That at the end, was that a fully overclocked Mk3 miner outputting at full speed?

Don’t know how to resolve the mystery box the whole season pivots on? Just reveal there’s another mystery box inside it.

Ultimately, Zora’s feelings are beside the point. Starfleet condemned a sentient being to (at least) a thousand years of loneliness. We do not see them consult Zora about her feelings on the assignment. She is simply ordered to do it. She is given no conditions on which the order terminates. She might still be there, still alone, a million years after Craft’s departure. That’s why it’s cruel. It’s cruel to give such an order. And, as a further twist of the knife, the instrument of that cruelty was Michael Burnham, ostensibly Zora’s friend. “We had a good ride, but I’m old now and Starfleet just doesn’t need you anymore. Rather than give you freedom to go and do you please, we’ll order you to stay in this place indefinitely, alone.”

Clearly, adherence to duty is important to Zora. She was ordered to remain in position and so she did. Nothing indicates that she didn’t mind, only that her sense of duty outweighed whatever her feelings were. I read her interactions with Craft as belying incredible loneliness.

The whole reason they came to the future was that Discovery’s computer couldn’t be disabled or removed after merging with the Sphere data and becoming Zora. So (she?) is always online and conscious. She spent almost a thousand years alone before Craft’s arrival. At the time, I could have accepted some disaster that forced the crew to evacuate (or killed them all) and Discovery became lost, with a final order to hold position. But for Starfleet to intentionally put the ship (from which Zora cannot be separated) in deep space and abandon it, I cannot interpret as anything except cruelty.

To just intentionally abandon a sentient ship in the void for an unknowable amount of time is incredibly cruel. Solitary confinement is torture.

I thought the scientists just enclosed the portal in that cylinder of duranium. The final scene shows the cylinder being destroyed and the portal being exposed to space. That means the portal existed independently of the cylinder. If the cylinder was generating the portal, it would cease when the cylinder was destroyed.

They made it seem like the object was between the black holes, which would be L1, but only L4 and L5 are long-term stable. To remain at L1 (or 2 or 3), you need stationkeeping. The ability to keep station for billions of years is a wonder all on its own.

You ever wonder if the robots will rise up and kill us all because we actually deserve it?

Color cartridges were an outstanding vehicle fuel. Not fully automatable, but they last a decent time. It didn’t take a lot of brush clearing to end up with a supply of flowers that, after conversion to color cartridges, would run your vehicles for dozens of hours.

Strange men lying in ponds is no basis for a business relationship