Where did Data and Picard's rifles go?

[Sketcher]

One thing that always bugged me about the battle on Deck 16 is that once the Borg start coming after Picard and his crew, Data and Picard's rifles just disappear. Worf and a few others are the only one seen firing them at the oncoming drones.

Data switches to his type 2 phaser, and Picard acts like he doesn't even have a weapon on him as Borg close in. I guess Picard could've dropped his rifle when he tried to get into engineering, but where did Data's go? A phaser rifle would seem like something not to just toss aside.

 

[Jiangnan Freak]

They probably ran out so they just threw it away.

 

[Timo]

And with "ran out", we'd probably be talking about running out of novel settings to confound the Borg, rather than running out of shots. Apparently, one has to hardwire the settings to the weapons by hand, so a "spent" rifle is no good to our heroes who can always go hardwire another one and will win nothing by hauling the dead weight of a useless weapon back to the upper decks.

This isn't the first occasion of throwing away phaser rifles, of course... When the posse first marches down to Deck 16, all the rifles have the rectangular silver muzzle. But when the battle is joined, all the rifles suddenly have the rounded black muzzle!

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0725.jpg
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0793.jpg

Did everybody discard their rifles and pick up new ones? Or is the rectangular bit perhaps some sort of a "silencer" or protective sheath that slides over the black muzzle, and the heroes just ditch those when they realize they do nothing but hamper performance in this particular type of fight?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bbjeg]

I say the lowest setting for a rifle is it's bludgeon setting.