I like the gaps. I don't need 52 weeks of new Star Trek per year. This is going to bite them in the ass by the end of the decade.
Picard's new body is as human, biologically speaking, as the old one was. No sensor could ever tell the difference, and Picard will still age and ultimately die (though no longer of Irumodic Syndrome). So in every way that matters, he is still human.
In this clip Picard still looks so fragile. His eyebrows are still positioned as if he is sad and tired of life. At least at one point, he could act as firm and determined as he used to.
I really didn't like the fact that they effectively didn't push the synth body storyline further and granted Picard the ability to decide (at a later time) if he wants to die anytime soon or not - same way that Disco destroyed that option for everyone else due to 'low success rate'). He might still die even if he's incredibly long lived for example (due to say an accident - someone could kill him, or he could die in an explosion, or in line of duty - or go off to live a second life as an archaeologist). Heck, I could see Picard having his 'retirement' for about few years (5-10) and then going back out. In fact, he could have taken extended leave of absence to Ba'Ku planet (10 years) to get his body regenerated entirely... and wham... you have a Picard in his prime back in action. I wonder if the Ba'Ku planet experienced visitors who wanted to extend their lifespans, or people went there who had some difficult to treat conditions which the planet's radiation could regenerate.
If we had the option of 50-something Patrick Stewart reprising the role as Picard in his prime I'd be all for that, but we don't. Besides... "I want to live, however briefly, knowing that my life is finite. Mortality gives meaning to human life, Captain. Peace, love, friendship – these are precious, because we know they cannot endure. A butterfly that lives forever... is really not a butterfly at all."
A human with indefintie lifespan is still human... just builds on different experiences as time goes on and changes over time. What is means to be human is continuously redefined by humanity. We came up with the term 'human' and we can change it... easily. One can still have peace, love and friendships even if you are biologically immortal... they might not last indefinitely, but those relationships will naturally change over vast periods of time. Nothing says you have to die to appreciate them better.
An extended family member of mine, 10 years older I am, told me, "Don't get old!", Then he paused and said, "But it beats the alternative!"
Maybe, maybe not, but that's the ethos that Star Trek: Picard itself is following. Functional immortality would be a definite change to what we'd consider to be the "normal human condition", and this is not unique to Star Trek. Babylon 5 contains the line: "To live on as we have is to leave behind joy and love and companionship because we know it to be transitory of the moment. We know it will turn to ash. Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is eternal." It's something the Doctor has mused on repeatedly in Doctor Who ("I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone who you...You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone. That's the curse of the Time Lords"; "Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters, it's the person"; "A life this long, do you understand what it is? It's a battlefield, like this one, and it's empty. Because everyone else has fallen.") Or the Great Ship series by Robert Reed – where humans become incredibly cautious to the point of extreme paranoia and take forever to do anything, because if the only thing that's likely to kill you is an accident you do what you can to avoid any and all possibilities of there being one. This would not make for exciting viewing. And again, it would be really really really hard to pull off the concept of immortality for Picard in his prime when Patrick Stewart is in his 80s. It's a narrative conceit necessitated by reality, like Q suddenly deciding he wants to look older.
It's the great contradiction of human existence: no one actually wants to die, but no one really wants to live forever either. And that's perfectly encapsulate in the season 1 finale, where upon being assured that his new synth body is mortal and will terminate when he reaches the end of a natural human lifespan, Picard comments "though I wouldn't mind an extra decade or two."