Continuously and comprehensively consuming all the Star Wars media - as one does - I see the Jedi slaughter droids with abandon, and watch mechs flung into space or variously crushed, sliced, and electrocuted...
... and at the same time respond to the anthropomorphism that is played here for laughs, there for pathos...
... and I wonder when someone is going to seriously address the issue of their ambiguous sentience.
@datawench right!!!
Droids status as second class entities, clearly sentient in some form but distinctly other, is so gross. It is remarkable how unremarked upon it is.
@datawench I was always hoping Star Trek would tackle that. The main computer on a starship has been at least as sentient as a dog since TOS.
Half the holodeck episodes in TNG or the like display a level of intelligence that's at least on par with humans. DS9 and Voyager had either not-minor or major characters that were programs.
Always annoyed me that they didn't explore that further.
@TheWizardTower The question of the Enterprise computer's sentience is a regular topic of discussion in my household. It seems absurd that, particularly by Picard's time, an entity of that sophistication wouldn't be a fully realized AI.
I've wondered if, like the better-known Eugenics Wars, there might not have been something like a Butlerian Jihad, the consequences of which enforced strict limits on Federation AI advancement.
@datawench Right. I could see something like that. I'd have to think for a bit to see if that kind of take on AI would fit with the "life is dangerous, but optimism is warranted" vibe of the Star Trek Universe.
It would make Soong's decision to research and create androids much more... controvercial. Though if we ret-con a butleran jihad, we have to wonder why Picard and Co. don't really think twice at Data being a for-realsies sentient android.
@datawench Maybe @Scalzi will write a sequel to "Redshirts".
@datawench It still bugs me that the Empire allow unscreened random droids onto their ships without checking for security violations. Like, they must have been hacked a trillion times already since the Knights of the Old Republic era.
Even the bartenders on Mos Eisley know better than to let in droids - but Darth Vader's top infosec experts don't.
@datawench - I've wondered about that on occasion. I've always assumed there was some sort of unmentioned cultural event in that setting that had closed the door on the droids-as-sentients question, but without the benefit of that context we don't even know the surface level explanation.