Star Trek: Discovery's Original Pitch Would Have Gone Beyond The Next Generation

Star Trek: Discovery has had something of a tumultuous trip from conception through production and finally to release. First announced in late 2015, the series was initially being developed by Bryan Fuller. However, the series was delayed twice and Fuller ultimately left the project before its debut.

An interview with Fuller in Entertainment Weekly finally reveals the creator's original vision for the show, how it has changed, and how he ultimately departed from it. Fuller's original pitch for Star Trek: Discovery was an American Horror Story style anthology series.

"The original pitch was to do for science-fiction what American Horror Story had done for horror," Fuller says. "It would platform a universe of Star Trek shows."

The show's first season would have followed the USS Discovery ten years prior to the five-year mission of Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise. The seasons that followed would have been set during the same period as Star Trek: The Original Series and then Star Trek: The Next Generation before eventually breaking new ground by going further into the future than even Star Trek: The Next Generation and its spinoffs.

CBS apparently felt the idea was riskier than they'd like. Instead, they wanted to test the waters first with a more traditionally serialized show and see how things went from there. Fuller was willing to work with that compromise, but it was only the first conflict in what became an increasingly sour relationship.

Fuller was unhappy with CBS's choice to direct the pilot for Star Trek: Discovery. Fuller wanted to offer the job to Edgar Wright, but CBS chose David Semel, known for work on procedural dramas, instead. Fuller and the network also bickered over the show's $6 million per episode budget and believed their original timetable for release was unrealistic.

And then there was Fuller's big commitment to Starz' American Gods, which was eating up more and more of his time. This all led to CBS eventually asking Fuller to step down and hand showrunner duties over the Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts.