• The episode title, “Shuttle to Kenfori”, is a reference to the South Korean zombie film, “Train to Busan”, and the planet’s Kenfori was named for Ken Foree who played Peter in the original “Dawn of the Dead” film.

• Pike records the stardate as 2449.1 in his personal log.

    • This actually follows the previous episode, “Wedding Bell Blues”’ given stardate of 2251.7 in a way that makes sense. Is our long galactic SNW stardates nightmare finally come to an end?

• Pike refers to the “restricted zone” between Federation and Klingon territories following the war depicted in season one of DIS, and Number One calls it a ”buffer zone”. The term ”neutral zone” was not used to refer to the Federation-Klingon border until “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”.

• ”He never gets caught.” “I never get caught.” In “The Elysian Kingdom” Doctor M’Benga was fully possessed of his faculties when he was betrayed by Spock as the sorcerer Pollux, and captured and imprisoned by Uhura’s Queen Neve.

• Number One is certainly trying something with her hair this episode. Apparently one of the abilities granted by the Illyrian genetic augmentation revealed in “Ghosts of Illyria” was foresight to know when the grav plating will be disabled and to prepare accordingly to cut down on filming costs.

    • Similarly La’an’s ponytail is up, and apparently Mitchell took the day off from tactical.

• Pike and Doctor M’Benga reminisce about the time they smoked Vedalan cigars and M’Benga became sick. Assuming that Vendalan refers to the same species, in “The Jihad” it is stated that the Vendala are the oldest known spacefaring race, so apparently smoking isn’t actually that bad for you.

• We’ve seen Starfleet ships leave plenty of warning buoy to ward off ships from encountering the hazards of exploration, such as telepathic pitcher plants, or Armus, but this is the first time we’ve seen a Klingon warning beacon.

    • The Klingon alphabet used for the warning beacon’s graphic is the one created for the “USS Enterprise Officer’s Manual” fan publication, published in 1980.

    • The text of the beacon translates literally to ”Don’t dead open inside.”

• ”What do you think about this whole Korby-Christine thing?” In referring to the revelations of “Wedding Bell Blues”, Pike establishes that much like Captain Picard, he too enjoys his tea hot.

• The Klingon skeleton has a honeycombed ribcage, matching the anatomy diagram displayed on a screen in “Affliction”.

• The Klingon fighter craft is a raider, introduced in “Choose Your Pain”.

• I believe this is the first time a Klingon scanning device has been referred to as a tricorder on screen.

• The disruptor rifles the Klingon hunting party are weilding were first seen in “Context is for Kings”, but Bytha’s pistol appears to be new design similar to the Klingon pistols introduced in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock”.

• Pike says the Klingons are, ”chasing [them] like Skral rabbits.” There is a Skral river on Qo’noS as per “Barge of the Dead”.

• Spock offers to mind meld with Captain Batel to help guide her through the pain she’s suffering. In “Dagger of the Mind” Spock informs Bones that he’s never performed a mind meld on a human before.

• Spock briefly experiences Gorn vision, which has a hex gird, recalling the compound eyes of the TOS Gorn. Of course, SNW Gorn do not have the same compound eyes of the TOS iteration.

    • Gorn vision also highlights the critical hit points on enemies.

• Pike refers to the chimera moss infected humans and Klingons as ”zombies,” much to Doctor M’Benga’s chagrin. in “Star Trek: First Contact”, Lily Sloane called the Borg ”bionic zombies.”

    • The Vulcans exposed to trellium-d in “Impulse” were referred to as zombies in the script, but not in the episode itself.

• Pike comes to the realization that the chimera plant is going cause Batel to become a hybrid with the Gorn genetics infecting her body. Like a chimera! In “Tuvix” a Delta Quadrant Orchid created a hybrid of Tuvok and Neelix, and that was the most controversial thing that happened in the episode.

• At Doctor M’Benga’s suggestion, Pike overloads the charging coil on his phaser, creating a small explosion that stuns some of the mossmen. In “The Conscience of the King” Kirk has to eject an overloading phaser off the USS Enterprise before it explodes, because it could take out an entire deck of the ship.

• The dagger Bytha stabs Pike with is a d’k tahg, the first of which was seen in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock”. Fortunately for Pike, he does not meet the same fate as David Marcus.

• Bytha states that she had a Rongovian tag Doctor M’Benga with a viridium tracker, but having it put in his drink’s garnish. We saw a Rongovian introduce himself to M’Benga in “Wedding Bell Blues”.

    • Spock used a viridium patch to track Kirk and Bones in “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country”. Additionally, we learned n “Napenthe” Commandant Oh had Doctor Jurati swallow a viridium tracker so she could be traced.

• Bytha introduces herself as the daughter of Dak’Rah, whom Doctor M’Benga killed in a scuffle in “Under the Cloak of War”.

    • Following his defection to the Federation, we learn House Rah’Ul has suffered discommendation. Worf accepted discommendation for the House of Mogh in “Sins of the Father”, and Quark was able to demonstrate that D’Ghor used accounting to undermine a rival house, leading to the House of D’Ghor to receive discommendation in “The House of Quark”.

• The Klingon starship is a D7-class battlecruiser; this CGI model appears to be identical to the ones previously shown in SNW, starting with “The Broken Circle”, which was an update of the one introduced in DIS’ “Through the Valley of Shadows”.