Star Trek The Next Generation: Every Season One Episode Ranked From Worst To Best
13. The Battle
While not the first episode to feature the Ferengi in season one, this was certainly the stronger episode. Daimon Bok makes his first appearance here, as does the beautifully designed USS Stargazer.
The script originally called for the ship to be a movie-era Constitution class ship and the show was filmed as such. Once the producers had decided to change the model, they renamed the class of ship Constellation class, so that when doing ADR on the episode, the word would match more or less with the lip movements of Levar Burton, who was filmed saying Constitution.
Will Wheaton thought that the episode itself was strong, but suspects that this is where the audience truly turned on Wesley. He says that the writers gave him such absurd and clunky dialogue, delivering it with arrogance toward the rest of the crew, that the character comes across as extremely unlikable here. Apart from this, he felt that the performances by Patrick Stewart and guest star Frank Corsentino gave the episode a more solid footing.
It has many throwbacks in design to Kirk's Enterprise. The bridge of the Stargazer is a redress of the bridge seen in Star Trek III and IV, while the Stargazer at warp shares the same effects as the movie-era warp styles. One of the better episodes of the season, this one really gave Stewart the opportunity for some meaty acting.