Man, they could not have picked a collection of less interesting ships if they tried

I usually skip the intros unless I’m really in the mood, but for LD my daughter and I always skip to the nacelle-eating alien (we named him Yum Yums), yell “YUM YUMS!”, and then skip to the end.

Actually this brought up a completely buried memory for me. For a few years I lived in the same neighborhood as him – at the time, cool guy that I was, I had a Starfleet badge on my coat, and one day I was at the grocery store and had an awkward moment with him where our carts got sort of wedged together negotiating the too-narrow checkout lanes. He saw my pin and gave me a Vulcan salute as he moved into his lane. He seemed nice and a bit sheepish. The staff at the coffee shop I used to go to told me he was extremely lovely.

Frankly, the scene that introduced Stamets and Culber together I think was intended to surprise the audience in a different way –– Stamets is a huge jerk the previous few episodes and set up as a semi-antagonist, and that bit shows him in a very different light, as the audience/Burnham starts to thaw on the Discovery crew.

The Orion ship that arrives to collect Tendi is inspired by the one introduced in “The Pirates of Orion”, but appears to be a more modern iteration of that craft, as well as being significantly larger.

There have been a number of references to that episode this season, but STILL no one has said “Oreeeeon” or worn a silly green jumpsuit/helmet combo. Like what are they even doing?

If Locarno had kidnapped like Harry Kim or Geordi or some shit and put them on that viewscreen like he did Mariner, we would have had a full episode’s worth of them interminably trying to find a way to play along and send a secret message out and agonizing over the situation, when just yelling “this guy’s an idiot and his plan is stupid” is genuinely a vastly better plan.

The information broker has had cosmetic surgery to resemble the puppet Balok used to appear intimidating in “The Corbomite Maneuver”

I don’t think it specifies in the episode that the information broker had cosmetic surgery, does it? I wondered if this episode was trying to semi-canonize the Dassik. I don’t really care either way because that bit was hilarious.

Are you implying that there’s a joke in a Canon Connections post? Inconceivable.

I loved this one. I’d read a Ryan North comic about Shaxs doing pretty much anything, but nice to see him in action fighting fascists.

With all the “Pirates of Orion” references in this one, they really missed the boat not having at least someone pronounce Orion the insane way they do in that episode.

The Bill thing at least is a joke about TNG season 1 - they had Troi call him Bill and it was in the early series bible that Picard would call him William and he would be called Bill by “close female friends.” I hate these shorts (although I’m glad they exist for the animation, at least), but that was a pretty funny callback.