Over the past several years, a number of names have been associated with the idea of bringing Star Trek back to television. One of the most bandied about has been Bryan Fuller. Today CBS announced that Fuller will indeed be serving as co-creator and showrunner of the new series set to premiere this January.
For executive producer Alex Kurtzman (who produced and co-wrote the first two films in the J.J. Abrams big screen reboot of the franchise) this is exciting news. "Bringing Star Trek back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan's devoted care," he says of Fuller, who has previously worked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. "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."
Fuller, who will remain as co-showrunner of the forthcoming American Gods, recalls that he discovered Star Trek when he was four or five, first when his brother turned off all the lights in the house and began to fly his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the dark. "Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire."
In an archived interview, Fuller had commented on first watching Star Trek: "I was old enough to know that there were adventures that they were having in space with aliens. That was very exciting in a way that westerns were a little dusty for me. It took science fiction for me to appreciate western storytelling. The Munsters and Star Trek were kind of the shows I would watch when I got home from school. They both had a lot to do with creatures and also being inclusive worlds in a way. Because the Munster family was very much an inclusive world, they allowed any kind of freak flag to fly. And we learned that in Star Trek that there is an entire universe out there of different varieties of people and all of them are OK. It was an early lesson in inclusivity."
Speaking of Star Trek in general, he added, "It's a beautiful world that has been created to promote inclusivity and a better man than the man that we have today on this planet. And I think that anything that encourages us to grow and strive and be the better versions of ourselves is a wonderful thing to have in our culture."