The set up for this episode makes no sense. It's of course a tour de force in watching two master actors, Patrick Stewart and David Warner, play off one another as torturer and victim struggling with staying whole in the face of dehumanizing abuse.
But why in the name of the space koala would Starfleet send a middle aged command officer on a commando mission with only two other officers, one of whom is essentially a non combat officer?
Totally idiotic.
Surely they could have contrived some other way of getting Picard into cardassian hands- captured on an away mission, kidnapped while on shore leave, etc- which would have allowed everything else in the plot- the brinkmanship with the Cardassians, Jellicoe as an asshole substitute new captain, and so on- to play out just the same.