Yep. It was a daft fanficcy idea to begin with, but I really enjoyed what they did with it in S2. IMO it was worth it for the bitchy chess game alone. I'm pretty sure everyone who comments about Sybok and how he fits into the Disco Sarek family is doing so tongue-in-cheek.
Vulcans have long lives. Sybok was likely already an adult by the time Spock was born and by the time Michael came he was likely already banned and hardly ever spoken about in the Sarek family. Remember that Vulcans, especially Spock, have a tendency to never talk about things personal unless it's necessary.
This fits a lot of Star Trek for me. Regardless, I'm willing to go along with it, as I find the characters and all their interactions to be incredibly interesting and engaging. To me, it's no worse that Jadzia somehow knowing major players from TOS. If I can accept Sybok then Michael is fine. YMMV. [LEFT][SIZE=4][COLOR=rgb(20, 20, 20)] Yup, precisely so. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/LEFT]
Given the finale Fixes Canon by establishing Sarek and Amanda are now pretending Michael never existed, my guess is the reason Sybok is never mentioned in Disco is because Sarek is pretending he doesn't exist either. Kind of sad when you think about it, the one kid Sarek has who he acknowledges exists is one he's not on speaking terms with.
Can we retrace where this notion comes from that everyone in the present after Discovery left is never mentioning the mere existence of the crew of the ship? Apart from that not even being possible what with their families and loved ones probably not taking too well to the very suggestion and them being publicly honored at one point for their service in the Klingon war and Micheal kinda being notorious after that whole mutiny thing, it's also not what Spock proposed. The "not mentioning Discovery and her crew" is for Starfleet officers, you know, the only people you could actually give orders of that kind to. And it's actually just specifically those who know about what really happened to the ship, as well as the details of the spore drive and the time suit which is already classified and need-to-know to begin with, so a relatively small group. Like, Ensign Moore's brother on the USS Namehere can talk about his brother who died on the Discovery as much as he likes, since he doesn't know anything about spore drives or time suits. He just knows there was an accident or a battle and the ship was lost with all hands. And the people who do know what happened cannot tell him otherwise without penalty of treason. So no, Sarek and Amanda will not host a dinner with their neighbors and just look owlishly and go, "who?" when asked by kindly old T'Pei (who brought Plommeek soup around when Michael was sick as a kid) how they are dealing with Michael's death. I swear, this is "fight like a Kelpian" all over again.
Mostly it's inferred from interviews with Kurtzman where he acknowledges he's aware of fan complaints about the show's attitude towards canon. With that in mind, it's very easy to look at the finale as the course correction for the show to realign the franchise, Disco is transported to the future where to avoid further canon conflicts, and everyone in the 23rd century stops acknowledging Disco exists. And it would seem to clear up the continuity problems with the first season and the rest of the franchise, namely how Chekov could think there's never been a mutiny on a Starfleet ship and why Spock didn't correct him about "well, actually my sister..." and how Martok could claim Klingons never attempted or even considered attacking Earth, despite the Klingons having a beachhead in the Sol system and an attack fleet making it to Earth orbit. Actually, Spock does note in his log just before he shaves that Sarek and Amanda really are now pretending Michael never existed. So that very scenario you just wrote up could indeed end up happening.
