Picard's Questionable Mental Health & Competence

[Mojochi]

A lot has been said over the years about the inexplicably abrupt reinstatement of Picard after numerous events that we'd realistically consider damaging enough to merit being relieved for recovery.

Many of us have just chalked it up to futuristic healthcare being overall better enough than ours to make that possible, & some of us find that rationale underwhelming. So let me break down the chief tragedies that have happened to this poor guy & see if we can't better justify what the outcome was.

The Best of Both Worlds: So... futuristic brainwashing, stripped of identity, forced to perpetrate atrocities etc... easily the worst thing to ever happen to him, & he was only out of the chair a couple months, tops. However, He's seemingly ok by then. Nobody in charge knows about the blubbering in France or the eventual Ahab obsession to come later. He looks good to everybody. Nobody on the crew wants him replaced, & Picard had put on a very believable face. More over, I like to think he got a quick approval because a whole lot of leadership had just been annihilated, & just as Picard had lamented earlier in that very episode, "Starfleet needs good captains, especially now."

The Inner Light: So... a mind hijacking, that forces a lifetime of experiences on him in a half hour & he's up & back on the job without missing a beat. Once again, he's doing a damn good job of maintaining an unaffected bearing, that might quell concerns about him. Plus, what does anyone really know beyond what he tells them? He was out 25 minutes & had a little Oz trip, that as far as anyone else is concerned was a dream. We know better, especially after seeing how DS9 would similarly do O'Brien, but they maybe don't

Chain of Command: Ok, legit PoW status here. No joking around. That video confession the Cardies got of him tells the story good. They're breaking out the torture tactics & he's gonna be f***ed up. Yet, he's booting out Jellico seemingly as soon as he has a fresh uniform.

However, he's largely physically unmolested, was only in captivity for a handful of days, got the upper hand more than once, maintained himself well, & really didn't give up much but his current assignment. Plus, they kind of owe the guy, because the mission itself was an obvious death sentence, & he survived it.

Plus, consider the just random stuff that happens to people in the show, that gets glossed over, meeting your clones or future selves, mind control abound, crew death, being sucked out of dimensions, madness, just pure madness. These folks are going to have to be a hardy lot in general.

Rascals: Ok, it deserves a mention, as silly as it is. He's ultimately just made to look younger (eat your heart out Mark Jameson) However, despite being essentially the same guy, he's asked (internally) by the CMO to step down temporarily.

Honestly? I'm not so sure this was about him at all. Nobody on the crew being able to get over it was the problem. He stepped down for them. Worf & Riker giving him side glances, Bev & Deanna getting all maternal & whatnot. His inability to command was there fault, not his. He was mostly just being gracious & cooperative with his beloved crew, & if Bev had wanted to be a stickler, she might've had a partial leg to stand on, with "currently suffering obvious unprecedented medical issues"

Point being, in that one case, for the crew's sake they could've maybe pressed it, whereas with all the others, no one wanted to or wanted to believe they had to. The crew's perspective has a lot to do with whether you wish to declare someone incompetent. There's a lot of gray area there

 

[Dukhat]

Oh yeah, there’s no way Picard would have been able to get right back on his feet and act like nothing happened by the next episode. Ditto for O’Brien, who basically had the same experience as Picard in ‘The Inner Light’ only it was worse because he spent all that time in pretend prison rather than raising a pretend family. Both of these men should have needed therapy for life, and would not have remotely been able to continue their former jobs.

(Honestly, your first three examples were good enough. You didn’t really have to throw Rascals in there, mainly because that episode was never meant to be taken that seriously, unlike Picard being turned into a Borg, living a fake life, or being tortured.)

 

[Mojochi]

Oh yeah, there’s no way Picard would have been able to get right back on his feet and act like nothing happened by the next episode. Ditto for O’Brien, who basically had the same experience as Picard in ‘The Inner Light’ only it was worse because he spent all that time in pretend prison rather than raising a pretend family. Both of these men should have needed therapy for life, and would not have remotely been able to continue their former jobs.

(Honestly, your first three examples were good enough. You didn’t really have to throw Rascals in there, mainly because that episode was never meant to be taken that seriously, unlike Picard being turned into a Borg, living a fake life, or being tortured.)

Well, I see a fair amount of annoyance toward Rascals because it's the one time he DID get pulled from command over competency related issues

As for the Kataan probe, it's kind of impossible to know the permanent effects anyhow. There's nothing saying it did the damage that O'Brien's treatment did. It felt real for Picard as he experienced it, but the aftereffects might have been less potent.

