They can’t shut down the dang refinery! The lever’s stuck and they’re out of WD-40!

I actually had the least problem with that. It’s entirely plausible that huge machines can’t just turned off in an instant. Even real life nuclear reactors need something like +12 hours even for an emergency shutdown. A city-sized space-refinery probably has so much momentum in it’s spinning parts that it is faster to just shoot that thing.

The “ancient alien” line may not age well. They are usually very careful not to put references to our time due to it not dating well

What do you mean? which line, what reference?