3 reasons why Star Trek fans accept Sybok over Michael Burnham

Sybok wasn't the tentpole character of an entire franchise

No matter what you may think of either character, the original Sybok was a minor character in one film. Michael Burnham was the star of her own series. The need for one character to be better written over the other is clearly there. To the credit of Star Trek V's writers, Sybok isn't a poorly developed character by any means. Yet, we didn't need a tremendous amount of backstory or overly convoluted plotlines involving him.

He was going to get maybe 30 minutes of screen time against an ensemble cast, and then we'd be done. Burnham, on the other hand, may get 30 minutes of screen time per episode. She needed to be a better-written character. She needed to be a character that wasn't instantly disliked. She also needed to be a character whose backstory wasn't going to fall apart when looked at for any serious length of time.

Tying her to Spock in any way held her back as a character. Tying Sybok to Spock was the only way to get any real heat on the character in 90 minutes or less. A rogue Vulcan just wasn't what the series needed to have to thrive. After all, from the second film in the franchise to this point, any villains were truly horrific. They were personal. Personal conflicts sell.

Random Vulcan Number 11 just wasn't going to have the same juice as "Spock's brother." The downside of that idea is that it really hamstrings the character into having to include Spock in a lot of ways. An idea that doesn't really work across five seasons. After all, Spock is as big of a character in the franchise as they come.

Clearly, if you mention Spock, people are going to care about him more than anyone else. He's probably the most popular character in Trek history and fans always want more Spock. It's very akin to going to a family get-together and the only topic of conversation anyone has with you is about your more successful and more popular sibling.

When you bring Spock into the conversation, he overshadows whatever character he's attached to it seems. Not a problem for a villain, but a major issue for the new face of the franchise.