The lead up to the 50th anniversary of Star Trek this month was chockablock with news about a new addition to the pioneering sci-fi franchise. After CBS confirmed that the property would live long and prosper in a new iteration, word broke that Hannibal executive producer Bryan Fuller—who was a writer on Voyager and Deep Space Nine—had been tapped as showrunner. That’s when the outlook for the series became especially rosy, and Fuller further bolstered fans’ confidence by teasing the storytelling model and the starship at Comic-Con this summer. And even though the new show, Star Trek: Discovery, would be relegated to CBS All Access after its premiere, the network recently added the option of skipping commercials.
But just as we were setting our phasers to “be stunned,” CBS has announced that Discovery’s launch has been nudged back to May 2017, Deadline reports. The 13-episode series was originally slate to premiere in January, but Bryan Fuller and his producing partner Alex Kurtzman requested a schedule change. The duo made the following statement:
Bringing Star Trek back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood. We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: Star Trek deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.
Although the dead of winter just got even more lifeless, the delay is actually kind of heartening to anyone who was concerned about Fuller juggling the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods while also reviving Star Trek on the small screen. Those are a lot of ideas for anyone, even someone like Fuller, to juggle. But take heart, thwarted Trekkies, because what’s already in place reportedly looks/sounds great—at least, according to David Stapf, CBS Television Studios president:
“The series template and episodic scripts that Alex and Bryan have delivered are incredibly vivid and compelling. They are building a new, very ambitious Star Trek world for television, and everyone involved supports their vision for the best timing to bring to life what we all love on the page.”