“Star Trek: Discovery” has notoriously played fast and loose with “Star Trek” canon, rewriting rules, shifting technologies (person-to-person holograms were on the U.S.S. Discovery, but still not perfected a century later on “Deep Space Nine”?), and introducing new, dramatic backstories to characters previously established. The character of Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), the protagonist of “Discovery” was, in fact, a never-mentioned-before sister of Spock (now played by Ethan Peck) who was raised on Vulcan under Vulcan logical doctrines. Early in “Discovery” — the second episode “The Battle at the Binary Stars” from September 24, 2017 — she reveals that, as a child, she had nearly died and Spock, acting fast, inserted a mere portion of his katra into her brain, saving her life.
Like most things in “Discovery,” the full implications of this are never really explored, other than to say that Burnham and Spock are especially close in an abstract sort of way. It hasn’t been brought up since the second episode either, and that version of Spock has since twisted off to become a central character in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” Conveniently, a massive, season-end plot twist required any and all mention of the U.S.S. Discovery to be stricken from Starfleet history, and saw the ship thrown nearly a millennium into the future, allowing all of the show’s reckless handling of canon to essentially be undone.
