"Choose Your Pain"
I love the back-and-forth between Lorca and Cornwell after the briefing at the beginning of the episode. More on that in the next episode. Moving on for now.
I'm glad they didn't go somewhere they could've gone with the Tartigrade. Using it to run Discovery's spore drive always reminded me too much of "Equinox" (VOY) where Ransom wanted to use those aliens to power Equinox's warp drive. So when Burnham said this is wrong, I was cheering her on. Burnham is trying to make her case, then Culber backs her up, and then Stamets goes along with Burnham and Culber, taking it one step further and giving himself an injection that allows him to be able to navigate the Spore Drive.
At the beginning of the episode, Cornwell tells Lorca that she wants more ships with Spore Drives and then the end of the episode shows that they can't power it with Tartigrades and the one thing that's compatible with operating it besides a Tartigrade is a Homo Sapien with genetic manipulation (because half their DNA is the same as fungus from back before the animal kingdom evolved). And, of course, genetic manipulation is banned within the Federation, so that answers why Discovery is the only ship that can have a Spore Drive. Humans have enough mental processing power to guide a Spore Drive and they don't have artificial intelligence powerful enough to do it yet. I'm guessing that in the 32nd Century, that would no longer be a problem. In the third season, they could have an artificial intelligence guide the Spore Drive, if one is installed into Discovery. Maybe Zora?
This the first episode where the Stamets/Culber relationship goes into focus.
We also get to see Saru regret not having the chance to be Georgiou's First Officer on the Shenzhou. He's furious at Burnham for how her recklessness led to Georgiou being killed and deprived him of getting to learn how to be a Captain. Over the course of the episode, Saru learns that he's a better commander than he worried about. But one thing he needed to learn was to not follow rules so rigidly and learn how to adapt his strategy to new information he found out. When Culber made it clear he wouldn't be able to get the Tartigrade to operate the Spore Drive, he should've begun thinking about what else he could do, without it.
I think it's just as well that Stamets didn't tell Saru or Culber what he was planning to do when he hooked himself up to the Spore Drive. Now they're spared of whatever action could've been taken against them, if they knew and would've agreed let Stamets go through with the plan.
Harry Mudd is a piece of shit. He pretends to try to stick up for the little guy caught in the middle of Starfleet's wars but all he cares about is himself and what's in it for him. Even though Lorca's really from the Mirror Universe and Tyler unknowingly has Klingon within him, they make a good Starfleet team. After Mudd pulled a fast one on them, stole food from them, and relayed information to the enemy, I love how Lorca and Tyler pulled the rug out from underneath him and escaped while leaving him behind.
I still don't have an issue with Tilly saying "That's so fucking cool!" It's something she just blurted out in excitement. It's not even the only swearing in the episode. Stamets backs her up saying, "It is fucking cool!" and Tyler said "shit" earlier. Discovery took a lot of flack for swearing in this episode but, later, Picard would take it and run away with it.
The Mirror Stamets appearing after Stamets and Culber brush their teeth is still weird, strange, mysterious, and ominous at the same time. The End.