Surely, the emotional impact was strong, as he embraced his flute, but if these people (who seemed benevolent enough) had the capacity to do this to him, they might also have had the ability to have him returned to normal in short order afterwards. It's not like they were trying to be malicious & wanted him incapacitated or haunted by it afterwards. So maybe he wasn't.

Albeit, at least one throwaway line of dialogue from Bev about that being the case would've been helpful.

 

[fireproof78]

The Best of Both Worlds: So... futuristic brainwashing, stripped of identity, forced to perpetrate atrocities etc... easily the worst thing to ever happen to him, & he was only out of the chair a couple months, tops. However, He's seemingly ok by then. Nobody in charge knows about the blubbering in France or the eventual Ahab obsession to come later. He looks good to everybody. Nobody on the crew wants him replaced, & Picard had put on a very believable face. More over, I like to think he got a quick approval because a whole lot of leadership had just been annihilated, & just as Picard had lamented earlier in that very episode, "Starfleet needs good captains, especially now."

This is probably the one that stands out the most to me because of things like "I, Borg" and him willing to assume the Locutus persona with Hugh, and then on to First Contact and the clear obsessive behavior, indicating past trauma triggers are still present. Actually, even before that, Picard notes that Starfleet has confidence in the crew of the Enterprise but not the captain. So, some doubt remains, and I think it should remain because of the pervasive nature of the Borg threat.

I think other honorable mentions include "The Battle" and the Mind Control Device that Bok uses, as well as the trauma of losing his brother and nephew in a fire.

It always strikes me as incredibly concerning how easy going Starfleet appears to be at times about this.

 

[Dukhat]

Surely, the emotional impact was strong, as he embraced his flute, but if these people (who seemed benevolent enough) had the capacity to do this to him, they might also have had the ability to have him returned to normal in short order afterwards. It's not like they were trying to be malicious & wanted him incapacitated or haunted by it afterwards. So maybe he wasn't.

But that wasn’t made clear in the episode. The audience is made to believe that Picard lived this entire fake existence and then, poof, it’s gone, he’s back to being Captain Picard, and everything is fine after that, with no real payoff as to how this affected him in the long term. Because the episode wasn’t about that. It was about the Kataanians using Picard to tell their story. Picard’s aftereffects were not important to the plot.

 

[at Quark's]

Perhaps, people's mental resilience can vary greatly also. I have read accounts of people that were in a Nazi concentration camp, saw the most gruesome things, barely survived it themselves, that picked up their life after that, seemingly never looking back, and functioning adequately without any visible problems (though we'll never know what horrors they relived in their heads). I have read accounts of people that could go on, but with serious trauma and problems, and I have read accounts of people that were wrecked for the remainder of their lives.

 

[Mojochi]

This is probably the one that stands out the most to me because of things like "I, Borg" and him willing to assume the Locutus persona with Hugh, and then on to First Contact and the clear obsessive behavior, indicating past trauma triggers are still present. Actually, even before that, Picard notes that Starfleet has confidence in the crew of the Enterprise but not the captain. So, some doubt remains, and I think it should remain because of the pervasive nature of the Borg threat.

I think other honorable mentions include "The Battle" and the Mind Control Device that Bok uses, as well as the trauma of losing his brother and nephew in a fire.

It always strikes me as incredibly concerning how easy going Starfleet appears to be at times about this.

When the Locutus thing is already rearing it's head with Norah Satie using it against him in the The Drumhead, that same year, you just know it's not forgotten anywhere, but even worse was that it appears as though he's not even entirely free of their influence in First Contact. It always seemed like he was gleaning some kind of real feedback from the collective/queen there, & has an intuited sense of what they're up to. (Or was it just a dream & he's just expertly savvy about their tactics now?)

However, nobody knew anything about any of this in the weeks just after BoBW. It's at least feasible he gets a green stamp to be back in service because no one is any the wiser, & Picard is a master at looking normal under duress.

 

[markoid the android]

What is being referred to are just occupational hazards for a Starfleet captain. If your life consists of travelling through the galaxy then you're just not going to be ground down the way many people today are because your perspective and your philosophy on life is very different. One major difference is that Picard's life was constantly in danger. That's such a mad thing for us to contemplate living that way because it's not part of our experience at all. Picard's mental state cannot be judged by the standards of your average 21st person. The proof was in the pudding too. Picard was ship shape and Bristol fashion right uo to the end of the series.

 

[fireproof78]

When the Locutus thing is already rearing it's head with Norah Satie using it against him in the The Drumhead, that same year, you just know it's not forgotten anywhere, but even worse was that it appears as though he's not even entirely free of their influence in First Contact. It always seemed like he was gleaning some kind of real feedback from the collective/queen there, & has an intuited sense of what they're up to. (Or was it just a dream & he's just expertly savvy about their tactics now?)

