10 Times Star Trek: The Next Generation Went "Dark & Gritty"
3. Chain of Command
Continuing on the theme of Cardassians, let’s talk about Chain of Command. This one is pretty straight forward. Picard is ordered on a covert mission. They send him to investigate a possible Cardassian Weapons facility. Let’s just forget the fact that he was well into this sixties at this point and a high ranking officer.
You'd think Starfleet would have, like, a special ops force for this stuff. Instead, they're like, let's get our second oldest commanding officer to run a dangerous, covert mission.
Obviously, Picard is caught. The dude is sixty! Give him a break.
What follows are two episodes of some severe torture scenes involving Picard. He’s stripped, humiliated, tortured, and gas-lit. It’s pretty explicit stuff. Especially for primetime tv in the early 90s.
Maybe Starfleet learned their lesson and stopped sending geriatrics to raid weapons facilities. Seems like a no-brainer, but whatever.