Yes! Just the fact that replication and transcription of unnatural bases can occur without any modification to polymerases is already amazing, especially considering that the bases they use interact mostly through hydrophobic interactions and not hydrogen bongs like normal Watson-Crick pairs. Apparently, just using a normal tRNA with modified anti-codon was enough (they use the seryl-tRNA synthetase from E.Coli which apparently does not require codon/anti-codon interaction so tRNA loading was not an issue).
The DNA template was indeed a plasmid, I also wonder what would happen if you try the same in genomic DNA. I would instinctively say that it would be a mess but if replication and transcription work fine then maybe it would not be that bad in bacteria if you only modify ORFs and not promoters or regulatory elements (eukaryotes are another story though, I'm not sure this would ever be possible).
Glad you liked it, I enjoyed writing it :)