However, nobody knew anything about any of this in the weeks just after BoBW. It's at least feasible he gets a green stamp to be back in service because no one is any the wiser, & Picard is a master at looking normal under duress.

Yes, indeed. And I'm sure even Picard felt like the best way to return to a semblance of normal was to assert control in the areas he could control. Reasonable, to a degree.

I just, like Starfleet, would have a tough time trusting him as much in certain situations.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I think this whole thing is one of the reasons why so many people had issues with the way he's portrayed on PIC, where he clearly struggles with PTSD and other things and just seems more "fragile" - he just never seemed to really break on TNG, except after the Borg incident, but even then we "just" see him crying in the mud with his brother. A lot of this is due to TNG's episodic nature, of course - if TNG was made today he would spend an entire season dealing with the aftermath of what happened. A lot of it is also probably due to the whole Roddenberry directive of "everyone is fine, no conflict among the crew" - IIRC he was firmly against "Family" being made because he seriously seemed to feel that Jean-Luc was invincible and Michael Piller had to really put his foot down.

It isn't even just the things that were mentioned, it starts early on TNG in "Lonely Among Us" when he's brainwashed into beaming himself into outer space and turning himself into an energy cloud. I know he claims he doesn't remember anything (with the wonky explanation of him having been brought back by the transporter but the pattern was formed before he beamed out... wat... okay okay it's early TNG, trying to make sense of it is often impossible) but seriously... this sort of thing can wreck someone just BECAUSE they don't remember what they did. And he should have been left wondering if he's still real or if he isn't just a transporter copy etc etc etc.

I'm probably too biased to say that he should not have been kept around as a captain but I do see the point of those who say he should have at least have taken a massive leave of absence after the Borg incident in particular. Like I said tho, I think this whole thing shows how TNG's episodic nature clashed with the stories they were trying to tell. On the other hand, I know how mental health etc was treated at the time when TNG aired so I'm also not really surprised by the way the show treated it at times.

Another factor I'd also like to add tho is that Jean-Luc is an INCREDIBLY private guy. He "needs an image of geniality" (his own words in Encounter At Farpoint). He tries to always seem invincible. He's almost obsessed with it, which is probably why his crew also tends to think he's invincible and always has a VERY hard time with mutinies and/or protest (as seen on various occasions when Jean-Luc is clearly not himself but they follow him anyway or walk around on eggshells when it comes to relieving him of command or challenging his decisions). It's his command style, he figures he must seem invincible so that everyone always trusts him and relies on him etc. While I do agree that a captain who's struggling with decision-making all the time isn't a good idea either it wouldn't have hurt sometimes if he had just admitted that he was out of his depth. (I mean look at him in "Q Who"... it takes 18 deaths for him to finally admit to Q that the Borg are way out of everyone's league and that he needs Q's help.)

In essence, an attitude like this really doesn't help him with mental health issues - it makes him bury them as deeply as he can, ignoring them for as long as he possibly can, etc.

 

[Mojochi]

It took dude 7 years to even just sit down to a poker game with them. The "Bedrock Captain" dynamic was seemingly his highest personal principle. Having a one-on-one with any of them was just about the only way to sidestep the office of the man, & even then it often came back to him telling Wesley to be wary of personal connections, or dining with Beverly but at arms length.

It's clear that professional distance was his philosophical prime directive, to the detriment of more than one romance even. One could glean from that a self-protective nature that kept him from having to struggle with the intimate pain of losing people. He's not keeping that distance for them, or even the decorum of the office (as he'd purport). He's keeping it to protect himself, so that he can maintain the office without faltering.

He is, after all, a guy who's lost a whole ship & untold numbers of crew in his life, some who were "very dear" to him, & when he laments about his unchecked youth, and how through hard lessons he's matured, that's what he means & this result is how he copes.

So, is it so unbelievable that that guy would also be a virtuoso at keeping up appearances during trauma, so much so that it meant no one ever thought he needed to be relieved, regardless the horror? They even had to force him onto a vacation. Relief is by & large not in his nature. It took a lifetime of letting go in that Kataan probe reality to even welcome a private relief into his life, in the form of music.

Before that, what did he have? An old-timey holonovel, that he eventually gave up? Stabbing people with fencing swords? Reading about ruins? Guy has almost no chill to offer himself... And the result is a persona so well constructed, that even the empath might have a hard time sorting out where it ends & how well he's really doing in any given catastrophe.