I've only taken it as Spock and his family doing this out of grief, I don't really believe they have been directly ordered to do so by Starfleet. I mean, how is that supposed to work anyway? Will any survivors of the Shenzhou serving on other ships be sworn to secrecy as well, considering that three members of the Shenzhou's former bridge crew disappeared with the Discovery? Will Michael Burnham be expunged from Starfleet Academy records completely? Will her high school classmates be ordered to send their yearbooks back to the press to correct the accidental insertion of a non-existent person into the list of graduates? Will it done be like the Great Soviet Encyclopedia whose owners regularly received "corrected" pages in the mail which they had to replace the "misprinted" pages in their books with whenever Papa Joe decided to unperson someone who had an article? Will Siobhan Tilly be visited by a pair of suspicious people wearing black suits and sunglasses, claiming to be government agents, who order her to doctor her daughter out of every single family video and to pretend for the rest of her life that the second bedroom on the upper floor has always been a guest bedroom? Realistically, I'd say Starfleet records still say that a USS Discovery existed and that a Michael Burnham or a Keyla Detmer served on it, but the parts of their service records pertaining to the Discovery are completely redacted along with all mission details for the ship itself. Yes, details will inevitably leak out to the press and Starfleet would get some very uncomfortable questions and some conspiracy theories will rise in fringe circles. But I find that much more realistic and plausible than an entire interstellar society of hundreds of planets making an effort to enforce a damnatio memoriae.
It's interesting how differently people interpret the same thing. Given the context of the line (right after saying his parents are able to avoid interrogation by the Federation and therefore can't be made to give up whatever they know about spore drives, time suits, or Discovery not having blown up due to a spore drive accident, as well as knowing that keeping the truth about Discovery's ultimate fate hidden will keep Michael safe) I interpret that as them not putting attention on Michael's fate by bringing her up in company. People will ask them how they are dealing with Michael's death, they'll make the appropriate mouth noises about the tragedy of the accident, how much they miss her (not evan a lie), and that they are bravely carrying on. Et voilà, as soon as people's curiosity on that topic is sated/they've gotten the impression that it's a painful topic, they'll stop asking eventually. And by not bringing her up in conversation with others after, they avoid further instances where someone might steer the conversation into areas where they might give away that they are withholding information, or that there are gaps in their stories. Can't accidentally spill the beans if you don't open the can. Whereas straight up lying into the faces of people who know Michael existed (like, probably all of Vulcan because a human being brought up like a Vulcan by that wacky Sarek with his weird obsession with humans was probably noteworthy, hence logic extremists) will not stop people asking about her. Quite the opposite, even. People would start digging to get to the bottom of it, invalidating the whole thing.
What Spock recommended and what subsequently transpired need not be the same thing. If most people think the Discovery blew up, and some know she didn't but don't feel compelled to say so, TOS and the rest happen like they did. If most people think the Discovery was claimed to have blown up, but returned and saved the universe twice and then blew up, same thing. If most people know the Discovery retired after a string of universe-saving adventures, still same thing. Nothing much about the hero ship and her S1 and S2 feats goes beyond the usual - divine forces and fantastic abilities come and go in every spinoff, and even the people within those spinoffs know better than cry for spilled milk. But silencing Michael to death isn't even a thing. I mean, it's such a Vulcan thing that it's not even a thing. Seems this Sarek guy is a habitual silencer-to-death - why would he break the habit, and why would any of his sons? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there were two or three children of Sarek preceding Sybok. It wouldn't have surprised me after ST5:TFF, and it certainly doesn't now. Spock and Sarek agreeing on that at the end of S2 is comically fitting for the family, really. Timo Saloniemi
Vulcans are apparently adverse to any form of smalltalk and/or gossip, so they'll never say anything to anyone unless it has a practical use. Like if a Vulcan is taken hostage and the hostage taker says: "I will execute the people among you who don't have a sister." The Vulcan will say: "Hey, I have a sister!".
I can imagine Spock only learned he was Sarek's son when he was taken to be enrolled in school and the official at the desk asked him for his father's name.
Since she never attended Starfleet Academy, they likely don't have any records on her to begin with. The Vulcan Science Academy might gladly erase any mention of a human attending and graduating from it. Vulcan high schools might not even have yearbooks anyway, making this a non-issue. Given how she was depicted in the novel about Tilly's teenage years, she could very well be doing that anyway, even before Disco disappeared. I don't know. It seems Sarek's pretending Sybok doesn't exist, and no one's asking any questions about him, and he's basically a Vulcan prince. If Vulcans can pretend a prince doesn't exist, I'm sure they can easily pretend a human raised on their world never existed.
