I still think it's a shame they almost exclusively used him for comedic relief (and often of a none too high quality). The few episodes in which we got to see a deeper side to him (Jetrel, Fair Trade, Mortal Coil, Homestead) convinced me they could (and should) have gotten a lot more out of the character than they did.
I have no problem with Picard kicking some serious ... whenever he needs to. That fits in with what we know of him. I do have a bit of a problem with him jumping into 'action hero' mode when it's not necessary, for example when deploying the Argos in NEM. That's something I wouldn't have expected of series Picard.
It's a good episode. The only thing that doesn't really feel 'right' with me is how the Klingons came so close to defeating the Federation, when it seems that in the TNG main timeline, they seem to take a bit of a backseat to the Federation in terms of power.
Narendra 3 can likely be considered a decision point in terms of how the three main powers developed.
In our timeline, we ally with the Klingons, push back the Romulans, and then the Klingons begin an era of relative peace and whatever the term for the opposite of expansionism is and so they become "lazy" and "slovenly" and all the other complaints about K'Mpec and Gowron's Chancellorships and so they scale back production of their fleets, their warriors become less well honed etc.
At the same time, the Federation enters a genuine period of safety, no longer having to battle on two fronts, and so their fleet production grows, they are training more and more officers and expanding fairly rapidly (some of this is inferred rather than explicitly stated) which brings strength through numbers but also through discovering/acquiring via treaty/stumbling across new technologies which allow them to stand dominant by the 2360's.
In the Yesterday's timeline, the Federation is simply not ready for a war and so whilst the odd Galaxy class gets built the size and scale of the fleet isn't what it should have been.
The Klingon's are also able to rally, Duras doesn't become a meddling shitbag (or if he does then the focus on warrior tradition over politics means someone uses his body to practise Bat'leth acupuncture) and so they retain unity, and they have the Federation's technological golden age instead so maybe the Nheg'var gets developed sooner or something?
A fair bit of assumption/head canoning but I reckon it is possible to square the circle on this
