3 points
I would think the puzzle is a sort of trial to ensure that their seeded race(s) were sufficiently developed to gain something from that message, insight into their origins and/or more philosophical questions that we as humans are still striving to answer.
As for the humanoid forms everywhere, yeah you absolutely need to suspend your disbelief a bit for that. Still I think it’s the only in universe explanation for it no?
1 point
Sure, but as the episode itself showed, that didn’t happen on at least one planet that had a puzzle piece, so it was a very weird gamble to make.
I think The Inner Light has problems too, but that attempt at the idea of keeping the memory of a race of people that went extinct alive worked so much better.
