- Technically, Picard now lives in what they called a golem before the soul was installed. If a Soong bothers to come up with a new name for the technology, there's probably a distinction there somewhere, and a golem is not a synth. Unless "synth" is an umbrella term either replacing "android" or then encompassing that or being a subset of that.
- In today's terminology, both the golem and the observed synths are androids, that is, man-shaped creations.
- A degree of artificiality is involved in androidness, so Picard originally wasn't one. But his utterly identical clone, grown in a vat using one of the many established Trek techniques, might well qualify - Shinzon would be an android, say, due to the element of artificiality.
- Accidental immortality happens quite a lot in Trek, as do jumps across time, space and reality, so there are zero showstoppers for Picard appearing. Be it Jean-Luc or perhaps his ancestor from the 1700s or whatever.
Timo Saloniemi
