Alex Kurtzman talks Star Trek: Discovery and the departure of Bryan Fuller

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

With the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, the future of Gene Roddenberry's once mighty franchise looked uncertain. It's important to keep in mind that up until that point, there had always been a Star Trek series on the schedule since The Next Generation made its debut in 1987. That's an awful lot of continuous Star Trek. A world without Star Trek seemed rather sad to me, but perhaps a break would do it good. Now, over a decade later, Star Trek will once again make its (hopefully) triumphant return to television (sort of). Unfortunately, thanks to the frequent delays and production issues, it'd be understandable if your enthusiasm for the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery was somewhat lessened.

As a life-long Star Trek fan, I'm still very excited to see what Star Trek: Discovery is all about, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the departure of Bryan Fuller wasn't disappointing. Fuller originally signed on to create the series and run the show, but due to having too much on his plate juggling the development of both Star Trek: Discovery and American Gods, Fuller stepped down as showrunner and then later departed Discovery altogether. Quite a lot of work had already been done on developing the series when Bryan Fuller left, but it wasn't known just how much of his original vision would survive. While speaking with Collider, Alex Kurtzman was asked whether Bryan Fuller's footprints would still be noticeable.

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.

The series still doesn't have a firm release date, they're currently shooting episode five of their fifteen-episode first season, but it's expected that Star Trek: Discovery will finally debut this fall. Alex Kurtzman addressed the frequent delays, saying that the reason stems from wanting to give the series all the time it needed in order to be the best Star Trek show it can be.

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.’

Kurtzman also teased that a great many celebrities have expressed an interest in appearing on the show. "So many actors are fans," Kurtzman said. "We literally got a list of them that were like, ‘Here are people who said they want to be on Star Trek’. It was awesome… To just be in an episode or come in or out." Looks like we'll need to keep our eyes peeled for sneaky cameos. As for Alex Kurtzman's other projects, he directed Tom Cruise in THE MUMMY which is now playing in theaters. Make sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray.