SAN DIEGO – Space fans have been waiting a long time for a sequel to Carl Sagan's groundbreaking documentary series Cosmos – 33 years, to be exact. Next year they'll finally get that long-awaited follow-up, and it'll be hosted by everyone's favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which will air on Fox in 2014, is meant to take the groundwork of Sagan's brilliant 1980 series and expand it for modern audiences. It will also, according to Tyson, build on that show's ability to be more than just a televised science book.

"[Cosmos] spent time learning—exploring—how to make science matter to you, as a human being, as a citizen, as a species with the capacity to reflect on its own existence. And those kind of messages are timeless," Tyson told reporters following a screening of the documentary at Comic-Con International in San Diego. "They're layered onto whatever is the science of the day, but it's the science of the day that gives us knowledge about how to think about our place in the universe."

Sagan's widow Ann Druyan, who co-wrote and produced the first series along with Sagan and Steven Soter, is producing Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. She noted that while the original was about how science discovered Earth's coordinates in space and time, the new Cosmos looks to the future.

"This series is still about that same thing, but we're telling a completely different set of stories, establishing the coordinates, but then jumping off from there," Druyan told reporters.

Ann Druyan and Brannon Braga. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The show's crew includes a who's who of science fiction veterans, including director Brannon Braga, who won a Hugo award for his work as a writer and producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and director of photography Bill Pope, who was also the cinematographer on the Matrix trilogy. The particular expertise of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who was instrumental in not only getting the show off the ground but winning it its prime-time spot on the Fox network, will be visible in the new Cosmos as well. In the new series, the live-action historical reenactments of the original series will be largely replaced with animation in what Braga described as "a sophisticated graphic novel-type style."

Since it's been more than three decades since the first Cosmos, there are now far more visual effects that can be utilized to enhance the impact and the scope of the series.

"As humans, we like hearing stories," Tyson said. "We have what I think is the greatest story ever told: the story of the universe, and our place within it, and how we came to discover our place within it. And finally, we have the methods and tools to bring that to the screen."

Some of the new effects will update concepts and images introduced in the original show, like the cosmic calendar. "With Brannon's talent we could take the cosmic calendar, which actually had cardboard dinosaurs on it in the original, and turn it into something that was, I think, even grander and more representative of that great football field of time," said Druyan.

Above all, the goal of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is meant to recapture the accessibility and broad appeal of the first series. However, the creators aren't looking to preach to the space-loving converted. Instead, they'll use the show's network placement and prime-time slot to reach the people who might not have found the series otherwise. "We're doing exactly what Carl Sagan would have done, which is to go to the broadest possible audience and try to touch each and every person," Druyan said.

Creating a show with that level of accessibility is the best hope for a return to a science-literate—and more science-passionate—society.

"That's what Cosmos is about. It's about a hopeful vision of the future," Druyan said, "It's about the future we could still have—it's not too late—that is within our grasp if we could just awaken from this stupor that we're in."