A Captain Picard question

[Sailor.X]

Here is the question. Should Captain Picard had been forced to retire from Starfleet at the end of Best of Both Worlds? When he became Locutus he pretty much against his will gave the Borg the data they needed to wreck the Federation defense fleet. It was an event that almost lead to the Assimilation of Earth. As we see in the beginning of DS9 quite a few Starfleet Officers still have an axe to grind when it comes to Picard. It would have been better for Picard to have stepped down and Riker to become Captain of the Enterprise. Picard never ever got pass his issues with the Borg. In first Contact it came to a head and he almost made a huge mistake. And as we saw in Star Trek Picard he still has PTSD from the Borg. So for the good of Starfleet it would have been better if he just left and focused on getting himself well. He could have served the Federation in other capacities. What are your thoughts on the matter.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Picard's level of PTSD was quite variable. He was somehow totally able to deal with Hugh and think rationally on deploying a superweapon against them (He decided not to), and later also dealt with rogue Borg being commanded by Lore.

His trauma seems to have gotten worse later and his personality by First Contact is dramatically different. Granted the Doylist reason is because it was movie time and they wanted everything to be more extreme than the relatively placid show. As a result, Picard turned into a gun-totin' racing enthusiast who yells a lot out of nowhere, but I dislike relying too much on Doylist reasoning.

 

[Captain X]

The issues he had with the Borg were largely an issue with the movie First Contact, which was introduced in part because the actor portraying the character wanted to be more of an action hero, and they just went along with it. So to accomplish this, they had to amp everything up, which included this PTSD. So with that aside, I think he still made a more or less good captain and proved he could still serve well in that role. If not for FC, I doubt this would even be in question.

So I guess the real question is, how much different would the show have been with Riker as captain and Shelby as his first officer?