Well now my screen's clean from all the fanwank, I shall begin.
What a fantastic episode. Klingons that weren't irritating as fuck (all it took was speaking English, who knew? Oh right, everybody). Lorca being awesome. The actual character they called Mudd (I'll get to the fact that it's
him). Obvious spy is obvious. But the real meat of the episode happened on Discovery herself, and what a great story that was.
Discovery is lacking in optimism and the spirit of Star Trek you say? Well not any more. Some wonderful character moments with Stamets, Tilly and Saru, and the scene where they revive the tardigrade was lovely (we'll ignore the question of where it got its water back from in the vacuum of space). I'm assuming there will be hell to pay next week for getting rid of the only tardigrade. When we're through the looking glass
The effects continue to be brilliant, the shots of Discovery were beautiful, and the Klingon disruptor effect was a great update on the vaporise setting - and just as with canon of old, it only vaporises extras, not recurring cast.
The downside (there always will be one):
The fanwank was strong with this one. The list of captains bit made me want to vomit. Seems the only criteria for being a 'great' Captain is being on TV. And with the odd exception, commanding the Enterprise. And there is no way in hell Georgiou was a great Captain. Sorry.
Mudd. Great character, enjoyed every minute of his time on screen, funny lines, great mystery to the character, and loved the bit about getting caught in Starfleet's crossfire. But why did it have to be Mudd?! There's nothing there which requires that character to be Harcourt Fenton Mudd. It's small universe nonsense and makes me cringe.
Oh, and obvious spy is obvious.
Overall, very good indeed. This one gets my first 9 of the series.