So far, Discovery has had a fairly different style of story-telling from most of previous Trek, save parts of Enterprise and maybe DS9. That is, this is an arc show. It’s telling a single continuous story over several episodes.

Until now.

“Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” is a throwback to more traditional Trek story-telling. It’s a “bottle show” taking place entirely on the Discovery, and it’s (almost) an entirely self-contained story.

Irate from his abandonment on the Klingon prison ship, Harry Mudd returns to exact vengeance on Captain Lorca and the Discovery, and with the help of some spiffy alien tech, he has all the time in the world to make his plan come to fruition.

Only Lieutenant Stamets, with his mushroom-altered consciousness, has the ability to recognize what Mudd’s doing, and hopefully stop him.

This is an episode that I enjoyed more than it necessarily deserves. It’s campy, it’s silly, it’s predictable, and it’s complete filler with no relevance at all to Discovery‘s ongoing arc. Mudd is a shameless and unnecessary play to TOS nostalgia, but inconsistencies with his portrayal in TOS are likely to incense the same fans he’s meant to target.

This is, in short, an episode that shouldn’t work. And yet it kind of does.

The thing is, this is also the most like old school Star Trek that Discovery has ever felt.

This is exactly the sort of episode that has traditionally made up the bread and butter of Star Trek. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. I’m not really a fan of trivial filler episodes like this, and I’m glad Discovery is going for a more arc-based approach.

But as a one-off thing, there’s something warmly nostalgic about a cheesy, old school bottle episode. I don’t want all — or even most — of Discovery’s episodes to be like this, but I see “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” as kind of a love note to Star Trek’s past, and seen through that lens, there’s something strangely charming about it.

Also, Anthony Rapp continues to be by far the best of this series. Gods Stamets is so much fun.

While there are a lot of things that could be criticized about this episode, there are only a few things about it that strongly bother me.

One is the ending, which makes no sense at all. I don’t know what more I can say without violating my admittedly ill-defined spoiler policy. It’s just dumb.

The other is that while Stamets is the only one who knows what’s going on, somehow this still turns into Burnham saving the day again. I know she’s the main character and all, but does she need to steal the spotlight from everyone else every single time?

Well, at least she does get to be pretty badass.

And it’s a bit strange there’s no reaction at all to the admiral’s abduction from last episode.

Overall rating: 7.3/10 More fun than it has any right to be.

A faction of Klingons wants to talk peace (yeah, that’s not suspicious at all). To that end, the Federation dispatches Ambassador Sarek, but his shuttle is sabotaged en route — not by Klingons, but by radical elements within Vulcan society.

Burnham senses his distress through their katric bond, and it falls to her and the Discovery crew to save Sarek before it’s too late.

This is essentially a filler episode in that it does very little to advance Discovery‘s arc, but it doesn’t feel like a waste of time.

The main thrust of “Lethe” is to flesh out Burnham’s past, and it does so well. Learning more about the trials of her Vulcan upbringing somewhat ironically helps humanize her a lot, and despite my initial dislike of the character, she’s growing on me more and more.

James Frain also puts on a solid performance as Sarek. I feel a little bad for him because Mark Lenard was so fantastic as Sarek, and that is an incredibly tough act to follow. I don’t think Mr. Frain has quite equaled his predecessor in the role, but he’s doing a very admirable job of trying.

I also appreciate that while the focus is once again on Burnham, there is a decent amount of attention given to the rest of the cast, as well. Nearly everyone is given at least one good scene, with the possible exception of Saru.

Another thing I liked is that I think “Lethe” is another example of Discovery following in the footsteps of Enterprise, something it’s done far more of than I ever would have thought possible. These are definitely the flawed Enterprise Vulcans much more so than the pristine Vulcans of earlier shows. I can easily see the current extremists being ideological descendants of V’Las and his Romulan-backed hardliners.

Also, the biological bomb the extremist injected himself with is very reminiscent of those used by the Delphic religious fanatics seen in season three’s “Chosen Realm.” I don’t know if that’s deliberate or not, but my mind went to it immediately.

So maybe “Lethe” isn’t a super important episode, but it’s very well done, and I enjoyed almost all of it.

The one complaint that really stands out is that, in stark contrast to Discovery’s normally excellent visuals, the nebula looked like masticated Froot Loops viewed through crappy 3D goggles. Not sure how that happened.

Well, that and I still hate what they’ve done with the Klingons.

Overall rating: 7.4/10