The Battle by: Herbert Wright from a story by: Larry Forrester and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“The Battle” is written by: Herbert Wright, from a story by: Larry Forrester, and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 110, was the 9^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on November 16, 1987.

 

There isn’t really a battle in “The Battle”, or at least there shouldn’t be.  It is Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first proper attempt at a psychological character study and the second episode of the series to actually be good.  Not, great, but “The Battle” is actually a solid episode and were it earlier in the season, say in the place of “The Last Outpost” it might have actually worked to make the Ferengi a credible threat.  The episode is close to a ship only style bottle episode, only a few scenes are set away from the Enterprise on the Stargazer, the previous ship to be captained by Jean-Luc Picard, found derelict by the Ferengi Bok and returned to Picard for mysterious reasons.  The episode is largely structured on Picard’s descent into not quite madness as he is forced to relive a battle where he destroyed an unidentified aggressive vessel (revealed to be a Ferengi vessel) by developing the Picard Maneuver, warping the ship so enemies detect a ship in two places at once.  This central descent for Picard really puts the focus on Patrick Stewart in the role and develops him further than the basic sense of diplomacy previous episodes have employed.  This is a man haunted by the past, something that would never have made it to screen were this the original series: Picard consistently questions his decisions and his own memories throughout the episode as evidence begins to pile up that perhaps that fateful decision to fire was not against an aggressive ship after all.

 

Now, “The Battle” as an episode does immediately tip the viewer off to where it’s going, Picard suffering from a headache that is steadily getting worse revealing essentially a Ferengi brainwashing technique.  The climax of the episode reveals that Bok, played by Frank Corsentino, is actually the father of the Ferengi in charge of the ship Picard destroyed all those years ago, clandestinely wanting revenge.  Bok is actually an effective villain for the first two thirds of the episode, the Ferengi in this episode having been largely toned down in terms of delivery under director Rob Bowman even if there’s still the established hyperactive way of speaking.  Making Bok the father of someone Picard killed makes the animosity personal, it’s pulling a trick out of the Star Trek films in reverse, putting Picard in the role of villain in someone else’s story and the episode is direct in its resolution to imply that there could eventually be an alliance between the Federation and the Ferengi.  Okay, the implication is a little weird with the fact that the Ferengi are even more explicitly capitalists driven only by profit here, but it actually would be an interesting start for a race of aliens to develop towards a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society as was Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity’s future.  Would be is the important phrase because “The Battle” as an episode is actively hurt by “The Last Outpost” being what established the Ferengi as a completely non-credible threat.  “The Last Outpost” treated them as a joke, so “The Battle” is attempting to do almost a season’s worth of heavy lifting to break a first impression in the viewer’s mind, one that doesn’t entirely come across.  There are still some comedic scenes with the Ferengi and again that style of line delivery is actively working against it despite the great attempts.

 

Bowman as a director is currently the best director Star Trek: The Next Generation has to offer, it’s clearly no accident that this and his previous episode “Where No One Has Gone Before” are the only two episodes that would qualify as good episodes.  Bowman both blocks and lights “The Battle” as incredibly dynamically.  While the actual camera angles are largely standard for late 1980s television, working around the sets quite well, Bowman actually blocks his actors in line with the emotions that the characters are feeling.  There is a soap opera blocking technique I’ve heard called backacting, where two or more actors are having a conversation largely while facing the camera.  The first scene between Picard and Beverly Crusher largely employs the technique intentionally (most bridge scenes in Star Trek have at least some backacting because of how the set is laid out).  It’s actually quite effective for allowing both Stewart and Gates McFadden to actually emote, likely again down to Bowman’s direction.  This is also an episode where Wesley gets a few genuinely effective scenes, especially early on allowing Wil Whaton to attempt to develop the character as learning to become an officer and form a relationship with both Picard and Riker.  Herbert Wright is clearly in a better element in terms of scripting here than he was in “The Last Outpost”, dealing with straight forward character drama instead of a comedic science fiction plot.

 

Overall, “The Battle” still has some problems, mainly with the way that it just kind of ends without a strong resolution and that it doesn’t undo nearly enough of the damage of the Ferengi’s first impression, but it’s still a solid episode of television.  After nine episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation the show should really be striving to have scripts of at the very least this quality, only the second episode to really work and come together as an episode of television and that’s enough to give me at least a little hope back that this show will actually work, at least until the quality inevitably plummets later in this season.  7/10.