Thoughts: Besides the use of general Trek lore, there aren't really any cute or funny references to previous Trek in this episode. So, free to create its own mythos and stand on its own, this episode... really kind of fails to do anything interesting, and Tendi's actions throughout are more annoying than endearing, which makes me think that this diversion of having Tendi return to her homeworld for the last three episodes was a poor choice by the storytellers. Since there was no time for audience feedback, it seems they abandoned the idea all on their own.

Thoughts: I can't quite nail down what exactly it is that doesn't work in this episode for me, but I think a lot of it has to do with the resolution being disappointing. Ensign Olly doesn't turn out to be a likable character who was just misunderstood, in the end. She is actually really bad at her job, and it's not as if she actually went through any growth or learning experience in this episode... she just used her powers once and did the tractor beam trickery at the end... she's still just as dangerous as she was before. And as for the cubes and orbs, well, we're presented with a mystery that turns out to be a sort of throw-away joke at the end, so toward the end of this episode you just kinda go, “Oh. Okay.” I feel like this story went through a few re-writes and never really got the rough edges polished off.

Thoughts: I ended up giving this three stars because I felt that there were elements to it that were worth four stars and elements that were only worth two stars... so I guess they evened out. What works: the ridiculous sousaphone. What it needed: more antics by the lower-deckers from the viewpoint of the upper-deckers. That would have made for a nice reversal of the TNG episode TNG 7x15: Lower Decks. In that episode, the upper-deckers aren't absent, they just aren't the main focus. Here, we barely see any of our main cast of lower-deckers at all.

Thoughts: Oh boy, here we go. You may be aware that a sect of older fans of Star Trek did not care at all for Star Trek: Discovery, nor did they care for that show's re-imagining of the Klingon race's appearance. (I rather liked it, but I'll save that discussion for my actual DIS reviews.) Well, early in this episode when quantum realities start to cause changes, and one of the “TNG-style” Klingons turned into a “DIS-style” Klingon, lots of people started to cry out, “See?! That's PROOF that Discovery doesn't take place in the prime universe!” I mean, fine, believe whatever you must in order to protect that carefully-curated definition of Star Trek that you've built up in your mind and refuse to change, for whatever reason. It doesn't change the fact that the Trek franchise has repeatedly said that all TV series, including Discovery, take place in the Prime Universe/Timeline. The only on-screen Trek media that take place in a different timeline are the three “Kelvin Timeline” films, Star Trek [2009], Star Trek Beyond, and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Now then, this episode... *sigh*... I am judging it more harshly since it is a season finale and, indeed, the series finale. So, there are a lot of what a live-action show would call “special effects” with the ship battles and the ships transforming and the Schrödinger field etc. etc. but... this is a cartoon. Sure, animating all that is more complicated than animating less action-packed scenes, but it's still nowhere near the level of effort, budget, and time required to do all that in a live-action show. This episode might have been impressive as a live-action finale, but as a cartoon it just doesn't have the same impact.

There was a tone shift about the “multiverse” in this episode. In the previous episode, William Boimler decried the whole concept as “Just lazy derivative remixes”, which I took as something purposely written in to mirror the thoughts of the producers and writers – like they wanted to do a multiverse episode but also recognized that just “remixing” existing concepts is a lazy way of shaking things up. Then, in the conclusion of this episode, instead of sealing the rift, they stabilize it, permanently writing into canon that Starfleet now has the ability to explore other quantum realities whenever they get tired of the regular galaxy, I guess. I don't like that. The thing is, space is inconceivably HUGE as it is, and that's what makes it such a good source of unending story potential. In 400 years of space exploration, Starfleet has barely scratched the surface in exploring half of our galaxy, to say nothing of the probably-trillions of other galaxies that exist. I promise you that we really don't need a portal to other realities, too.

The coda is about 7 minutes long, and it does all the requisite changing of the guard, making of poignant speeches, etc. etc. etc. The weird thing is... producers knew that this episode would be the last one in the series, with plenty of time to write a satisfying series finale. And yet, somehow, it still feels like it was written to be a “normal” episode, and that the final seven-minute coda was tacked on later. I don't know, this episode just doesn't do it for me, especially as a finale, and I can't rate it high based solely on the feel-good seven-minute coda. I'm only giving it 3 stars for what I consider to be an “average” episode.