Just don’t call in Jellico, it will not go well.

Not in widespread use, but they have the designs for a pretty badass sniper rifle that uses a transporter to beam the bullet past obstacles and place it directly in front of the target, paired with a headset that can see through walls.

Now that I think of it, they also established in first contact that kinetic weapons are effective against the borg, since Worf’s blade and Picard’s holographic tommy gun were able to get past the borg defenses. Seems like maybe they should have replicated some guns and ammo, or possibly just taken some from the planet below.

Which directly contradicts the statement in episode 2:

Obi-Wan: “Well if droids could think, there’d be none of us here, would there?”

If we accept Obi-Wan’s characterization, then those droids may be able to operate independently, but they aren’t actually thinking.

Again, I think a lot of Star Wars media has leaned towards making droids people and not just walking computers with a friendly ui. It’s convenient for storytelling because it’s easier to write and allows for droid characters to play larger roles and be more relatable to the audience.

But from a world building perspective it creates a lot of unfortunate implications and just makes less sense. The existence of truly intelligent robots should fundamentally alter the world but it never does.

The easy way to defend it would be to suggest that they aren’t actually sapient. The way they are treated in the original trilogy, and the way they are discussed in episode 2 in contrast to the clones would be consistent with the way we would view something like chatgpt. Sure, it can mimic a person, but anyone who is antheopomorphising it and trying to treat it like a real person is making a mistake.

Unfortunately, this isn’t consistent throughout the franchise. Hell, even episode 2 explicitly stating druids can’t think comes just one movie after we had a ceremony to present R2 a medal for saving the ship. And it certainly seems like more recent Star Wars stuff prefers to lean towards humanizing the droids.

After saying it twice and not making progress:

“Darmok and Jalad at fucking Tanagra”

Aside from the fact that they are listening to propaganda, it’s also a matter of framing. They think of solar as green weenie shit, the ineffectual limp dick replacement for tried and true all American machine power.

It all starts sounding different when you frame it as a security issue. Large scale solar will keep working through almost anything, even if parts of it are damaged. Most other forms of power need constant maintenance and can suffer catastrophic failure that renders the whole thing inoperable and costing a fortune to replace.

More importantly, it adds flexibility since it can be rapidly deployed and remains effective at smaller scales. The military wants solar because the alternative is often a gas generator that needs fuel shipped in by truck, a common target for attack. If your house has a solar roof and battery backup, a blackout isn’t going to effect you. Power can be out for weeks and you’ll barely notice, while previously the only option was a gas generator that only powers a few circuits in your house and is inevitably going to run out of fuel.

The more widespread solar and battery gets, the more secure we are as a civilization against large scale catastrophes that disrupt the grid, whether that’s war, sabotage or natural disasters.

Kirk has an adult son named David in Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock. And despite knowing about him, Kirk stayed out of his life. David didn’t even know Kirk was his dad until it’s revealed in Wrath of Khan.