Yeah, I think this one didn't come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and done more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled "yeah right!". Lo and behold a minute later it's resolved happily. The drama class and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.
Probably one of the worst eps, but I'm happy to say that's actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I'm flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that's the real trauma here)
Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I'm here for it.
I don't have any issue with seeing young adults growing and dealing with trauma. This episode has a lot of pieces working together in the overall storyline, I just don't think it was that compelling within the episode.
The drama class half of the episode didn't really go off. Maybe because I only know the play from what the episode told me about it, but I think it's more like the actual growth part got cut off. We spend time with drunk Tarima (yawn) and then short cut the cadets actually performing the play with each other. That would have been the climax of that story, them getting into character, relating to it, working through it and reaching some sort of understanding or catharsis but that scene gets hand waved. Probably needed a full 45 minutes to do right too.
Or the Sam story, which was closer to the mark but still failed to create tension or consequences and ended up getting resolved neatly with a happy ending. Give Sam half an episode to be dead, for people to be sad, and the Doctor half an episode to reflect on it, resolving to do better before tying it up with a bow and it could have been great.
I love that the show isn't constantly balls to the wall action and we're getting a lot of character focus but the story juggling bit this episode in the ass and it isn't the first to be trying to do too much and fumble the execution.