Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I bet Breen suits need to be removed by the wearer in a particular way, and if they're not the person inside just melts or dissolves or evaporates into nothingness. That would explain how Kira and Dukat were able to incapacitate two Breen and steal their suits without ever seeing what the people inside looked like.

Does it matter? There's so much we don't know about MU timeline. It might not even have been related to Spock at all. Maybe the ISS Enterprise we see in this episode is an entirely different ship than the one we see in Mirror Mirror, maybe whoever the Emperor was at the time covered up the theft of this Enterprise and ordered a different Constitution class renamed Enterprise, and the replacement is the one Kirk visited.

The blue liquid was left by Dr. Cho, it's the next clue. For all we know it might be Gatorade or Bolian piss or a baby changeling.

Anyway, this episode at least clears up why Moll and L'ak would hand over the Progenitor technology to the Breen, but I still don't feel any particular sympathy towards them. I spent the entire last act wanting to scream "Shoot them, Michael! Stun them! One of them is wounded and the other is distracted , now's your chance! Throw them in some agonizer booths so they don't just escape! Something!"

Oh, and Michael can't even offer them pardons or amnesty or the Federation version of the witness protection program? She has to make it clear they'll go to prison if they surrender? Idiocy. And it doesn't even seem like the Breen are taking that bounty very seriously, since they were already on Starfleet's radar before the season started but the Breen hadn't caught up with them yet.

The blue vile very much may be a changeling because apparently that was the third life sign they detected.

So I just watch the ups and downs over at Trek Culture and someone mentioned in the comments that when Culber was coming back to life you can hear TWOK theme. I thought that I heard that, but wasn't sure.

I thought at first they'd detected three life signs in sickbay, but I think they'd actually detected three "matter signatures not from the MU" in sickbay.

Michael puts something from her uniform in that MU locket so Moll and L'ak will detect the same non-MU signature if they scan it when she tries to bluff them.

I've got it, the Progenitors are what the Founders used to be, the Breen want to pull a Picard season three and rebuild the Dominion.
ETA: The paradise in the Gamma Quadrant is the Founders homeworld where refugees from the burn live with the Founder. We may see a CGI Odo or something like that. It ends sort of like Return of The Jedi.That's my prediction.

The Breen thing was pretty sloppy. So sloppy, that the writer agrees it didn't make any sense

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-breen-details-writer-carlos-cisco/

Two things about the Breen portrayal:

1) It solidifies what we've already figured since the second half of DS9, that "Kira and Dukat stripped the refrigeration suits off of some Breen" lives alongside "the Trill have forehead ridges and nobody in the Federation knows they're a joined species" and "the Ferengi eat people" in the realm of "early statements about a species that we're just gonna ignore."

2) The reveal helps explain why they might be ideologically predisposed to side with the Dominion.

I'm fine with the Breen reveal. It's not the way I would have done it, but it still fits with established lore.

The breen mystery was better on Babylon 5.

Agreed on both points. The Breen are in the middle of evolving towards the changeling form. Like Enterprise, it seems the Discovery writers are finally figuring out the show just as it gets cancelled. I give the writers credit for this choice.

It makes sense for the story they seem to be telling.

"Whistlespeak"

This one felt like I got to breathe a little bit. No action set pieces, phaser fights or anything like that, just a really nice story about a group of people surviving on an overly inhospitable planet, and we get a Denobula reference! As a fan of Dr. Phlox, I was pleased. I also love seeing Michael and Tilly play off of one another, and here they seem to have had so much fun while driving the episode story line. I liked this one. Well done.

I didn’t become a Eurythmics fan until after I’d seen Annie Lennox on … it must have been Johnny Carson … I don’t think David Letterman was on yet. Anyway, the host asked why she shaved her head and she responded with “none of your business”

And that was it. She’s been my favorite since. But, Scarlett Johansson has made attempts.

So this sort of a mix of one of those classic TOS episodes like "The Apple" and TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers". So this tower requires regular maintenance, but they can't violate the Prime Directive and show them how it works, but you've already violated the Prime Directive by putting it there in the first place. Now the Discovery crew is going to show them how to maintain it. Wouldn't that be like showing ancient Egyptians how to use a smart phone? This episode was a huge improvement from last week and I think the writing made sense. I do wonder why they don't have cloaked shuttles by this point. They did manage to bring in that signature cry session and whisper session.

I want to add that it sounded like they were whistling Katy Perry at one point.

Yeah, she's been a hero of mine for a long time. Her, Sinead O'Connor, Grace Jones, and so many other powerful women who shaped music and even politics.

Generally my thoughts regarding the Prime Directive. The civilization was already polluted, and it was because of that technology that people were going to die. This was less a Prime Directive issue and more a standard rescue mission, even if the civilization was pre-warp.

It was a Kirk type PD break or “Pen Pals” type situation. Someone brought up “Paradise Syndrome.” Also, I thought Crosshair was going to bite the dust.

Pretty much. It was the kind of situation where some limited contact should be expected and understood. In this case, it worked out wonderfully, better than hoped for. The Federation would be foolish and shortsighted to say anything negative to Michael for this.

The PD is a great plot device allowing for tension in otherwise vanilla episodes.

I mean, we knew as soon as they brought it up that the need to break/skirt it was going to be imminent and that added to the tension of the episode - how, where, when …, etc

Most of the episode was nonsense anyway. The only important bit was the backstory to Moll and L'ak. There was no need for the mirror universe; no need for the ISS Enterprise (other than they recycled the SNW set).