Bryan Fuller, head writer and showrunner of next January’s Star Trek television revival, revealed some details – some we suspected, but others new – about the upcoming series to Collider at last night’s Saturn Awards event.
As we have been expecting, the first season of the show has been set for thirteen episodes, a standard length by which many premium television series operate.
FULLER: We’ve got the arc of the first season entirely written, or arced out, and we’ve got the first six episodes entirely broken.
COLLIDER: I’m assuming this is going to be one story over thirteen episodes.
FULLER: Yes. We start [shooting] in September [through] probably March. I think our runtime is flexible because it’s streaming, [but] they gave us parameters – sort of, “No more than this, no less than that.”
In addition to those behind-the-scenes areas, the writer also spoke to the kind of content that will be part of the new show:
COLLIDER: Star Trek has never filmed certain subject material because it was filmed at a time when showing a gay character or showing certain kinds of characters was frowned on.
What I’m so looking forward to is to see you guys be so progressive and all-inclusive. Are you looking at it that way?
FULLER: Absolutely. I think the progressive audience that loves Star Trek will be happy that we’re continuing that tradition.
[Also,] because we’re CBS All Access, we’re not subject to network broadcast standards and practices. It will likely affect us more in terms of what we can do graphically, but Star Trek’s not necessarily a universe where I want to hear a lot of profanity, either.
Fuller also dipped into a general timetable of when we’ll start to hear more concrete info on the show, later this summer, but it seems that casting isn’t finalized yet.
I imagine [specifics will start] around Comic-Con. It’s interesting because normally I love talking about everything, and I’m sort of relieved I’ve been muzzled by CBS on it because I do less interviews, so I can spend more time writing.
We haven’t booked directors yet. We booked Vincenzo Natali, who will be our producing director, but he’s not directing the first episode. We’ve got stages and we’re very far along. We’re going to be putting sets up in a couple of weeks.
I’ve met with a few actors, and it’s an interesting process. There’s a few people that we like and we want to carry on what Star Trek does best, which is being progressive. So it’s fascinating to look at all of these roles through a colorblind prism and a gender-blind prism, so that’s exciting.
The new Star Trek series arrives this January.