In general, I think this season has felt the most like TOS like any of them. A lot of people forget how campy the original series was, and if anything, they definitely seem to be embracing it fully here, for better or worse. Episodes 1 and 4 in particular would have fit in very well in TOS.

Wish the Onion wasn't out here giving them ideas…

I don't know how, but I would love to see more of these characters in live action. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid were fantastic in BNW.

Tawny Newsome is awesome, so I'm sure this will be good, but there seems to be a fundamental tension between Kurtzman saying Trek can broaden, while Paramount seems to be trying to contract it.

I thought this episode was a lot of fun. Haven't really been feeling this season of SNW as much for some reason, but I think this is my favorite episode yet. Managed to fit some character development in around all the craziness, and the post-credits scene with Patton and Ethan was great.

I would not have released Patel into Pike's custody after how she lost control when confronted with "Gamble". Like, clearly the being inhabiting his body was malevolent, but "the enemy of my enemy" doesn't make it ok that she basically got taken over by a consciousness besides her own. Leaving her alone with the captain of the ship feels especially dangerous (and letting her captain her own ship again, for that matter).

Sensationalist headline-writer: "These researchers are neutrally investigating language change? Let's throw 'fear' in there to get up the prescriptivists' hackles!"

"The only thing that allows me to bear my infinity is not having to love anyone" may be one of the most devastating lines I've ever heard.

I literally spent the whole episode whispering "don't kill SAM, don't kill SAM" to myself

Someone asked Patrick Stewart about this once, and he said that in the 24th century, no one would care about baldness anymore

I feel like there was a kernel of a good episode in there, or maybe kernels of several episodes. I'm not opposed to the documentary angle per se, and it fits in with SNW's general willingness to experiment, but I have a difficult time imagining that a documentarian would actually edit the finished product that way, on top of the other stuff. There's definitely room to critique Starfleet and the Federation, but this episode really feels like it was missing some important chunks.

The Greatest Trek had a great line in last week's episode: "I don't mind all the genre episodes, I'd just like one of the genres to be Star Trek."

Yeah, in the last few minutes of the episode, I kept thinking how in TNG they would have discovered it was an anaphasic lifeform or some kind of telepathic residue or something, and here we don't get any explanation. Maybe they're trying to spin off Section 12 as some kind of "X-Files in space".

Writers' Room: "We need a name for a mineral these scavengers could be looking for."

"Uh… (glances at Italian takeout) aldentium!"

I'm glad Kumail knew what conkers was, because I had to look up this weird British thing

Like, the "Wall of Heroes" or whatever it's called really shouldn't be 90% people we've heard of before.

Kumail spinning around and saying "I am Kumail Nanjiani" with each revolution made it look like he'd finally cracked. They should have used that for the intro.

I want to see the Spock/Pike dream dance!

It's been established as far back as TOS that M'Benga specializes in Vulcan medicine, so it's surprising they didn't even mention it in this episode