In a good way, they took a lot of scifi things that have been done in other trek and remixed them into a very good episode. It had shades of Voyager’s “Faces”, DS9’s “You Are Cordially Invited”, Data getting his emotion chip in generations. These are things we’ve seen, but explored in new and pleasing ways.
I feel like these bread crumbs of context to “Amok Time” are going to make a classic episode better, but for a lot of newer fans there could potentially be no pay off if TOS can’t hold their attention.
Some fan discourse I’ve seen on mastodon suggested “oh look there’s the AR wall” like its some kind of bad thing, but I don’t see this as any different to saying “oh look CGI character” we all know it, you don’t need to point it out.
Good CGI/LED walls blend in. If you notice it, it breaks the 4th wall a bit. Battlestar Galactica 2004 had CGI and it worked so well and looks very believable.
The AR wall stood out to me more on Rigel VII, where the background, while beautifully done, just had that empty, standing in the middle of CGI look. In this episode, it made sense for it to be obvious. They’re in a space humans can’t truly perceive, much like the celestial temple, and it had a sterile feel that seemed right for the chatbot aliens.
“Oh look, it’s the AR wall” is the modern version of “oh look, it’s the same octagonal set dressed up with random props from a couple of other episodes to represent an alien planet”