Lord Garth, in the case of Picard, what does transferring his consciousness to a biodroid entail? Was he simply copied? If human Picard somehow survived, would there be two Picards running around? What about the human soul?
My take on this is that I watched my childhood hero die an old man among friends after one last heroic deed. When Picard was revealed to be transferred to the biodroid, to me, this is a new Picard. A copy of Picard in some kind of Picard-looking biodroid. Picard 2 gets to live out the life Picard 1 would have had he not died.
I want Picard's new identity to be explored in Season 2. Seven can help him. Is Picard Picard or some kind of echo? Is Seven human, Borg? Do these questions ultimately matter? If you are perfectly cloned and your original self is dead, your clone might as well be you. I would not mind if I died and was replaced with a perfect clone. I might be dead in Heaven, but look guys, I can be in 2 places. lol
I'm about to head out the door soon. And this requires a deep, insightful answer that spans not only science but also the supernatural and possibly also religion. And it's dependent on what each of us believes. That's my short-short non-answer. I'll give something more detailed some time tonight.
So these are my thoughts. Deep, philosophical thoughts that not everyone is going to agree with. I already know this in advance.
"Return to Tomorrow" (TOS) was written by John T. Dugan, who was a deeply religious person. His belief was that Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch existed as Spirits. These spirits either inhabited their original bodies, the bodies of the spheres they were in, the bodies of Kirk, Mulhall, and Spock, and then finally android bodies. Wherever the spirits put themselves, that was their body. They could also exist without bodies. At the end of the original version of "Return to Tomorrow", Sargon and Thalassa would've existed as Spirits. John Dugan believed in an Afterlife. Gene Roddenberry did not, vetoed that idea, and they went into non-existence/oblivion. John Dugan hated this revision to his ending so much that he went by his pen name John Kingsbridge instead. (
link)
My stance on religion and spirituality is that the two don't have to be connected to each other. Just because there are Spirits doesn't mean there has to be a God. I won't know about the existence of God, or a God, until I die and I'm not in a hurry to die. That makes me an Agnostic. Since we're created by our parents, our bodies and our spirit could've been created at the same time. If it's possible for the spirit to continue without the body, then spirits can move into another body that's without one. It can be transferred from one shell to another.
"Return to Tomorrow" doesn't contradict the idea of a spirit that can be transferred from one body to another. It reinforces that belief. The only Roddenberry-imposed mandate was that the spirit could not exist without a body. Doesn't matter what the body is. It just has to be inside of it.
Skipping ahead to
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Kirk and Sarek find out that Spock's katra -- which I interpret to be another word for his spirit -- was transplanted onto McCoy. The schizophrenia caused by the two spirits being merged into one was driving McCoy insane. His body was McCoy but his mind was Spock and McCoy at the same time and the combination didn't mix. At the end of the movie, T'Lar separates Spock's mind from McCoy's mind, as if she were separating two cojoined twins with incompatible minds. Then she took Spock's katra and fused it with the spirit that existed inside the Regenerated Spock. Since the regenerated Spock's mind was a blank slate, the original Spock's katra was able to become dominant easily. Except the regenerated Spock's mind had to process a lifetime's worth of memories and experiences all at once. Too much for any brain to handle, which is why Spock was the way he was the end of TSFS and Sarek said, "Only time will answer." When Spock was talking to Kirk at the end, his brain was still processing everything. If his brain were like a computer booting up, he'd be like: "1%... 2%... 3%.... " and that's where he was when he said, "Jim. Your name is Jim."
"Return to Tomorrow" plus
The Search for Spock equals "Et in Arcadia Ego".
Picard's spirit was transferred into a biosynthethic body. Picard's biosynthetic body can subconsciously process information much faster than a Human or Vulcan brain. Consciously, Picard 2 won't notice any difference, but subconsciously his brain sorted out everything before he even woke up in a way that Regenerated Spock's subconsciousness couldn't.
Long story short, bringing me back to what I said before, I think Picard's spirit was transplanted into Picard 2's body. Mentally, he's Picard 1. Physically, he's Picard 2.
Physically, we're not that different ourselves. Our cells regenerate constantly. We're technically not the same people we were even one year ago. Our spirits are in a different body. It's just that Picard's spirit was put into a different body all at once instead of a little at a time constantly.
