News Kurtzman: Why We Gave Spock A New Adopted Sibling

A new news article has been published at TrekToday:

When it was revealed that Michael Burnham would be Spock’s adopted sister, fans wanted to know about her relationship to Spock and...

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Spock's reaction:

 

It was never a big deal to me. Its a super common trope and Spock never told even his "Best friend" about his family unless he had to.

 

In the new behind-the-scenes featurette, Sarek introduces her as his "ward", not "daughter" or even "adopted daughter". He doesn't see her as one of his children. It's likely Spock thought of her as another person from his past, not his sister.

 

Not very keen about this. It seems like pointless retconning to tie it in with TOS and Spock in particular. They didn't need to do that.

 

Yawn.

Why can't they invent someone new? Why do they have to keep latching onto old ground?

Yes, it can work (if you squint), but surely other characters could work without this shoehorning - why not simply have a child peer? Simple

 

It isn't a retcon. They never said Spock never had a sister.

 

It doesn't matter, It's stupid. They already pulled this once with Sybok did we really need another long lost family member trope affecting Spock yet again?

 

Spock never talks about his family.

 

How convenient for the writers. Still a bad idea.

 

As Sarek IS Vulcan's Ambassador to Earth - is it really a stretch thatn he might have a relationship with some Star Fleet Captains who crew ships launched from Earth?

And further if the "Michael Burnham" character background is that she was on Vulcan and her parents wore killed while stationed there - I would find it logical to place the child as a Ward to a mixed Vulcan couple where one (Amanda) is a Human and they have a Half Human/Half Vulcan clild of their own (and again, the fact Sarek is ambassador to Earth makes it even more plausible.)

My point: It doesn't seem like an implausible 'touchstone' here. YMMV.

 

It's only a "bad idea" if it doesn't go anywhere. But there's tons of story potential. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the writing staff is talented enough to capitalize on it or not, but assuming they are, it could easily end up being one of the most interesting aspects of the series.

Certainly more so than magic fungus.

 

It seems like a lot of TOS characters didn't know much about each other's family. Spock didn't tell anyone he had a brother until he had to tell Kirk why he didn't kill Sybok. Spock didn't tell anyone that an ambassador representing Vulcan that was coming aboard the Enterprise was his father. Kirk didn't know that Sulu had a family and/or daughter, after having known him for 30+ years.

 

Well I think the idea there is her parents were smart enough to be allowed to work on Vulcan in the first place.

 

A Vulcan outpost, not Vulcan itself.

 

She graduated from the Vulcan science academy.

 

They did say she excelled at the Vulcan Science academy, so I suppose she's smart.

Super-smart though? I don't think they ever said that. Do people need to be super-smart to excel at the Vulcan Science Academy? I guess that depends on what the definition of "super-smart" is.