This episode tried to do something different by exploring the same theme (command) in different ways in the A and B plots of the episode.
The problem is, neither half really gelled. The false Picard on the Enterprise was interesting, but the point was largely lost on me: was he trying to be slightly different, or was it just an error? Either way, there was never any interesting conflict out of the idea that the crew might be losing trust in the Captain, despite that plot having a lot of potential. And then the scenes in the lab with the real Picard also just fell a little bit flat: we never got to know the other subjects as anything but broad caricatures, so it was hard to care much about them.
There was a good idea and structure here, but the writing and the acting just didn’t quite bring it out.
173 down, 564 to go.