I like Linus.
Number One is a pretty cool lady. It makes sense why Pike would call his first officer Number One to her face but referring to her as Number One to members of the discovery crew seems...weird. She's not this ship's #1. So I'm sitting there thinking...why didn't he call her...um...call her...what's her name? Why can't I remember her name? Majel? No, that's our lovely actress and computer. What's wrong with me...
So I look it up. Oh yeeaaaah. She never had a name to begin with haha. I guess that's why they're avoiding her name. But they might as well give her one now instead of awkwardly hopping around it. Apparently a DSC novel gave her last name as Una (har har) but those have been made noncanon in record time so who knows. Just call her Lieutenant Majel Una, its fine.
The Tower of Babel bridge was hilarious and so much fun.
Saru's condition is sort of interesting and funny to think about. So it's normally a major reaction to the greatest threat on his planet. It's his threat ganglia shitting themselves, because they know his goose is cooked. And even if they somehow avoid getting killed, he says the ganglia running overdrive drives them nuts anyway.
So it's not so much that he's dying directly from a condition in a traditional sense. It's like your body's fever response getting so hot that you get brain damage (which can happen), except in this case instead of being triggered by a real infection it's being accidentally triggered by space stuff. And since this is his threat detection gland, instead of being like "oh okay let's try to find a way to dull my gland secretions or stop the space stuff" he's all hopped up on adrenaline/gland juice going "I'M FUCKING DEAD IT'S TOO LATE JUST GIVE UP" even though it's not necessarily true. His brain is full of panic chemicals.
Then it becomes a bit weird that nobody on DSC seems to consider this and Burnham is about to euthanize the guy at his request. Of course it did turn out to be untrue and Saru was fine because of the power of courage. But the medical staff were totally cool with just taking his word for it the whole time even though it turned out to be a buncho bullshit. Come on, guys.
Also Saru's quarters are pretty sweet.
It's a bit disappointing that the whole episode revolves around this creature trying to tell Discovery its story and we the viewer never even get a hint of what any of that story is. It's just the gimmick of the week.
And now they've introduced the way they'll exit the Spore Drive from the mythos. I guess this time it won't be as easy as "we fixed it" like when they pulled the same plot with the warp drive. Not very creative.
Also haha at that haphazard bandaid fix for no holograms on the Enterprise. Pike got mad about holograms so he told them to tear the system out of the ship during repair. That doesn't really cover it but alright I'll just roll with it.