were filmed individually on the bridge against a smoke background before being superimposed together. He explained, "we went dark in a lot of scenes and we did different angles and things the show hadn't done yet. For me, it was a real creative stretch and it felt great for the show." The bridge itself was a re-dress of the film-era Enterprise bridge. The term "Picard Maneuver" was later used offscreen to refer informally to Patrick Stewart's habit of tugging his uniform shirt down, and the Battle of Maxia itself was described in the first chapter of the pre-TNG era novel The Buried Age. The Constellation-class starship first appears in "Encounter at Farpoint" as a desktop model in Picard's ready room. Rick Sternbach constructed the model by kitbashing Ertl kits of the movie Enterprise, using parts from other models such as the VF-1 Valkyrie to add detail. Greg Jein used Sternbach's and Andrew Probert's designs to create the four-foot shooting model of the USS Stargazer for "The Battle". 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. This episode is noted for featuring special effect sequences with a Constellation-class starship in outer space. This design is used again in the episode "Peak Performance" (Season 2 Episode 21 of TNG). Reception "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