While I have never been too fond of episodes where one character travels into other character's mind, that's undeniably part of Star Trek, and it built nicely to Sarek's revelation. To see that the legendary Vulcan has some flaws after all...
The captatin getting captured, discussion about the status of a newly-discovered species... The last couple of episodes have brought back scenarios that have always been part of Star Trek. And what they have changed, I like. I have never enjoyed Klingon episodes very much; they are always about a Klingon fallen in dishonor (usually Worf) who can't stop whining about his House's honor. Now we have a different kind of Klingon (I assume the main Klingons we have seen are part of an extremist political faction and or fanatic cult, and do not represent all the Klingons). And the redesigned look, after the initial shock, I think doesn't look bad.
The same goes with the Federation/Vulcans. I am glad we have different characters with different ideologies/behaviours. It's time we drop this Planet of Hats trope.
Lorca has also been getting more screen time and character development, and that's great. I am still a bit concerned that almost every plot has Michael as the main character. We need to diversify the stories, and the addition of Ash to the cast could help with that.
They still need to address the cliffhanger in episode 5 with the mirror. Stamets looked a bit off in episode 6.
Breja: But I definately remember that it was mentioned, I think on Voyager, that there were no holodecks on starfleet ships before the 24th century.
I caught this! Having watched very limited TOS, I usually don't notice the continuity errors. I remember the episode where Janeway said that Kirk and company had a very different life because of the threat of war and because they didn't enjoy holodecks or replicators.
However, in Enterprise the crew encountered an alien ship with a working holodeck, so the Federation has known of their existence for a long time. The one in this episode looked like a protoype or an early version (the holo-Klingons disintegrate when shot, instead of leaving a corpse, and it seemed like the shape of the holodeck, a corridor, didn't change in the simulation).
We haven't seen replicators yet, although the food dispensers have definitely evolved since the Enterprise days.