New Star Trek TV Series Beams Up Bryan Fuller as Co-Creator

"Star Trek" is coming back to TV in 2017 via CBS Television Studios. Here, the original Starship Enterprise model hangs in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
"Star Trek" is coming back to TV in 2017 via CBS Television Studios. Here, the original Starship Enterprise model hangs in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. (Image credit: National Air and Space Museum)

Move over, James T. Kirk, "Star Trek" has another captain now. CBS Studios has tapped "Hannibal" creator Bryan Fuller — a veteran Trek writer — as a co-creator for its new Trek TV series launching in 2017.

Fuller has written for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: Voyager," and brings a deep appreciation of the "Star Trek" world to the new show, according to CBS Studios representatives. The new show will air on CBS All Access, a digital streaming platform. (The first episode will air on live TV.)

"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," Fuller said in a statement. "Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire. 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."

Kurtzman, the new show's other executive producer — who was a co-writer and producer on the recent reboot films — added his support of the new showrunner: "Bringing 'Star Trek' back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan’s devoted care," Kurtzman said in the statement. "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."

The show will introduce new characters and follow storylines unrelated to the movies, although it will be set after the upcoming film "Star Trek Beyond."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Sarah Lewin
Associate Editor

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.