Things have been rough over at Star Trek Discovery. Delays, high costs, Bryan Fuller stepping down as Showrunner, and now this. We reported a few weeks ago that Fuller was stepping down as Showrunner, but that his fingerprints were still very much on the show and that he would maintain some level of producer involvement. That’s no longer the case.

The man behind shows like Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes had worked in the Star Trek universe, early in his career, a a writer on both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. From the sounds of things, what should have been a dream assignment for him, turned into what he referred to as a bittersweet decision that he had to make.

News of the split came in an interview with Newsweek. in regards to his goal for making this the most diverse and inclusive series in the history of Star Trek, he had this to say:

“Creating [Discovery] and getting to the heart of what the important themes were to me as a Star Trek fan—how do we get along with people who are different than ourselves? How do we find common ground? How do move into the future together? Those themes were implicit in the scripts that I wrote before I left, and the storylines [I plotted].”

Those stories pretty much make up for the first two episodes. He’ll still have an executive producer credit, and CBS pledged to keep in line with his vision, but he announced in the interview that he now has no involvement at all in the series.

“It is bittersweet, but it was just a situation that couldn’t be resolved otherwise… so I had to step away. I’m not involved in production, or postproduction, so I can only give them the material I’ve given them and hope that it is helpful for them. I’m curious to see what they do with it. Ultimately, with my responsibilities [elsewhere], I could not do what CBS needed to have done in the time they needed it done for Star Trek. It felt like it was best for me to focus on landing the plane with American Gods and making sure that was delivered in as elegant and sophisticated a fashion as I could possibly do.”

Star Trek Discovery will premier on CBS next year before moving exclusively to CBS’s online subscription service.

Source: Collider