 

[FederationHistorian]

The Best of Both Worlds: So... futuristic brainwashing, stripped of identity, forced to perpetrate atrocities etc... easily the worst thing to ever happen to him, & he was only out of the chair a couple months, tops. However, He's seemingly ok by then. Nobody in charge knows about the blubbering in France or the eventual Ahab obsession to come later. He looks good to everybody. Nobody on the crew wants him replaced, & Picard had put on a very believable face. More over, I like to think he got a quick approval because a whole lot of leadership had just been annihilated, & just as Picard had lamented earlier in that very episode, "Starfleet needs good captains, especially now."

There were signs that he wasn’t okay though.

- Admiral Satie tries to provoke an episode, several months after his assimilation. And as she's Bentzoid, she'd sense something.

- He had a jacket he wore over S5, to promote individuality. Possibly a recommendation by Troi to counter Picard being triggered by Satie.

- Then, most of the senior staff and Guinan were in favour in using Hugh to wipe out the Borg and almost goes through with it. Beverly was the lone dissenting voice, that later grew to include Geordi, Guinan. And it's Guinan who gives Picard the push to talk to Hugh.

- Then Picard another encounter with Borg a year later, rogue Borg that were influenced by Hugh’s individual personality.

- Loses the Ent-D, a safe space, and is given the more militaristically designed Ent-E. And within a year of getting the Ent-E he has another encounter with the Borg in FC.

- Then he goes through a phase of action hero that starts with FC and continue into INS and NEM. This also occurring during a more militaristic age for the Federation due to the Dominion war, which while giving Picard a permission structure to behave the way he does, is also contrary to Picard being an explorer at heart.

- Then the flashback to trauma over the duration of PIC.

It's really Satie that's to blame, that led to an avalanche of mental health issues regarding the Borg. As she used them as a cudgel against Picard.

The Inner Light: So... a mind hijacking, that forces a lifetime of experiences on him in a half hour & he's up & back on the job without missing a beat. Once again, he's doing a damn good job of maintaining an unaffected bearing, that might quell concerns about him. Plus, what does anyone really know beyond what he tells them? He was out 25 minutes & had a little Oz trip, that as far as anyone else is concerned was a dream. We know better, especially after seeing how DS9 would similarly do O'Brien, but they maybe don't

It’s one of those moments where we needed to see Troi in a counseling session with Picard in the following episode. And have them discuss Picard's experience.

But based on what we see, maybe nothing was done because it helped Picard forget about the Borg. Or lets it look as his loss of individuality and identity another way by being a part of a civilization against his will. At that point, he just had his issues with Satie, and discovery of Hugh’s individuality.

Chain of Command: Ok, legit PoW status here. No joking around. That video confession the Cardies got of him tells the story good. They're breaking out the torture tactics & he's gonna be f***ed up. Yet, he's booting out Jellico seemingly as soon as he has a fresh uniform.

However, he's largely physically unmolested, was only in captivity for a handful of days, got the upper hand more than once, maintained himself well, & really didn't give up much but his current assignment. Plus, they kind of owe the guy, because the mission itself was an obvious death sentence, & he survived it.

It does imply that the Cardassians are as bad as the Borg (we saw it with O’Brien, Benjamin Maxwell, and the Bajorans), and should have been a very traumatic experience for Picard. As Picard admitted to Riker that he almost broke. But it’s glossed over because of Picard's experience with the Borg and he never thinks about it again.

Rascals: Ok, it deserves a mention, as silly as it is. He's ultimately just made to look younger (eat your heart out Mark Jameson) However, despite being essentially the same guy, he's asked (internally) by the CMO to step down temporarily.

Honestly? I'm not so sure this was about him at all. Nobody on the crew being able to get over it was the problem. He stepped down for them. Worf & Riker giving him side glances, Bev & Deanna getting all maternal & whatnot. His inability to command was there fault, not his. He was mostly just being gracious & cooperative with his beloved crew, & if Bev had wanted to be a stickler, she might've had a partial leg to stand on, with "currently suffering obvious unprecedented medical issues"

Point being, in that one case, for the crew's sake they could've maybe pressed it, whereas with all the others, no one wanted to or wanted to believe they had to. The crew's perspective has a lot to do with whether you wish to declare someone incompetent. There's a lot of gray area there

Is this controversial? As Ro was allowed to remain a child a while longer to experience a real childhood after the trauma she suffered from the Cardassian's occupation of Bajor.

The crew did not know if there would be another encounter with the Borg to trigger Picard at that point, but they likely saw the signs that he was troubled and took advantage of the opportunity to get him to stand down.

 

[Mojochi]

There were signs that he wasn’t okay though.

- Admiral Satie tries to provoke an episode, several months after his assimilation. And as she's Bentzoid, she'd sense something.

