Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 6 - "Two of One"
Jean-Luc Picard's (Patrick Stewart) hospitalization in Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 6 sheds light on just how different his synthetic body is from Commander Data's (Brent Spiner). Picard and his motley crew infiltrated the Europa Mission Gala event in order to protect Jean-Luc's great-great-great aunt, Renée Picard (Penelope Mitchell) from Q (John de Lancie), who wants to use Renée to change the timeline into the dark Confederation future. But not long after Jean-Luc made a connection with Renée, Q's accomplice, Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner), ran the Starfleet Admiral over with his car, which nearly ended Jean-Luc's life.
Star Trek: Picard season 1 ending gave Jean-Luc Picard a synthetic body - essentially making him an android - which remains a controversial choice. However, Star Trek: Picard season 2 downplays the weirdness of Jean-Luc's predicament with sly jokes like Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) telling Picard that's he looks "positively positronic" and Captain Cristobal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) confessing that no one has been able to properly explain synthetic Picard to him. Jean-Luc finally perished from irumodic syndrome in Star Trek: Picard season 1 but luckily, there was an empty synthetic Golem shell that Picard's consciousness could be placed into, giving the Starfleet legend a new lease on life. However, Picard's new synthetic body was purposely designed to be age-appropriate to the 90-year-old Admiral and he didn't receive any enhancements, unlike Soji (Isa Briones), who has super strength and other abilities similar to her 'father,' Data.
The critically-injured Picard was brought to the Los Angeles clinic where Rios' new friend and possible love interest, Dr. Teresa Ramirez (Sol Rodriguez), practices. Teresa treated Picard, who went into cardiac arrest, but other than the doctor being shocked when the synthetic Jean-Luc shorted out her defibrillator, Teresa had no reason to suspect he was really an android. Soon, Picard's vital signs were normal yet he remained in a coma-like state. As Tallinn (Orla Brady), the Supervisor assigned to protect Renée Picard, plotted to mind-meld with Jean-Luc to find out why he's trapped in his own memories, a confused and irritated Dr. Rodriguez went home to her son with no reason to believe her patient is anything more than a man in his 90s who just survived a car accident.
Obviously, Picard's synthetic body is an evolution of the positronic android Data and his brothers, Lore and B-4, were. The golden-skinned Data could never pass for human and would have stuck out immediately if he were part of Star Trek: Picard season 2's 21st-century time-travel mission. Picard's synthetic body has organs and blood. Jean-Luc's android form functions identically to a human body. While Teresa didn't X-ray Picard, she had no reason to think he was anything other than human. In contrast, as advanced as Data was in the mid-24th century, he was thoroughly and unmistakably artificial. Data could be disassembled and he even had an 'off' switch. Picard's synthetic body perfectly passes for human although, if Dr. Rodriguez had cause to use 21st-century invasive procedures, she might have quickly discovered Jean-Luc is synthetic.
Rios, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) had good reason to be worried that Dr. Rodriguez would find out Picard is synthetic but he passed inspection. If anything, Picard's vital signs stabilizing might have set off a red flag considering he was an elderly man hit by a car. This also indicates that Jean-Luc's synthetic body may have a healing factor of some sort. Yet many questions remain as to Picard's synthetic body. Data's schematics and capabilities were thoroughly explored in Star Trek: The Next Generation but it's doubtful Star Trek: Picard will ever explain exactly how Jean-Luc's synthetic body works. Perhaps there will be real-world Star Trek manuals about synthetics like Picard and Soji published one day, but Star Trek: Picard is keeping the details vague.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.