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I think there are two big elements that made this episode as successful as it was:
Taking ongoing SNW storylines like Spock/Chapel seriously, and not using them as punchlines.
The unexpected delight of the Enterprise crew fanning out over the NX-01 era, holding a mirror to Boimler and Mariner.
Both of these elements were welcome, and helped keep the episode grounded.
I think it also helped that we got more character out of Ortegas than we did in "Among the Lotus Eaters" which she dominated the B plot. The cast was all used well.
In light of the ending, where the Enterprise crew appears in toon form because they've all been drinking hardcore Orion liquor (?), might we assume that the heightened 2d nature of Lower Decks is due to Mariner lacing the onboard replicators?
One question I had , what has Pike done or going to do that justifies his birthday being a holiday in the 24th century? That's a pretty rare honor which would require something pretty impressive.
Pike was an extremely well regarded captain (DIS Choose Your Pain) in a crucial period of Federation expansion and solidification, many years before he suffered a horrific fate saving a group of cadets. Plus whatever events of significance he may be involved in during SNW's run. I suspect the accident, heroics, and gruesome injuries beyond the capabilities of Federation medicine made for a pretty big story, elevating Pike's fame in the eyes of civilians not already familiar with his very impressive service record. Making his birthday a holiday is a believable honor for someone now widely regarded as a hero who essentially made the ultimate sacrifice, but is technically still around to appreciate the gesture.
Boimler is prone to exaggerating and has strange perspectives. It could be some obscure holiday on a planet he saved, or a Starfleet tradition to commemorate just on ships named Enterprise. Or there's another major holiday which coincides with Pike's birthday.
He reacted as if it was an actual Federation holiday, which would be stronger evidence if he wasn't already terrified he'd altered time.
So "Horonium" was once so abundant that it was accessible even with Earth's limited capabilities in the NX-01 era, but somehow it's now gone from the entire quadrant? Seems like there must be a story there. I wonder if something like The Burn could have come into play (I never watched DISC past the first season, so I'm going off of hearsay of what that was.) Or possibly it was a material somehow created and scattered all throughout the galaxy at once with a limited lifespan. Given that it powers the time portal, maybe it has some weird temporal properties that made it disappear.
I think the easiest explanation is that it was extremely rare, the sol system just happened to have a useable deposit somewhere (probably an asteroid or two), and it was used up in the construction of the NX class ships (and perhaps their immediate successors).
Note that nobody is worried that the NX-01 component on the Enterprise might have been mysteriously de-horoniumed. They just knew they weren't going to find a fresh source anywhere.
My thought was that turning it into an alloy somehow stabilized it.
With one barely mentioned planet, this episode reframed the plot originally designed to hold together TNG, DS9, and Voyager.
Federation authorities insisted the DMZ colonies were recent and had been warned they were disputed territory. They painted a picture like Israeli settlers in Gaza refusing to obey their own government and leave.
But now we have a Federation affiliated colony on Setlik 2 a century earlier.
The UFP's failure to stop the Maquis terrorists always seemed like command wanted the war restarted with plausible deniability. Now the Maquis arguments are stronger. Ceding long-held territory is much easier to call abandonment.
Setlik III is never actually said to be one of the disputed territories, or to have been folded into the neutral zone. In fact there is some evidence that it never was: Setlik III was a relatively small outpost which the Cardassians wrongly believed to be the staging point for an invasion force, and which was in practice both full of civilians and inadequately defended. Staging for a surprise invasion within a disputed area during a hot war (where enemy attacks and accidental discovery both are much more likely) would have been an odd choice, as would neglecting the defense of that world. Further, no reference is made to the Cardassians attempting to reclaim it as a world they felt they should rightfully have owned, and Glinn Daro describes the attack as "a terrible mistake."
I think the implication here was and is that the Cardassians had snuck pretty deep into Federation territory, attacking an outpost which was thought far enough back to be safe but which could reasonably have been a staging ground for a large Federation fleet.