Star Trek: 10 Controversies Behind Discovery’s Troubled Early Seasons

10. Fuller House

Bryan Fuller is well known in Hollywood for creating critical darlings like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, but the writer producer actually got his start in the Star Trek Universe, penning two episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and an impressive twenty-one episodes of Star Trek: Voyager.

Following the release of JJ Abrams' Star Trek in 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013, Fuller publicly expressed his interest in producing his own take on the franchise. Just a few years later, he got his wish and CBS announced on February 9, 2016 that it would create its own streaming service to rival Netflix and Hulu, anchored by a brand new, big budget Star Trek spin-off produced by Alex Kurtzman and helmed by Fuller.

However, less than a year after that announcement, CBS fired Bryan Fuller in October of 2016.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly a few months later, Fuller revealed that his working relationship with CBS had soured during the development of Star Trek: Discovery. Fuller battled the network over the hiring of David Semel to direct the pilot episode and "squabbled" over the budget, while CBS objected to Fuller splitting his time between Discovery and Starz's American Gods; according to an August 29, 2017 article in Variety, "Fuller failed to deliver scripts months after they were due."

Following his dismissal, Fuller remained mostly silent in the run up to Discovery's release, keeping his comments short upon seeing the teaser trailer released in July of 2017:

What I can say is…my reaction was that I was happy to see a black woman and an Asian woman in command of a Starship.