Bryan Fuller, the Star Trek fanboy television producer, who was leading the reboot of the iconic franchise for Paramount, has officially hit the "abandon ship" button.
Fuller has confirmed he has no involvement in the reboot, a significant shift from the perception that although he had stepped down as showrunner he was still a consultant on the project.
"I'm not involved in production or post-production," Fuller told Newsweek magazine.
"I'm curious to see what they do with it," he added.
So are the millions of brand-loyal Trekkies around the world who had, up until this moment, assumed that Fuller was behind the scenes on the highly-anticipated series keeping a watchful eye.
The series, which is titled Star Trek: Discovery, is to launch in the US on the streaming platform CBS All Access in 2017; in Australia, the streaming platform Netflix holds the rights.
Fuller, whose credits include Hannibal, Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me, was the main creative steering the project until he stepped down as showrunner in October.
In US television, a showrunner is the lead executive producer who steers a series from day to day.
In fanboy terms, Fuller's involvement was comparable to Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat working on Doctor Who, or J.J. Abrams steering the Star Wars sequels: all are superfans, who handled their childhood icons with care and respect.
Fuller did confirm the series is proceeding with the two scripts he wrote for its first two episodes and his outline for the show's first season.
"I can only give them the material I've given them and hope that it is helpful for them," he told Newsweek.
But the news will rattle the cage of fans of the franchise, who will see his clearer disconnection from the project as a potential problem.
Though the Star Trek franchise is well established in Paramount's asset library, it is not without creative hiccups: the Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold was hired and then let go during the pilot for Star Trek: Voyager in 1995, and the series Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled after just four seasons, making it the shortest of the four modern Star Trek TV spin-offs.
Fuller was replaced as showrunner by the show's co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman, who is working with two Fuller collaborators, Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts.
One consolation for fans: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country director Nicholas Meyer is still working on the series.
Meyer's two "original series era" films are widely regarded by fans as the best of the original Star Trek movies.
All of this behind-the-scenes shifting comes at a critical time for the series development.
Last week the first members of the show's cast were announced including The Knick's Doug Jones as Lt Saru, an alien science officer, and Anthony Rapp (Pan's Labyrinth) as Lt Stamets, an astromycologist.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress Michelle Yeoh will play Captain Georgiou, in command of another ship, the USS Shenzhou.
The show's main character - Number One - will be the female executive office of the USS Discovery, a move intended to give the show a different perspective from previous Star Trek incarnations.
That is a nod to the character of Number One, played by Majel Barrett, in the original Star Trek pilot 'The Cage' in 1966; the character was written out of the series at the time because network executives felt it was not realistic to have a female senior officer on the ship's bridge.
Casting for that role has not yet been announced.
