What an awesome episode! Let's list off the callbacks it provided. I'll start: The whole battle scene harkened to ST'09. The biggest giveaway was Pike's command: "Evasive pattern Delta 5! All power to forward shields!" which was the exact command issued by Captain Robau in ST'09. What other obvious references to previous Trek did you notice?
A couple others: TNG-style rock debris on the Discovery bridge continuous phaser beams Burnham pre-spacejump (STiD) Spock's science station, complete with swirling grey spirograph
Repair bots on the hull was like The Phantom Menace, but instead of R2 units the robots looked like Eva from Wall-E. Inception gravity defying rotating corridor fight. All the fighters and shuttles forming a protective "shield" around Burnham was like Ender's Game when the drones protected the doomsday weapon ship. 2001 wormhole lightshow effect. Just needed a starchild Michael. TMP wormhole effect on the crew, and with the grid pattern in space as Michael transitioned through the wormhole. The Enterprise fighters looked sort of like the Mars Defense Perimeter drones from Best of Both Worlds. The Leland-1000 getting the nanites pulled from him by magnetism was like T3 and Terminator: Genysis. The top-down view of the perimeter defense systems taking out the Section 31 drones in a massive ring of explosions looked a lot like nuBattlestar Galactica, just with phasers instead of cannons. Burnham totally did the superhero jump off the debris to lead Discovery through the wormhole. It was very Iron Man with the suit. Before we get any premature Abdinication, I don't consider any of this ripped off or even necessarily intentional (though I have to believe they were making the Inception "BWOMMMM!!!" sound in their heads while filming that corridor fight), but there's nothing wrong if it is either. This is just some of the stuff that came to mind as I was watching the episode.
The whole battle sequence was very reminiscent of the ST'09 opening, with shots of the Enterprise and Disco saucers as phaser beams blasted outwards. The space jump was of course Into Darkness (and the moment Michael skims over the Enterprise saucer was brilliant) It was also very reminiscent of the big battle from the fan film Of Gods and Men, right down to the design of the fighters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFqAME7dx58 I thought of Into Darkness and Beyond, but yes Inception did a rotating corridor fight first.
And a little like Zero One's defense system from the Matrix Revolutions when their drones were made to explode.
It seems Yeoman Colt is an alien now: http://trekcore.com/blog/2019/04/interview-star-trek-discovery-season-finale-michelle-paradise/ . Not really a fan of this idea, it seems to be canonized if Colt is outright named in the credits (can anyone confirm?) That means the showrunners are outright telling us Colt was an alien during Cage too despite visual evidence to the contrary, or she went through some bizarre genetic alteration? With the Enterprise bridge, there's leeway as to whether there was a refit. With Colt, we're now supposed to believe she was always an alien in the Cage. Not a fan of this idea...
Wait, Yeoman Colt was the Spiky alien? No wonder she made Pike uncomfortable Seriously. Continuity. You jumped forward 950 years so you wouldn't have to worry about it, but you do stuff like that. IT'S A REBOOT. STILL.
No, we can still fit it into canon. Yeoman Colt used, uh, Krall's life elongation tech (as seen in Star Trek Beyond, the Enterprise encountered Krall much earlier in the Prime timeline) and drained the life energy of a hapless spiky alien in a still to be revealed storyline. As with Krall, this had the side effect of taking on the biological traits of the victim. On a serious note, this also massively messes with the plot of the Cage, as how did the Talosians intend to breed Pike with a spiky alien?
She is going to go backward in time now and seed the human race. Just things the current showrunners grew up with. I don't see any problems there.
That sort of undermines a significant plot point of The Cage... "THE WOMEN!!" Unless the Talosians knew about some kinky stuff in Pike's mind, why would they offer him his choice of women and one alien?