Right. Spock knows all about Michael. He just doesn't talk about her because, as noted, he almost never talks about personal stutf, not even to his best friends. It's strange, actually. Why, it's almost as though the writers are making this stuff up as they go along . . .
I'm calling it now, the Discovery show runners will borrow a plot line from Dynasty to explain why Spock never mentions Burnham. Basically, Burnham finds out that she is pregnant with Ash's child, Spock becomes jealous at the thought of yet another child,in this case a grandchild (or grandward) taking away Daddy Sarek's attention. Burnham visits the Enterprise and decides to go for a horse ride in the ships not-holodeck that was first seen in TAS. Whilst riding her holohorse Burnham is unaware that she is being watched by none other than Spock who is hiding behind a tree with a phaser. Spock fires the phaser which startles the holohorse which throws Burnham and literally drags her around the not-holodeck for a bit. Burnham finds out that Spock was also in the not-holodeck and confronts him. A catfight ensues similar to this one (but set to the amok time music) And they never speak again.
But . . . but I thought Edith Keeler was run over by a bus! What's she doing in a catfight years later?
Doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's possible that could be something David Mack knew about and put into the book rather than the show referencing the book. Hell, when Spock first met Kirk he was only comfortable telling him an ancestor of his married a human, as opposed to admitting those ancestors were his own parents.
Could be. Not sure. The book came out around the beginning of the season, though the final episodes were not completed by then. Either way, it shows the novel writers and the screen writers are working pretty closely this time.
We know David Mack hung out on set and got to sit in the writer's room. I find it far more likely he inserted info he learned from the writers into the book than the show's writers deciding the had to adhere to the book. Even with the level of coordination that exists between the show and its tie-ins, the tail still does not wag the dog.
Spock never mentioned it because it never came up or he was afraid Kirk would put the moves on her, end up his brother-in-law and then he’d have to deal with awkward family dinners.
Sybok is not canon. "But CBS says it's all canon" CBS are a giant corporation that basically say everything is canon because they want fan money. Lets be real, TAS is not canon, and several of the movies are not canon, especially Star Trek V. Roddenberry did not consider STV or TAS canon so when Star Trek came back to TV with TNG, TAS and films like STV were completely and totally ignored and basically retconned out of existence by the writers. Sarek never in TNG when dealing with his family mentions Sybok, so it's clear the writers went with Roddenberry's vision that Sybok and STV is not canon. Just like in TAS the Holodeck exists, but is brand new technology in TNG. I've always hated the "CBS says it's canon so it's canon" nonsense, no, that's horse crap, CBS do not make Star Trek, They're just a bunch of suits who probably don't even know anything about Star Trek beyond the $$$, the writers do and the writers and CREATOR of Star Trek did not consider this shit canon, so it's not canon. TNG further confirms this with Sarek never, ever mentioning Sybok despite the story line in TNG would have most likely involved Sybok as well if he actually existed. On Burnham, the problem with Burnham is that she was written by a 14 year old over at fanfiction.net and gave her the dumbest Mary-Sue backstory in Star Trek. The "Sister of Spock" stuff is complete and utter eye rolling nonsense and again, completely contradicts Sareks storyline in TNG. But, it's canon, it doesn't fit in well and it shows what hacks the writers are, but it's canon so how will it be resolved? I suspect the writers just hope you never question it.
I don't remember the implied rape of her mother though (basically Burnham said that the Klingons "took longer" to kill her mother - which implied rape to me.) But I gave the book to my daughter so can't recheck that part.
Yes, I don't think many people at my work know I have a brother and If I mention him no-one is going to wonder where my secret brother suddenly came from.
See it's stuff like this where 'canon' loses credibility for me. One minute fans are like 'if it's on screen it's canon, especially that one line uttered 50 years ago before it was even known if TOS would make it passed season 1'. But then fans are like ' everything is canon except all those aspects of the franchise gene hated'. Gene hated everything that he wasn't involved in. Gene hated The Wrath of Khan yet fans love it and consider it the apex of trek movies, but does the fact that Gene hated it make it non-canon? If we follow the fan assertion that everything we see on screen in Trek past or present is canon, then Sybok by that definition is canon. Something can't be just made non-canon because you hate it or because Gene Roddenberry also hated it, because we've seen it and it's considered official by paramount and later CBS. Writers don't 'own' anything either, they work at the behest of CBS. They come up with ideas, they write about those ideas and if CBS don't like what they are doing the get removed as was the case with Bryan Fuller. Who pays for Star trek television series and movies to be made? it sure as hell isn't the writers, it's CBS. They own the licenses so they get to say what is canon and what isn't. That's how it works. Canon can be used as a guide but writers should not be hamstrung by it because fans demand it be treated like real life history.
Ownership means nothing. Say I own stocks in Toyota, does that mean I make Toyota cars? I would make a very strong bet the suits at CBS know basically nothing about Star Trek beyond the money and Kirk and Spock and the Delta. The people that make Star Trek are the writers, they're the people that literally craft Star Trek with their minds and hands. If they don't consider something canon, it's not actually canon. CBS saying something is canon or not means jack shit, who are you going to trust to know what is actually part of the story, Some random suit counting their money in a boardroom like Leslie Moonves or Gene Roddenberry, Brannon Braga, Rick Berman etc? Nobody aside from CBS considers TAS canon.