episode prevented any suspense being built up. He said that the episode worked because it concentrated on Picard, and gave it a score of six out of ten. Jamahl Epsicokhan at his website "Jammer's Reviews" gave the episode two and a half out of four, saying that it was slow-paced but that the storyline had a "psychological component that's sometimes effective". Cast member Wil Wheaton watched "The Battle" for AOL TV in February 2007. He felt that the plot had similar themes to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in that a father sought revenge following the death of his son. He thought that the writing was weak overall, and that the episode purely worked because of the ability of Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard.
  In 2020, Primetimer ranked this one of the top ten episodes for the character Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of the Enterprise 1701D.
caption: Reviewers and The Next Generation crew praised the performance of Patrick Stewart in "The Battle"
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