So, something that occurred to me last episode, which I haven't seen much speculation about - though admittedly I do try to avoid most of the more speculative sites to avoid spoilers.
The first scene we see of Rios, where he's got the piece of shrapnel in his shoulder, didn't much stand out for me at the time - it seemed like just a slightly overblown way of suggesting that he was a bit of a badass. But as we've seen all of his identically-faced emergency holograms, seemingly for every function of the ship, it did creep up on me that the shrapnel scene would be an excellent way for someone to establish themselves to a newcomer as definitely being a real, flesh-and-blood person, should they feel a need to do so.
What are the chances that we're ultimately going to find that Rios himself is just another holographic personality, on a starship that is essentially running itself? I know he talks about sleeping and dreaming, but I feel like an EMH that had been left running for long enough might adopt such practices, either deliberately or as a developing personality quirk, perhaps to serve much the same function of memory-sorting that dreams do for humans.
And it would certainly fit the running themes of the series very well.
It is a possibility that he's just a hologram, too, but the other possibliity is that whatever happened on his old ship meant that he had lost a lot of people and thus fears surrounding himself with real people, particularly people he likes. (He seems to complain a lot about his holograms).
I find myself mulling about the similarities between the Federation and the Romulans. Too often the Federation seems to have a secret cabal working within it. And there is the "open" secret cabal of Section 31. Compare to the divide in Romulan culture, a weird mirror image of the Federation, the openness of the warrior nuns are the minority vs the more traditional Romulan secrecy and stoicism. There's even a deeper division between the Tal Shiar (the Romulan Section 31?) and the Zhat Vash. Is there a deeper group within Section 31?
Well, Tal'Shiar might have been a secret police, but she wasn't actually a secret organization. It was more or less common knowledge it existed.
So I think the more accurate equivalent for the Tal'Shiar is actually Starfleet Intelligence, and Section 31 is the Federation's equivalent of the Zhat Vash (at least in regards to secrecy, not necessarily organizational structure or history.)
Going further out into left field, we have the stark contrast of abundance and scarcity - Picard's chateau vs Raffi's trailer, the Federation in general vs the relocated Romulans.
I think however it's wrong to interpret Picard's chateau and Raffi's trailer as a purely economical thing. It might have a lot more to do with how they were able to deal with the ends of their career - it's psychology, not economy. Picard didn't go in a downward spiral, he took over the vinyard and started writing books. But Raffi didn't deal with it so "well". She isolated herself, became basically depressed due to her situation, and her living arrangements is not a sign of being financially poor off, but being emotionally poor off, and making a concious or unconcious choise to live as she does. She is envious that Picard
seems to have such an easy time dealing with it - but in truth, he didn't actually respond well to it, either. As he said himself, he has not really been living, he had been waiting to die. Raffi picked up some weed and conspiracy theory chasing, Picard took on the Vinyard and his books, but both area really just trying to distract themselves from their frustrations.
I figure a lot of the story of Picard is about these people's emotional journey and their need to find a purpose for their life (I guess this conceit makes it difficult for some people to like the show, too. Star Trek is usually about a hopeful future, and traditionally, hope is restored at the end of an episode or maybe a two-parter - but this journey might take the entire season - if not the entire full 3 seasons they apparently have outlined for Picard.)
