Bryan Fuller was fired during preproduction, and they drastically changed the story he had in mind and just ran with it.
On the other hand, Bryan Fuller was responsible for the thing people hated most of all about the first season of Discovery:
The other Bryan Fuller contribution that remains is his redesign of the Klingons. “One of the things he really, really wanted to do was shake up the design of the Klingons,” Herberts said. “One of the first things that he ever pitched to us when we were deciding whether or not to come on the show was his aesthetic for the Klingons and how important it was that they be aesthete, that they not be the thugs of the universe, that they be sexy and vital and different from what had come before.”
I think I’m still on the fence about the revamped Klingon look; I would be 100% ok with it, though, if they reveal it’s just the way that Klingon house/subspecies evolved, as some of the fan theories go. The changes are so drastic (even moreso than the changes made between TOS and TNG) that it’s jarring. What I never got used to was the Klingon mouth prosthetics; they were so unwieldy that it was hard to understand the dialogue at times. I had to turn on closed captioning.
On the other hand, Bryan Fuller was responsible for the thing people hated most of all about the first season of Discovery:
https://www.slashfilm.com/552474/bryan-fuller-redesigned-the-star-trek-discovery-klingons/
I think I’m still on the fence about the revamped Klingon look; I would be 100% ok with it, though, if they reveal it’s just the way that Klingon house/subspecies evolved, as some of the fan theories go. The changes are so drastic (even moreso than the changes made between TOS and TNG) that it’s jarring. What I never got used to was the Klingon mouth prosthetics; they were so unwieldy that it was hard to understand the dialogue at times. I had to turn on closed captioning.