In the end, though, it's like arguing that Thomas Jefferson was written out of history by dark forces so that it now appears he never existed. He fails to get a mention in Star Trek, after all. Nobody need forget the crew of Discovery. Some people might need to think they died in 2258 (rather than in 3219, say). Starfleet might suggest they did. Or Starfleet might go with a standard "MIA" if no bodies or usual sub-tri-isophasic residue of said were found, to better accommodate a possible future miracle return to life. But nobody need remember the crew, either, any more than they'd need to remember Jefferson. The arrangements of the Sarek household are internal to them. Just as always. Any mention of Michael would have to be plied out of Spock with heavy duty tractor beams anyway, just like the fact that Sarek was his dad was, in front of our very eyes. But some people might well remember Michael Burnham the Mutineer and her connection to Spock. It's just that the only time this might come up is when Jim Kirk needs a way to make Spock really, really angry in "This Side of Paradise"... And he already has a smorgasbord of family facts to taunt Spock with there. Timo Saloniemi
I'll have to admit I was far too sharp-tongued for my own good and neglected to look at Burnham's biographical details, and you're of course right about those. But I think the questions stand about any other Discovery crew member. I mean, Jim Kirk is roughly the same age as Tilly and there's a very good chance he knew her. Would he be also sworn to secrecy about her if that were the case? I still think that this whole damnatio memoriae thing could only lead to an inevitable snowball of swearing people to secrecy who knew people who knew people who knew people etc... who knew the Discovery crew, and I just find that plain unfeasible.... how deep would that go, anyway? I think the most probable route Starfleet would take is simply redacting whatever they don't want to get public. It's easier to say that an Ensign Sylvia Tilly served aboard the USS Discovery as an astrophysicist, being involved in [REDACTED] and was KIA in a catastrophic antimatter containment failure (or some other generic excuse) than to remove her from public memory altogether... I mean, according to NYT, the average US citizen knows 600 people personally. Would those 600 people be visited by government agents personally to swear them to secrecy, and so on? Will Queen Po of Xahea also receive an official communiqué from Starfleet that states that her BFF Sylvia Tilly has never existed? Will the Klingon Chancellor herself receive such orders? I mean, the Discovery's crew was publicly decorated for their efforts during the Klingon-Federation War, the Starship Enterprise had to undergo extensive repairs mere weeks after having already spent weeks in drydock, there's a several-month gap in Spock's service record etc... it's obvious Starfleet won't be able to keep everything under a lid for long. Details will get leaked to the press and they'll start getting some very uncomfortable questions. Starfleet will probably offer some none-too-satisfying explanations, shift much of the blame onto Section 31 (because something's bound to get out about Control too) and that will be it. The press will munch on it for a time, the talking heads will offer their commentaries on the newscasts, and eventually a new scandal will come that washes everything away into obscurity.
Well, yeah, the more you think about the whole erase the ship and crew from history and swear everyone who knew about them to secrecy the more it falls apart. But, Kurtzman's interviews do seem to indicated that is indeed what is happening, Because Canon. It's silly, because of everything snowballs, eg, erase Michael's mutiny and the Battle of the Binary Stars is erased, as is the Klingon War. So, there was just a day when a bunch of Starships ended up in the same binary star system and got destroyed because reasons. And yet, I know that when Disco arrives in the future and try Googling themselves, they'll discover they never officially existed. Indeed, I have a suspicion this whole don't officially exist thing is going to eventually become a plot point in the Section 31 series explaining how they become the ultra secret hidden in the shadows organization we saw in DS9.
I'd say I wouldn't jump to any conclusions based on interviews with Kurtzman until I've seen what happened on screen. I don't and won't believe that an interstellar society would willingly maintain a myth of more than a hundred people and every single thing they've ever done never having existed at all just because one of the creators has implied so. Especially when maintaining this kind of secrecy about the Battle of the Binary Stars would require cooperation from the Klingons too.