"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.

Data (Brent Spiner) reminds Picard that nine years earlier at Maxia he was attacked by an unidentified aggressor which he destroyed.

Wesley detects unusual signals from the Ferengi ship, and the Enterprise computer informs William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) that Picard has returned to the Stargazer.

Riker hails the Ferengi vessel and speaks to Kazago, the ship's first officer, who reveals that the orb is a banned device and promises to investigate.

"The Battle" marked the second appearance of the Ferengi, but executive producer Rick Berman thought that they still did not make a decent major adversary.

[2] Larry Forester's script, his second for The Next Generation, originally featured several scenes on board the Ferengi ship to cast further light on their culture but they were all ultimately cut before filming.

A steadicam attached to a cameraman was used to show a slight unsteadiness, and each of the Stargazer crew members were filmed individually on the bridge against a smoke background before being superimposed together.

[5] The term "Picard Maneuver" was later used offscreen to refer informally to Patrick Stewart's habit of tugging his uniform shirt down,[2] and the Battle of Maxia itself was described in the first chapter of the pre-TNG era novel The Buried Age.

[7][8] Greg Jein used Sternbach's and Andrew Probert's designs to create the four-foot shooting model of the USS Stargazer for "The Battle".

[7][8] In the original script, the Stargazer was to be a redress of the movie-era Constitution-class Enterprise model that first appeared in Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Probert and Sternbach persuaded the producers not to reuse the movie Enterprise model, and the "Constellation"-class label was chosen so that it could match LeVar Burton's lip movement to redub dialogue.

[11] 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?

[13] 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".

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.