Absolutely. Rewatching the series in full as an adult made it more apparent that Data was always closer to his goal than he could comprehend. Just had trouble adjusting to social “norms” more than others.

Yup exactly. He just lacked emotional subroutines (at first) and the hardware to process that. But he doesn’t need emotions to kill. He is in fact capable of using lethal force (First Contact), he just has an ethical subroutine that prevents killing (Descent I, II) unless in defense of others, himself, or The Federation. Which would fall under his logical subroutines.

Similar in a way to Chief Engineer Hemmer who will not use violence (Memento Mori) unless in an act of preserving life. The means to defend is part of the training of a Starfleet officer.

This is honestly something that kind of annoys me about the show, data is pretty obviously human enough from the get-go, his journey is just about generally figuring things out and forming a proper personality.

Like the episode where they have to put his personhood to trial isn’t that amazing, humans now overwhelmingly at least somewhat care about the well-being of actual cattle, how the fuck would a clearly human-looking android that’s clearly capable of reasoning not be considered a person just like any other humanoid alien species?

It would have made sense if it took place in humanity’s capitalist past, but the largely enlightened federation? come oooooooon

i like that The Orville has their obligatory digital lifeform be from a whole-ass race that considers themselves obviously superior to everyone else, and no one questions their personhood because how the fuck do you question the personhood of someone who is actively choosing not to pulverize you?