I thought the "challenge" was a little on the obvious side, but then it's the sort of thing that would be obvious to someone not undergoing it.

Book's reaction to the Kweijian artifact was probably David Ajala's best work on the series so far, really great stuff.

Moll usurped the Primarch perhaps a little too easily, but I like Eve Harlow's performance enough that I really don't care.

Lastly, it's a small thing, but I thought the Badlands looked really great. They finally seem as hellish as they've always been described.

Reno partying with Hysperians –– now that is a show I want to watch

Sometimes, it seems like they forget about the spore drive. They could have leapt to the other side of the galaxy the instant the away team beamed back from the Archive. The Breen might have the ability to destroy the Archive, but with Discovery gone, it wouldn't gain them anything and how ever long it took them would be time lost for chasing Discovery. When the Breen catch up, Discovery could just jump to the other other side of the galaxy.

Also, why didn't Discovery prepare a fake clue? With 31st century replication, it couldn't have taken more than seconds to prepare a reasonable facsimile of the original. Moll did no more than a visual inspection of the artifact to affirm its authenticity and she had never seen the completed object, only some of the pieces. The real artifact is a small obelisk with a button on top. So, make a small obelisk with a button on top that projects coordinates to a random star system. There would be no way for the Breen to discover the deception except to go there and find nothing.

I enjoyed this episode immensely and was on the edge of my seat for most of it. I thought Burnham’s plan to fool the Breen was pretty ingenious.

I’ve also found my new favorite place in the Trek universe. Imagine getting to explore that library.

Something about the former Primarch really reminds me of Sarris from Galaxy Quest.

I thought that the twist to Burnham's mindscape challenge would have been that she needed to empathize with others, and thus take a look at what Book was reading the whole damn time.

Annotations for 5x08 up at: https://startrek.website/post/10307058

Sonequa gave possibly her best performance of the whole series in this episode. I know everyone makes fun of how much Burhnam cries, and like- it is a lot, but this time it really felt like she was being maximally vulnerable.

Also I really liked the Klingon(?) lady. Did not expect that to be her personality based on the promo pics.