[Rellimie]

So I have to ask this. Most of the Star Trek fan sites I visit (here, TrekBBS, Reddit, etc...) have tons of fans complaining about this Spock-Burnham relationship. How we have never seen or had her mentioned in in the show or movies. How is this argument not posed about Sybock in STV?k

No mention of him from Spock or Sarek ever. In fact in TNG when Sarek was dying I do not think he was mentioned AFTER he was introduced in STV.

All I'm saying is that the shows and movies represent just small snapshots into the characters lives. We had 79 episodes of TOS that covered the first 3 years of a 5 year mission. We had 6 movies that covered 6 missions over a span of 20 years.

I don't get it.

[Sul-Matuul]

This is a very good point that a lot of the haters seem to avoid.

Spock has a "sister" in Burnham who he's never mentioned and they loose their minds.

Back in ST:V it turns out Spock has a half-brother who was never mentioned until that point (and was never mentioned again) but nobody seems too bothered.

It's the way it always is with any fandom sadly, people will chose to be outraged by what they dislike and trawl up all sorts of arguments but if something doesn't support their arguments they will happily ignore it.
It's a perfect example of fans cherry-picking the aspects of the shows/movies to suit their point of view, or support their argument why something is right/wrong.

[Rellimie]

This is a very good point that a lot of the haters seem to avoid.

Spock has a "sister" in Burnham who he's never mentioned and they loose their minds.

Back in ST:V it turns out Spock has a half-brother who was never mentioned until that point (and was never mentioned again) but nobody seems too bothered.

It's the way it always is with any fandom sadly, people will chose to be outraged by what they dislike and trawl up all sorts of arguments but if something doesn't support their arguments they will happily ignore it.
It's a perfect example of fans cherry-picking the aspects of the shows/movies to suit their point of view, or support their argument why something is right/wrong.

Thank you! I'm glad someone sees the same craziness as me when it comes to some of this stuff.

[Rellimie]

Oh the irony of this statement. This is exactly what you're doing right now. You are cherry picking your way to make a "Gotcha haters!" argument, and a poor attempt at whataboutism. Do you honestly believe everyone that hates Burnham doesn't hate Sybok? Especially considering ST:V is the lowest rated Star Trek to date, with its plot and characters the centre of a lot of criticism. Gene Roddenberry even disliked it and stated the plot and more specifically Sybok being apocryphal. You really want to know why no one complains about Sybok? Cause it's been almost 30 years since ST:V! If it weren't for being reminded that he existed, I would've completely forgotten about that terrible and unnecessary excuse for a character.

But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good ol' circlejerk against them "haters", if it makes you two feel good then more power to ya.

I'm not against the haters. There are plenty of fans that hated Enterprise, Voyager, DS9, and even TNG.

Most of the Burnham arguments I have seen have never once talked about Sybok.

My main point was that if I had to look at the percent of the characters lives that we have seen on TV/film versus the percent of their lives we have not seen I feel like we have seen less than 20%.

[Sul-Matuul]

Oh the irony of this statement. This is exactly what you're doing right now. You are cherry picking your way to make a "Gotcha haters!" argument, and a poor attempt at whataboutism. Do you honestly believe everyone that hates Burnham doesn't hate Sybok? Especially considering ST:V is the lowest rated Star Trek to date, with its plot and characters the centre of a lot of criticism. Gene Roddenberry even disliked it and stated the plot and more specifically Sybok being apocryphal. You really want to know why no one complains about Sybok? Cause it's been almost 30 years since ST:V! If it weren't for being reminded that he existed, I would've completely forgotten about that terrible and unnecessary excuse for a character.

But hey, don't let me get in the way of a good ol' circlejerk against them "haters", if it makes you two feel good then more power to ya.

Wow, no need act like that about it. I don't think the language you're using against me is fair or necessary here at all.

I never said that i felt either way about it, i merely pointed out that I agreed it's daft how Trek fans will bemoan that one character appears as a sibling of a main character out of nowhere, but yet currently very few are mentioning that the exact same thing already happened once in canon. There may have been dislike of Sybok at the time, and ST:V is certainly not the most favored film among fans. But as Rellimie said, nobody currently seems to be mentioning Sybok but people are happy to go all out whining about Burnham and how she someone breaks canon b being related to an existing character.

[Vox]

I don't hate Burnham the character but I have commented about how now Spock has this half sister that he's never going to mention ever again from TOS onwards nor have I mentioned Sybok in that either and honestly the only reason I haven't when discussing it is because...well I completely forgot he existed.

However the difference between Sybok and Burnham is that he was in one move and then was gone forever, Burnham however is the main character of the show and therefore is going to be around for a lot longer than a one off appearance and in my case a lot more memorable than a character that like Sammy said I wouldn't have remembered at all unless someone reminded me of him.

[Mack]

I hated Sybok to the point I forgot about his existence after certain point of time till today. That's the reason probably why I personally never spoke of him - and maybe that's what can happen to Discovery, for me anyway.

But yes, I suppose it could take a couple of years for me to forget Discovery/Burham's existence till someone brings it up again, just like Sybok. I guess this is till open to see what they make off Season 2, but I'm not too hyped after Season 1.

