In 2016, CBS announced that Star Trek would be returning to the small screen with the brand new series, tapping Bryan Fuller – whose early writing credits included episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager – to serve as showrunner for Star Trek: Discovery.
Sadly for many fans, Fuller was forced to drop out of the series due to his commitments to American Gods, but executive producer Alex Kurtzman has revealed to Collider that his vision for the show remains intact.
“No absolutely there are footprints left on the show. Someone once described Bryan to me as a unicorn and that’s just the truth. He’s a one of a kind writer. He’s just unbelievably brilliant and I really, really loved working with him and I loved seeing the way that his mind worked. Bryan was very involved in American Gods and I think that the scope and scale of what Trek has become made it so that Bryan elected to say, ‘I don’t wanna short-change either of these two things,’ they’re both sort of beloved to him, so we sat down and we figured out how are we going to take what we can have of you and continue that through not only this season of Trek but hopefully set up things that are coming next season. So much of what’s there in terms of story and certainly in terms of set-up, character, big ideas, the big movement of the season, that’s all stuff that Bryan and I talked about.”
SEE ALSO: CBS unveils first trailer for Star Trek: Discovery
Fuller’s departure was just one of a number of setbacks which saw the series pushed back from its original planned premiere date, firstly to May of this year and then the fall, and Kurtzman also explained the reason for the delays:
“We postponed our schedule because the truth is we did not want to put out something that was subpar, and as the vision expanded we started feeling like we weren’t gonna be able to deliver the scope and the scale that was on the page. And CBS was extremely supportive in saying, ‘Okay you know what, this is streaming, it’s not like we have to beat out right away, let’s do the best version of this, Trek is too important for all of us.’”
SEE ALSO: Star Trek: Discovery gets a new poster and images
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY will follow the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and new life forms, and one Starfleet officer who must learn that to truly understand all things alien, you must first understand yourself.
Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green (Lieutenant Commander Michael Burnham) are Jason Isaacs (Captain Lorca), Michelle Yeoh (Captain Georgiou), Chris Obi (T’Kuvma), Doug Jones (Saru), James Frain (Sarek), Terry Serpico (Anderson), Maulik Pancholy (Nambue), Anthony Rapp (Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Tilly), Mary Chieffo (L-Rell), Shazad Latif (Lieutenant Tyler), Rekha Sharma (Commander Mitchell), Kenneth Mitchell (Kol), Clare McConnell (Dennas), Damon Runyan (Ujilli) and Rainn Wilson (Harry Mudd). It is set to debut on CBS All Access and Netflix in the fall.
Originally published June 15, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
