Star Trek: Discovery Almost Gave Fans Long-Desired Dream Series
Ever since the third season of Star Trek: Picard won everybody over in a big way, the fandom has been clamoring for Paramount to create a Star Trek: Legacy show. The main appeal of such a show is that it would take place in the “present” time of this universe rather than the distant past (like Strange New Worlds) or the very distant future (like Discovery). However, Star Trek: Discovery nearly gave fans what they wanted years ago because the show was conceived as an anthology series that would jump to different eras of Star Trek history.
Discovery Was Pitched As An Anthology
The idea of making this Star Trek show into an anthology series came from Bryan Fuller, someone who had a fairly extensive history with this franchise. He wrote a couple episodes of Deep Space Nine before serving as a writer and executive producer on Voyager. Fuller (who was the showrunner on great shows like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal) was the co-creator of Discovery and briefly served as its showrunner before Paramount gave him the boot.
The American Horror Story Of Science Fiction
The studio ejected the Star Trek showrunner for many reasons, including creative differences because he envisioned Discovery as an anthology series. How would this have worked, exactly? “The original pitch was to do for science-fiction what American Horror Story had done for horror,” he said.
A New Era In Every Season
Mechanically, what that would have looked like is that each season of Discovery would have taken place in a familiar Star Trek era before the anthology series format took us where no series had gone before. Fuller wanted the first season to be a prequel to The Original Series and the second season to be concurrent with Captain Kirk’s original adventures. The third season would have taken place in the era of The Next Generation, with later seasons moving to a future era not yet glimpsed in the franchise.
The Growing Demand For Star Trek: Legacy
An enthusiastic Fuller claimed that this anthology approach could turn Discovery into a show that “would platform a universe of Star Trek shows.” Conservative studio execs decided to simply try out a serialized non-anthology show and see how audiences would respond.
Notably, the show retained some of Fuller’s ideas, including making the show a prequel to The Original Series and setting everything after Season 2 in the 32nd century, a time period the franchise hadn’t really explored before.
However, we remain fascinated by the idea that if Star Trek: Discovery had been an anthology series from the start, it would have scratched the itch for a Legacy show before fans even realized it was there. Again, the biggest draw of a potential Legacy show is that we get to catch up on characters like Riker, Worf, and Dr. Crusher in the “present” time (as in, these characters have aged in real-time from the days of TNG).
Prequels All The Way Down
Weirdly enough, every other Star Trek show since Voyager ended has been some kind of prequel, leaving fans hungry for more current adventures with their favorite characters. After the failure of Nemesis, every movie has been a prequel as well, and Paramount’s latest franchise film is supposed to be a Star Trek origin story set in the past.
Discovery Was Almost Very Different
Had Star Trek: Discovery been an anthology series as planned, we could have spent entire seasons re-visiting beloved characters, sets, and settings. If this worked as Bryan Fuller intended, fan response to different seasons could have led to entirely new Star Trek shows set in those eras. Instead, Paramount drove away an ambitious and gifted showrunner before making creative decisions, which led to the cancellation of all but one Star Trek show and the sale of their studio to the highest bidder.
