Dammit Jim! Star Trek: Discovery Loses Its Showrunner

Star Trek's passionate fans were understandably nervous when CBS announced it was giving the franchise a reboot with Star Trek: Discovery, but their fears were steadied by the fact that Bryan Fuller was on board to serve as showrunner. Fuller, who captained Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, had the geek cred as a former writer on Star Trek: Voyager and his love and respect of the Star Trek franchise is well known.

Well, it might be time for Trek fans to raise some concern. Fuller is stepping down from showrunning duties on Discovery, according to Variety. Apparently Fuller's current workload -- which includes adapting American Gods for Starz and Amazing Stories for NBC -- was too much to add Discovery to the mix, and CBS would not consider another delay of Discovery to meet his scheduling needs.

Star Trek: Discovery: Everything you need to know about the new series

But it's not all bad. Fuller will still stay on as executive producer and will be instrumental in breaking stories. And there's no hard feelings; CBS reportedly loves the first two scripts Fuller wrote.

Writing partners and Fuller collaborators Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts (Roswell, Revenge) will serve as showrunners in Fuller's absence. Writer-director Akiva Goldsman (Fringe, Transformers) will also increase his creative role in the project.

Star Trek: Discovery -- which is set 10 years before the timelines of the original Star Trek and features a woman in the main role -- will debut its premiere episode on CBS in May 2017 before moving exclusively to CBS' digital venture CBS All-Access.

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