Wonder Falls for Bryan Fuller's Career

Bryan Fuller, the former Star Trek: Voyager writer/producer who is now co-creator of the new series Wonderfalls, set to debut on the FOX network in March, said that he thought the "strong genre storytelling" of the comic drama would appeal to Star Trek fans.

Wonderfalls, which is about a girl who receives messages from inanimate souvenirs, "probably goes back to my own obsession with action figures," Fuller told TrekWeb. "If you liked 'Bride of Chaotica'", the comic Spider Queen episode which Fuller wrote for Captain Janeway on Voyager, "you're probably going to like Wonderfalls."

Asked about parallels with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fuller said he thought that show broke ground by having "the ditzy cheerleader, who usually is the first person to be killed off, be the hero", but added that his own heroine is somewhat different: "Jaye's...not the ass-kicker; she's scrappy, but she doesn't have superhuman powers."

In fact, Jaye isn't even sure of her own sanity. "Is she psychic? Is she talking to God? Is she a spiritualist? Is she insane?" Fuller asked. "These are the questions that she's constantly burning through in every episode and is slowly starting to get the idea that this is something that, while maybe not tangible, is real."

Calling his show a "grounded fantasy", Fuller suggested that there would be more comedy than heavy drama and said that having a female lead allowed a greater range of emotional exploration. "With a male character you're not going to be able to get as wildly neurotic and emotional as you would be with a woman or female character because our society, for whatever reason, isn't comfortable seeing a man in that position," he said. "We're comfortable seeing women cry but it's a different thing when you see a man cry."

Comparing his new series to his previous work, Fuller said that he loved science fiction and fantasy but was attracted to the reality of a grounded universe. "In Star Trek, people don't talk like 'people'", he stated. "They're four hundred years more evolved, they're stiffer, they don't have as much humor, and they're not as much fun because they're less like us. The thing that I've really been trying to do is take fantastical elements of the story and ground them in our reality so they can still be relatable but hold the charm of the fantastic."

However, he discounted rumours of Star Trek's demise, saying that even if the franchise lay fallow for awhile, "I think the Star Trek universe is so fertile that I don't think it's ever going to come completely to an end."

For more, including Fuller's opinion of Brannon Braga's creative mind, see the full article here.

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