Former Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Bryan Fuller once had a very different vision for the Mirror Universe

Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery

Throwing it waaay back now, and also kind of forward, and maybe sideways: original Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Bryan Fuller has given a new interview in which he describes his original intentions for the Disco Mirror Universe. And it’s a little different than what we got.

According to an article on TrekMovie.com, Fuller was a guest on Robert Meyer Burnett’s web series Robservations. The focus of the interview was mostly not on Star Trek, and more on Fuller’s work in the horror genre. But Since both Burnett and Fuller have history with the franchise, it wasn’t surprising when Burnett brought up Fuller’s original intentions for Discovery.

When Star Trek: Discovery was announced, back in the Fall of 2015, we hadn’t seen Trek on our small screens for a decade. Fuller served as showrunner in the early stages of the show’s development, before being asked by CBS to leave the role in late 2016. Discovery, which had been slated for an early 2017 release, finally premiered in September of 2017.

The Mirror Universe was a key part of the plot in the first season of Discovery, and the action there has had lasting implications even through season two and beyond. Fuller never got to see his vision for Discovery fully realized after he left, so what was his original vision? Fuller pointed out that the Mirror Universe we usually see is simplified to binary extremes: good versus evil, sashes and goatees versus no sashes and clean-shaven. “What I really wanted to do in setting out,” he said, “was looking at the minutiae of simple decisions that have a cascade effect on our lives. [...] It is more about we are at forks in the road every moment of our lives and we either go left or right.”

Fuller elaborated that the Mirror Universe in Discovery wasn't necessarily meant to be like it was in all the other series. “There was something in the mistakes made by Burnham in ‘Battle of the Binary Stars’ that had this ripple,” he said. “The Mirror Universe was always meant to be an exploration of a small step in a different direction. [...] I wanted the Mirror Universe to function in a narrative exploration of like, “If I just didn’t do that one thing, everything would be better.’ As opposed to, ‘I don’t recognize that person, I don’t know who that person is, because they are a diametric opposite of who I am.’”

One can see how that might have made the series play out a little differently.

I wonder what the universe is like where Fuller never left the production staff of Discovery, and we did get a less-Mirror Mirror Universe. Would it be more or less opposite of now than it was, if the starting point had been different? Or would we all have just ended up in The Darkest Timeline, where there’s no more Star Trek at all? If you can wrap your head around those questions, then maybe you too can be a Star Trek showrunner, for a while, at least.

In the meantime, you can ponder those and other wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey questions when you catch up on Star Trek: Discovery seasons one and two, streaming exclusively on CBS All Access.