4. Don't Make It A Soap Opera
OK, let's look at the score card on this one, Shatner. You want your movie to be taken seriously. But you just had Spock - a character that's recently come back from the dead, mind you - reveal that Sybok is his long-lost half-brother, the family's secret shame. (Come on, give yourself a face palm - you know you want to.) The only way this story could get more into soap opera land would be for Kirk to discover that Spock and Sybok have both been schtupping Carol Marcus behind his back, and that any one of them could be David's father. Again, you could get some story mileage out of a passionate Vulcan. He certainly shouldn't be related to Spock, though. Why not have a young Spock, the proverbial outcast, find solace in Sybok's belief in an emotional life? What if, after a time, Spock came to realize that Sybok was a madman, and it was Spock that was responsible for Sybok's downfall and exile? What if this was Spock's most painful memory, instead of the rather shallow idea that his daddy didn't love him? Besides being bad melodrama, Sybok is someone that Spock has to care about, instead of someone he chooses to care about. Spock not shooting his brother makes sense - it's easily forgivable. Spock declining to shoot an old friend - who represents a time he put behind him - that's something truly challenging. But this movie's not into challenging - something that Trek should constantly strive for.