[Scarlett]

Who's Sybok

On a serious note, that (Burnham = sister) was a bad idea but someone approved it.

[Rellimie]

I don't hate Burnham the character but I have commented about how now Spock has this half sister that he's never going to mention ever again from TOS onwards nor have I mentioned Sybok in that either and honestly the only reason I haven't when discussing it is because...well I completely forgot he existed.

However the difference between Sybok and Burnham is that he was in one move and then was gone forever, Burnham however is the main character of the show and therefore is going to be around for a lot longer than a one off appearance and in my case a lot more memorable than a character that like Sammy said I wouldn't have remembered at all unless someone reminded me of him.

Yes, but just because we are watching them on a show doesn't mean Spock and the Enterprise would have actively followed the exploits of the ship. There are thousands of ships and billions of people in the federation. I alway found the notion that the hero ships running into each other often or at all to be a stretch.

[WelshAvenger]

Wow, nearly 30 years since ST:V?? No wonder people don't remember Sybok as I think that Discovery is attempting to get younger people into Trek, so I guess their target demographic wouldn't remember a standalone movie from 30 years ago.

That said, we don't know where they're going with the whole 'sister' thing. They could be setting it up for a massive plot device where Sarek and Spock disavow Burnham. We won't know until Discovery finishes it's run. It's also possible that Sybok will make an appearance at some point. Good grief, Harry Mudd got two episodes in Discovery so it isn't a stretch that Sybok could appear.

[Petrarch]

The fact that Burnham has been made into Spock’s half-sister/step-sister/foster sister/whatever doesn’t bother me at all, though that might be because I dislike the character anyway. I don’t know if it’s the actress (not seen her in anything else she’s done), the character itself, the writing or a combination of things, but that’s where I’m at. Saru and Stamets are both far more interesting and there’s a lot more scope for the likes of Ash and Tilly.

Even Star Trek isn’t above retcons if it’s needed, one of the more subtle ones being the arrowhead insignia. Fun fact on that, the starships having different chest patches wasn’t intentional in TOS, they were all meant to be the same but it wasn’t caught in time to fix it on the occasions it happened. There was an internal memo (not sure if it was Roddenberry himself or one of the higher ranking staff members) that told the production that the intention was that the arrowhead was the Starfleet aymbol and not unique to the USS Enterprise. So that’s why stuff set before TMP features it - a retcon.

Another fun fact since Star Trek V was mentioned - despite being rather poor, even when adjusting for inflation, Nemesis is actually the lowest grossing film.

[Silynn]

I haven't watched any STisco (won't pay for CBS Access), but to me (yes, this is only my opinion) retconning Spock's background due to his signature status within Star Trek is akin to retconning the Skywalker background and saying Anakin had a twin sister who was Rey's grandmother.

The Sybok deal in ST:V was such a flop, as others have illustrated, that no one really remembers that movie.

I do have a question. Is Burnham smarter or more of an achiever than Spock? From what I have read in her bio on Alpha and Beta Memory, she always finished at the top of her class and had better scores/marks than Spock. With her being a few years older than Spock, she was the pioneer (Human) going through the Vulcan Science Academy and not Spock (Half-Human/Half-Vulcan).

If that is the case, I think the writers elevating her at Spock's expense in retconn is pretty shameful to do to such an Star Trek icon.

[Sul-Matuul]

Just like your sweeping generalizations against people that dislike Discovery or Burnham wasn't fair or necessary. Do you know how annoying it is for your criticism to be thrown out the window to just get a "lol haters" as a response and then read how people pat each other on the back because they've supposedly out maneuvered the "hater". The language I used is in response to your smugness.

How was i being smug?

How was i making sweeping generalizations?

How did i throw anyone's criticism out the window?

Someone pointed out an inconstancy in how people are behaving towards Discovery and I simply agreed and stated that this sort of thing happens a lot with fans of any show/film/book/game series.
Regardless of how popular, well know or forgettable any particular character is/was, it still remains that some people are indeed ignoring the fact the exact same thing happened decades earlier in the canon stories. It doesn't make any particular side right but it is a good example of how fans on either side of the divide are able to ignore things that don't support their view of the show.

I don't think your attitude towards my posts is justified at all.

[Three of Seven]

Sybock? That's a stupid name, never heard of him really, and people have said in this thread they don't like that character, so it kind of proves that he was so forgettable that people didn't like the character. Unlike Sybock though, Burnham is a major character, and it's something the show writers seem to mention a lot, it's a very in your face kind of point, it's not subtle at all.

Also Burnham is a terrible character, mostly the writing for the character I feel, I don't really know the actress too well from anything. But it's a character who seems to know everything, and even when she does have a problem, it's resolved so quickly. It's so silly.

The show suffers from awful writing, and some bad directing, there were some good episodes, but a number of them used awful camera angles and lighting.

Anyway, everyone has opinions, some people have heated opinions, but no one is right or wrong, people don't like Sybock as stated by many in this thread, they forgot about him in some cases which just shows how little the fanbase cared for him. Calling people "haters" is not a great way to discuss anything either, it tends to start something on a hostile footing, because it becomes US VS THEM, rather than a discussion about what people like/dislike about something.

[Scarlett]

Burnham is a Mary Sue.

Did I use that right? I think I used that right. I did. Didn't I?