Okay, now I wanna see Nebula 9. I'm intrigued by the Oracle character -- love to know the backstory there.
Fun episode, though it's a shame they couldn't corral more big SFTV names for the guest cast. They got Armin Shimerman for one scene, and Frakes directed, but otherwise it was straight-up basic cable: Ed Quinn from Eureka and Erin Way from Alphas. I'd kind of gotten the impression there'd be some Firefly cast showing up, so I was a bit disappointed there. Although Quinn did bear a striking resemblance to Fillion. And overall it was so much fun that it made up for the casting.
And speaking of satisfying appearances... Alexis. Wow.
I'm surprised how many real SF shows/films they were able to reference. The Marvel references and cosplay make sense, what with ABC being Disney-owned. The Star Wars refs were a bit surprising, since surely this was made before the Lucasfilm sale was announced -- although maybe they already knew it'd be happening so it was cleared. But there were also a lot of Trek references (including Fillion doing both Shatner and Stewart impressions), mentions of Blade Runner, etc.
What's nice is that apparently we've grown past the era when SF/fantasy as a whole was seen as a fringe or niche interest that had to be justified and defended. Everyone was a fan of one thing or another. Castle and Beckett are both megafans of their own distinct things, Esposito likes Blade Runner, Ryan's into sword and sorcery, and Alexis was cosplaying as... wow. Beckett's big monologue justifying her love for the show came close to the usual defense of "Sure, it looks cheesy, but it's also inspiring and meaningful," but it was just the one particular cult show, not the whole genre, that was treated as needing a defense.
The main thing I had trouble with was the working lasers. No way could something that tiny contain that much power with present-day technology. Any portable unit, if it were possible, would probably need a heavy backpack to carry the power cells. And no way could one hobbyist working alone come up with such a revolutionary breakthrough. They strayed a little too much into science-fiction territory there.