My mental justification is that the Tardigrades were either extinct at that point (which is stated to have happened at some point prior to the end of DISCO S3), or what few post-Message in a Bottle admirals might know about the classified project couldn't justify making them suffer-- because, y'know, that is a thing that happens with the spore drive.

Hell, even if it was an option, would Janeway go for it? We saw her get rightly pissed at the equinox crew for running their ship off space aliens' suffering. and I feel like the next-closest alternative known at the time (genemodding someone with Tardigrade DNA and also making them suffer through the jump) might also fly in the face of her highly principled stance.

In fairness, they did that on Voyager first.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you have two pairs of the same person and that more than half of these examples (Solkar, Spock, Sarek) are sourced from a single family.

If I had a nickel for every time Uhura solved a problem by singing at it, I'd have two nickels. That's not a lot, but it's the same number as how many times Chakotay's been lost in the Delta Quadrant.

This was a fun episode. Some bangers, though I agree with some of the people who think some songs could have been shortened. The unexpected Klingon boy band was an amazing gag that didn't overstay its welcome. Overall, I think it's great to have Trek embrace the old-school campiness from time to time.

Anyone else convinced Captain Batel is kinda doomed? Pike got off the relationship trauma fairly easily in this episode.

I liked that this episode and Quality of Mercy fleshed out (prime) Pike's weakness-- he's very much a diplomat, not a warrior. He avoids conflict to a fault, and this distinguishes him from other "diplomat" captains like Picard, who's more willing to show his teeth when necessary.

It really contextualizes why Starfleet Command told Pike to stay on his Five Year Mission during Discovery s1--ya just know he would have gotten the Enterprise banged up while trying to make nice withsome T'kuvma fanatics.

I would have liked M'benga's ending monologue to be less final. Instead of "things break, we fix them, but they'll break again," even just leaving it as a question-- "can we ever truly fix these things?" would feel like it leaves more room for hope and redemption in the future.

I thought it was weird and a touch sleazier than we normally see from Ransom, but out of universe that is very sweet!

Are Orions now the designated species for calling out how essentialized Star Trek aliens tend to be? Because we have D'vana Tendi, the somewhat obscure Ensign Harral from Discovery, and now the crew of the D'var. You can argue the last one's just an extension of Tendi's character arc, but still, that's three series that have touched on this.

I was gearing up for a Gorn episode and they faked us all out!

I liked it thy gave most of the cast (sorry Ortegas) screentime and moved a lot of side plots a small amount.

Moderately bummed they retroactively made Thor (George Kirk) seem like a less good father, though.

To be fair, Sybok was the original spontaneous Spock sibling, even though Star Trek V was chronologically later.

Maybe a less popular one, but all the stuff Admiral Vance had to do to keep the Federation together prior to Discovery's arrival. He's pragmatic and you can tell from how he treats Stamets in the s3 finale he's no stranger to sacrifice. From his discussion with Osyraa, though, you can see he's still committed to the high-minded ideals of Starfleet and the UFP.