[horatio]

I think three episodes from the middle of the season have qualities that Trek often lacked.

Contagion is about a grand extinct civilization, The Royale is about humankind's past and its setup is slightly surrealistic and Time Squared is about meetig and confronting yourself out there.
All this helped to make the universe (this is not just a spatial issue as two of the above stories are about what happened in the past) feel large.