New Star Trek Series Taps Bryan Fuller As Showrunner

It looks like the new Star Trek series is going to be in good hands as executive producer Alex Kurtzman, Paramount and CBS Entertainment have tapped Bryan Fuller to be the showrunner of next years new Star Trek series that is aimed for CBS' All Access streaming service in January 2017. For TV shows the showrunner is effectively a combination of what writer, lead producer and director are on a film as in all decisions go through them including story arcs, scripts, casting, set designs, ship designs and a bunch more. In short, his decisions will influence every single aspect of what the new series becomes.

Fortunately I honestly can't think of better hands for such a role. Bryan Fuller's writing career began with scripts for Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. From there he created a series of critically acclaimed shows (that sadly never found their audiences) including Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daises, and Hannibal. Hopefully his streak of great shows (and I recommend all those just listed) but struggle for renewals will end with the new Trek series.

“My very first experience of Star Trek is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls. Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire,” said Fuller. “It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before.”

“Bringing ‘Star Trek’ back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan’s devoted care,” said Kurtzman. “His encyclopedic knowledge of ‘Trek’ canon is surpassed only by his love for Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic future, a vision that continues to guide us as we explore strange new worlds.”

Of note, Fuller considers Deep Space Nine to be the best Star Trek series. Which is simply true. Not to belittle the other series but they simply were not allowed to explore characters and have long term story arcs quite like DS9 was able to for its final four seasons either due to showrunner interference (Roddenberry for TOS, TNG) or network demands (VOY, ENT). Of course CBS loves its procedurals (a self contained episode investigating A-story that might have a thread of season long C-story that gets referenced for a few minutes each episode) so it will be interesting to see what emerges in the give and take between showrunner desire and network mandate in regards to Star Trek. As for which universe the series will be set in, that remains unknown.

Variety says "The creative plan is for the series to introduce new characters and civilizations, existing outside of the mythology charted by previous series and the current movie franchises." Some have interpreted that to mean a third Star Trek universe is in the works but all that really means is Klingons, Romulans, Borg, and other famous alien faces from the last 50 years are off the table (for now anyway). By extension that also means the crews of the Enterprise, Voyager, and DS9 are out too which was a given anyway (unfortunately). So while a third universe could happen, the Prime and Abrams-verse are also still on the table. I still think it will be set in the Abrams universe because of the three films and least the amount of "continuity" which studio and network executives tend to hate (because they don't care about it but are forced to fake it for fans). Hopefully I am wrong about that assumption.