I very much doubt Jean-Luc wants to return to LaBarre. He loves the stars - THEY are his real home. And now that he’s back in space AND has a shiny new body... no way he’s gonna go back to making wine.
I mean, that was literally his job in S1, yes. Picard paid for the use of his ship because he didn't have one of his own, and hiring out the use of his ship is how Rios makes his living and keeps himself busy, so it was an arrangement that suited them both. In S2...well, we'll see.
Yes they do, outside the Federation, which is where Rios mostly operates. It was referenced repeatedly through S1. We also saw currency used and discussed in TNG and DS9. I'm not sure there would be any point to debating this again, it would just be argument for the sake of argument, which does not interest me. Besides, this thread is well and truly off-topic now.
Yes, it’s off topic, but I’m just curious as to how Picard paid Rios. He is a citizen of the Federation, which doesn’t use money. You say it was referenced, but I don’t remember Picard actually paying him. Did he give Rios some bottles of Chateau Picard?
Well, Rios and Raffi laid a wager in gold-pressed latinum, which was the currency of choice on DS9 and was mentioned on-screen as far back as TNG as a galactic currency used outside the Federation, so it is fairly safe to assume that was the currency used here, since Rios mostly operates outside Federation space. Did we really need to see the payment change hands? I'm pretty sure if we had, there would have been complaints about the waste of screen-time. Payment was discussed on-screen, more than once (the price went up when it became necessary to enter Romulan space to retrieve Soji from the Artefact). That's really all we need to know.
I hope they get a new ship in season 2. Rios has one ugly ship. Nothing like the enterprise. The enterprise itself and other ships have always been characters themselves. The ship in Picard has no beauty. It looks like a garbage scow. Honestly though even the federation Star ships look horrible. He designers looked like they went backward to even before TOS for the exterior designs. They looked primitive and clunky. The Beauty of TOS enterprise is its sleek smooth simple look. The exterior of the TOS ship actually looks more advance then the ships we saw in Picard
Rios’s ship isn’t ‘ugly;’ however it looks very impractical as a freighter, unless it just wasn’t hauling cargo containers at the moment. It would be like using my car itself to haul freight when it would be more practical to have a U-Haul trailer hooked up to it for that job.
the ships are actually characters in the show all the from tos to now. Many people that have produced these shows have stated they are characters as well as critics. The ships are the center piece of the adventures. Without the Starship you would have no show or a very boring one.
I do not regard ships as charcters. They are a setting. This is like saying the Titanic is a character. It is a vessel, setting and such. It doesn't require character level status to be part of the show. I couldn't give two craps about what critics call ships. I do not regard the Enterprise as a character.
it doesn’t matter what you think only what the creators think. They intended the enterprise to be a character and it is.
Define "natural time"? It could mean different things, the longest potential natural lifespan; the longest with moderate mitigation; full mitigation, biological and artificial aids; etc, etc. Today we use lots of non-natural things to maintain life. Some experts think a human body could last 140-150 years without certain basic mechanisms (7 of them) to degrade it. A constantly uploaded mind might be virtually immortal. Picard could certainly choose not to upload it again. What matters is Picard actually made that decision in the show. At the age of 92 and not in the best of health, and having lived through a "death", his point of view may have changed. But to me, it seems that if Picard always meant what he said about AI and that it is sentient and worthy, then his choice to become one is one of the greatest follow-throughs of the ideals of any character on Star Trek. It also has a few perks, not least of which is life itself. https://www.lifespan.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Lifespan.io_Event_kit_Hallmarks.pdf RAMA
Proof? Because the Enterprise comes across as a ship, so if the creators intended it then it got lost somewhere in the process. You can regard the ships as characters all you want and you're not alone in that. But, I do not and telling me the creators indented it as such without any proof is easily dismissed. And, no matter what, the ENT-D is ugly and if it is a character it is a lumpy, uneven, awkward, mass of a character. Not interesting to me.