I enjoyed these more than I thought I would! Most of my own thoughts after watching have been broached here already, but there was one thing that interested me in SAM's interactions with the EMH Doctor:

Didn't he seem visibly shaken when asked about the Protostar crew, like he knew something SAM didn't? I don't recall the conversation exactly, but could this be a backdoor to giving the Prodigy storyline some closure down the line on Academy?

I'm theorising in part because after "Those old scientists" I could definitely imagine a similar animation-to-live-action crossover. We already had a Brikar walking around on campus, and I'm fairly sure Ella Purnell could pull off Gwyn on camera 🙂