Rejoice, nerds! Hannibal‘s chances of resurrection may look grim, but Bryan Fuller has once again found himself in the captain’s chair of one of TV’s most promising adaptations.
BuzzFeed reports that Fuller is officially set to head up the first Star Trek series since Enterprise ended its run in 2005 for CBS All Access, the broadcast channel’s fledgling streaming service. The announcement doesn’t just cement Fuller’s status as the artisanal JJ Abrams, inheriting older franchises and reinterpreting them for new audiences — it also represents a homecoming of sorts for Fuller, whose first-ever television writing jobs were for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager in the late 1990s.
Since then, Fuller created cult hits Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies, channeled the legendary Hannibal Lecter into an NBC procedural-turned-epic-psychodrama, and took on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for an upcoming series on Starz. Fuller is critically adored but hasn’t attracted a mass audience, which makes him perfect for a streaming service, which, like premium cable, thrives on enthusiasm rather than sheer numbers.
The new Star Trek won’t debut until 2017, but until then Fuller fans, and the much larger fanbase of Trekkies he’s inheriting, can freak out accordingly.