- He had a jacket he wore over S5, to promote individuality. Possibly a recommendation by Troi to counter Picard being triggered by Satie.

What? Satie was not a Betazoid herself. Further, she was grilling him about any number of things in his record that could be twisted to sully & discredit him, & she was engaged in huge overreaching in order to do it. It was seen for what it was, and sank the investigation. Picard, in his own right, acquitted himself marvelously in that exchange & showed no signs of latent traumatic distress

The Hugh encounter was the only real time during the run of the show that Picard shows some latent distress about it. Then of course his obsession in the film, but nearly all the rest of the time, there's really nothing pointing to a man that needed relieving

 

[Oddish]

Honestly, your first three examples were good enough. You didn’t really have to throw Rascals in there, mainly because that episode was never meant to be taken that seriously, unlike Picard being turned into a Borg, living a fake life, or being tortured

I disagree. It was the perfect counter-example. If Picard could soldier on after being used to incinerate a Federation fleet, spending 35 subjective years on Kataan, and enduring days of hell being tortured and very nearly broken... being in the body of a 12-year-old would be easy. But he was quickly bullied out of the chair, and whatever BS Bev threw at him about hidden effects, OP has it right: the other crew couldn't handle it. Picard was barely affected.

Perhaps, people's mental resilience can vary greatly also. I have read accounts of people that were in a Nazi concentration camp, saw the most gruesome things, barely survived it themselves, that picked up their life after that, seemingly never looking back, and functioning adequately without any visible problems (though we'll never know what horrors they relived in their heads). I have read accounts of people that could go on, but with serious trauma and problems, and I have read accounts of people that were wrecked for the remainder of their lives.

That is a possibility. However, I think that Picard at least needed to be evaluated. And never mind that his Kataan experience was the discovery of a new culture, one that no other Starfleet officer could ever know. He could have used his down time to document who they were and add it to Starfleet's archives, so that Kataan would never be forgotten.

Then, most of the senior staff and Guinan were in favour in using Hugh to wipe out the Borg and almost goes through with it. Beverly was the lone dissenting voice, that later grew to include Geordi, Guinan. And it's Guinan who gives Picard the push to talk to Hugh.

Picard knew the Borg collective, which was something that desperately needed to be annihilated. But using an innocent individual (emphasis on the second) as his weapon was something he was unwilling to do.

That being said, the planned method actually implies that humanity could have exterminated the Borg by showing them an object that couldn't exist in normal space. Theoretically, if someone had just shown them an MC Escher print, the collective would be toast.

 

[FederationHistorian]

What? Satie was not a Betazoid herself.

My mistake. It was her assistant that was a Betazoid.

My point is still valid.

 

[Mojochi]

My mistake. It was her assistant that was a Betazoid.

My point is still valid.

In that very episode, the Betazoid ended up being wrong about the guilt of Simon Tarses & then he tried to malign Worf as a Romulan conspirator. His talents are hardly reliable proof about someone.

 

[Oddish]

In that very episode, the Betazoid ended up being wrong about the guilt of Simon Tarses & then he tried to malign Worf as a Romulan conspirator.

If he was smart, he got off the Enterprise REAL quick after the proceedings ended. Anything to avoid the possibility of winding up alone in a corridor with Lt. Worf!

 

[fireproof78]

In that very episode, the Betazoid ended up being wrong about the guilt of Simon Tarses & then he tried to malign Worf as a Romulan conspirator. His talents are hardly reliable proof about someone.

The goal of his presence seems to rely more on innuendo and reminiscent of McCarthyisms.

 

[Farscape One]

I think something people forget is that Starfleet officers, especially those from shows produced before the current era, are trained professionals. You're not going to see them having emotional meltdowns in the middle of an emergency. Psych tests are needed just to even enter the Academy (TNG's "Coming Of Age") and were also done at other times in their career (TOS' "TURNABOUT INTRUDER", TNG's "The Schizoid Man").

I don't think they need to be scrutinized or made to be relieved if they are showing no signs of problems while on the job or while on the ship/station.

Should they be tested and checked to see if they are okay after major events like the ones listed for Picard? Absolutely. And if they pass, that should be the end of the discussion. (Unless they actually do something later while at work that indicates otherwise.)

But assuming people are going through issues or problems without any outward indications is just wrong. Just because you think something is a breaking point or too much for yourself doesn't mean others have the same threshold.

 

[fireproof78]

I wouldn't question Picard's competence if it didn't come up in First Contact. Seriously, they say they lack confidence in Picard facing down the Borg again. It is odd and concerning to me because that should either be Picard has s mission commander or given a post were he can't encounter the Borg.