Seven days on from the news that Bryan Fuller will be joining the 2017 series, Matt Goddard takes a breath and looks back at the announcement without all the furore...
It's been a week since that most eagerly awaited of news
hit: Bryan Fuller is actually, positively, no doubt going to be co-creator of
the new Star Trek series. I don’t want to tempt fate with a good year
until the new show premieres, but Fuller as show-runner really works.
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| Set to bring back the colour of the flora and fauna of alien worlds. |
So seldom that happens. A pipe dream of that perfect someone
getting that gig they’ve always wanted, that they’re made for – especially in
the savage world of American television. And Fuller knows all about that. This could
so easily have been one of those dream unions that fall to nothing; like Gilliam
getting lost in La Mancha, Burton never getting Superman of the ground or
for a heart-wrenching few weeks, Lynch being a donut short of joining the Twin
Peaks reboot. Sometimes they in that poetic nobility of ‘creative difference’-
one of the best understated shorthands in Hollywood. But without a shred of
information beyond the main players, Fuller and Star Trek – that’s just irresistible.
At the very least it demonstrates that Fuller’s pitch for a reboot from a few
years ago didn’t put the network off him. And sadly for him and us, his diary
is wonderfully empty at the moment.
His forthcoming show American Gods, an adaptation of Neil
Gaiman’s sublime and challenging 2001 novel is set to debut on Starz in the
near-future, leaving the prolific producer and writer with relatively free time
on his hands compared to recent years. And the depth of American Gods, let alone
the devout Gaiman fan base and a run-in with small screen adaptations of Preacher
and Lucifer
any adaptation has to deal with, is further proof that Fuller is a past master
at adapting, distilling and deflecting when required.
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Not Morgan Bateson.
And not trapped in a temporal causality
loop yet.
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He’s one of the most progressive and creative minds working
on American TV. Creating what fans call a Fullerverse of interconnected shows
since he left Star Trek: Voyager, he’s often carried actors through
productions and engendering industry loyalty of Joss Whedon proportions. His work
over the last two decades has verged from horror to whimsy to comic book to
psychology. Black comedy, the darkness, hope and hidden depths of man set
against domestic comedy or parody and all carried along with a supreme sense of
style. While it’s difficult to find a large depth of fandom that crosses all of
his shows there’s little doubt that Fuller’s writing, and excellent writing it
is, is powered by character. Monumental themes, life versus death, the comedy
and the dark. Deep down that’s what man should be encountering on the Final
Frontier.
Indeed it was Trek that set him on that path, and something
he’d never been shy of saying. But when Fuller landed in The Next
Generation time-frame, it was very next. He’s talked at length about
that more clinical future of Star Trek while lamenting the loss
of the original style and colour that first brought it to TV. Although he’s
spoken of that real unknown, the intriguing fate of The Next Generation in
the now rebooted Star Trek universe,
it’s doubtful any new series would leap forward. Star Trek Into Darkness
showed little willing to expand the beats of destiny packing out this new
timeline while it tried to have its cake and eat it.
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The Darkness and the
Light - Fuller's Deep Space Nine
stories showed us a lot.
|
A mere nearly-three films into a whole new universe there’s
simply no need for any TV show to be slavish to a Franchise that’s already
branding itself in the sweeping intent of Into Darkness and Beyond. And with an arduously slow release
schedule of three years per film, there’s little pressure to tie any series
into the overarching film universe in the way Marvel has on the big and small
screens. And with mixed results it must be said. Shared universes may be all
the rage, from Universal horror to Transformers, but Star Trek can afford to
sit back as the godfather of it all.
Still, in sticking to the Kirk and co era, there’s huge
scope to mine that re-established continuity, resetting history from the
beginning with the vibrancy and frontiership that Fuller’s long admired.
So what’s the downside? Well, frankly there isn’t one. Obviously,
the Klingon monster dog in the room is that for all of Fuller’s long CV of
brilliantly conceived and produced shows, most have been cut short. His most
recent show, Hannibal, was a huge feat. With it, he managed to take the
themes and impetus of Thomas Harris’ original novels and steer them through
three seasons of incredible television, most of it inspired by brief references
to back story in the books themselves.
Behind the scene stories of that show are
yet to be fully told, but there’s little doubt that Fuller had to forge through
many rights issues, let alone the reputation of the heavyweight film series
carved from the same source, to spin out the wondrous storytelling of those years.
Oh, and not to forget that his casting was once again superb. While Hannibal attracted relatively few
viewers on NBC, a major US network who are not afraid to experiment with and
then swiftly chop down horror, that uncompromising show somehow managed to stretch
boundaries for an unbelievable three years.
There’s every reason to think that in the Star
Trek brand, Fuller has found a vehicle that can finally allow him to align
his vision and major ratings. And the potential for him to shape elaborate,
fresh and ground-breaking television for long time to come.
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What happened last time Star Trek had a small screen lay off?
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The quality of his work on Deep Space Nine and Voyager
are cause for hope of course. But the real question may be if Fuller has enough
of a link to that past to add a shot of legitimacy to modern a Star Trek that is still fledgling four
hours in. The continuity of personnel that propelled Star Trek through its
last four series and 18 years threw up the brilliant, but was also undoubtedly
a factor in its prolonged difficulty to overcome the sheer weight of hundreds
of hours of storytelling set in the same universe. In that way, be it a step
back or forward in time, Fuller is more akin to the great man Roddenberry
returning the show to the small screen in 1987. That was a time to reinvent, highly
successfully if from a slow start, and as Fuller has made it clear in recent
years, Star Trek needs to reinvent to
retain its spirit and freshness.
Fuller has the breadth and proven ability to reinvent in
ways that can surely benefit the show and keep die-hard fans guessing like no
other writer could. It’s likely to break his long extending Fullerverse all for
the benefit of the four quadrants. And having built a reputation among those in
front of and behind the camera in the 19 years since his first Deep
Space Nine story aired, there’s no doubt that other talent will flow in
with him. Just perhaps, with contributions to those two ‘other’ space shows
under his belt, there’s hope that American
Gods will lay the way for Neil Gaiman to pen an episode.
The flip-side of those great lost opportunities I mentioned
earlier, from Gilliam to Lynch, is when the end product proves that there really
wasn’t a dream union there at all. Unfortunately, once again, Mr Burton can
step up as an example. But there can be no doubt that Bryan Fuller and Star
Trek are a great fit for each other and hope that all temporal or space
distortions stay well clear for the next year.
And whatever happens, it’s certain that Fuller will power ambitious
and bold storytelling, as daunting as the task of reinventing the saucer
section is.
As a great man once said, “risk is part of the game if you want to
sit in that chair”. And man, did Bryan Fuller want to sit in that chair.
Thanks again to Matt for dropping his thoughts on the announcement here on Some Kind of Star Trek!
So has your opinion changed since the news broke? Do you still think Fuller is a good choice?
Thanks again to Matt for dropping his thoughts on the announcement here on Some Kind of Star Trek!
So has your opinion changed since the news broke? Do you still think Fuller is a good choice?
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