The first season, like all trek, is desperately trying to find its footing. That episode and 1-2 others could probably just straight up be skipped like how when I was looking for the best way to watch TNG for the first time the top ways I saw were "watch the first and last episode of season 1 and skip the rest".
Once the show gets its footing it gets really good really quickly.
I used to hate subtitles but now I have them on for literally everything and my experience is actively worse without them. I don't want to misunderstand anything the characters are saying! I want all of the dialogue!
He wrote MULTIPLE books about it!