nice to see those starfleet drones being used outside of Control trying to kill everyone

As long as Dots don't show back up on the Enterprise, I'm good.

A smart doctor with a nerd at his side. I feel that their super serum is not standard issue.

First time I genuinely considered skipping the intro.

I recall reading somewhere that Akiva is trying to arc spock from "smiling spock" in The Cage through koh'linar and into TOS spock over the lifespan of SNW. Spock ditching his emotional blocks and starting to 'lose it' already this season would play directly into that plan. He continues unraveling for, say, this season and part of next, and then he embraces koh'linar to regain composure and control of his emotions. Perhaps McCoy is around for this particular event, witnessing Spock's 'transition' into a computer, setting up all the remarks from TOS.

If my memory is correct, this episode contained more than half of the scenes from the trailers, most of which were theorized to be from different episodes.

That leaves two possibilities:

• this episode is the most interesting episode, which would be unfortunate but not unheardof for Paramount

• the best is yet to come, and we have no idea what's coming.

I choose to believe the second, for now, and I'm excited.