I didn’t hate this episode, but I feel like it’s more Dr Who than trek maybe? Like each week it’s something that’s not about Star Trek almost? Hard to describe.

When was Pike last, acting like a captain. Are they even in space? Ten episodes only and so far not a lot has happened in space, or overall plot outside of character relationships.

I’m not a writer or a critic but I’d like to see the captain be a captain. I think if this had been a tng episode, the orions would be a smaller part of it and the main focus would be the competence porn of solving the problem. Instead the problems are always hand-waved away, it’s talked about but it’s not the characters journey of solving it. That part just happens. The Orion plot almost became the A plot.