9 – The Battle

Grade: D+

Summary

The Enterprise has been invited to meet the Ferengi for some reason known only to them. After making the Enterprise wait for 3 days, they finally communicate with Picard and tell him they want to give him his old starship back. It seems like a nice gesture, but Picard never trusts the Ferengi.

Commentary

This first season has been abysmal. In this episode, the acting still isn’t great, and the storyline is still weak, but at least the script has improved. Note, for example, how Picard describes the so-called Picard Maneuver, and then later, as he re-lives the event in his own mind, we don’t actually see it. Instead, the camera focuses on him and allows Patrick Stewart to act it out himself. It’s not until the very end of the episode that we actually see the maneuver take place. But it’s good that they didn’t show the maneuver three times because the special effects are terrible.

On the other hand, this is not a great episode by any means. They still hadn’t defined the Ferengi very well yet, and there are some plot holes that are never explained. How did the Ferengi bring the Stargazer to them when there wasn’t anyone aboard? This is never explained. How did Picard get from his office next to the bridge all the way to the transporter room without being noticed? There is no other way out of his office except through the bridge, short of a site to site transport, which is definitely detectable.

One more bit of weirdness is that the Ferengi would just sit there once they turned the Stargazer over to Picard. Why would they hang around for so long? Why not just give him the ship and leave?

But we’ve seen much worse from this series before. At least this one is moderately interesting and not accidentally funny like the rest of the first season.