It’s been over 30 years since Carl Sagan brought his influential documentary series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” to TV.
Now its long-gestating follow-up is set to make its premiere.
It’s called “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” and is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, with “Family Guy” guru Seth MacFarlane executive-producing in a weird cultural cross-pollination.
Tyson was in graduate school when the original “Cosmos” first aired on PBS in 1980, but his connection with Sagan dates further back — to when, as a student at the Bronx High School of Science, he visited the famous astronomer at Cornell University.
It’s a story Tyson, the well-known director of the Hayden Planetarium, recounts on Sunday’s premiere of “Cosmos” (9 p.m. on Fox/replay Monday 10 p.m. on Nat Geo) — and a responsibility he shoulders in bringing this 13-part series to a new generation.
“All I have to be is a really good version of myself rather than an imitation of Carl for this thing to continue,” Tyson tells The Post. “I see myself as the next presenter of ‘Cosmos’ and there will be a third [presenter] after me.
“We’re not trying to duplicate [Sagan] or that series,” he says. “We’re creating a whole new series but in the same spirit of the original.”
Producers Ann Druyan (Sagan’s widow) and Mitchell Cannold and writer Steven Soter had been working to revive “Cosmos” for seven years. Like the original, Fox’s “Cosmos” will explore the origins and evolution of the universe, using a mix of CGI, animation and live shots of Tyson on the Ship of Imagination (a holdover from the original) and in more than 30 scientifically significant locations (including Iceland, Rome, Paris, Germany and London).
Though MacFarlane may seem an unlikely collaborator for a science documentary, Tyson says the “Family Guy” creator is “deeply interested in science” and suggested taking “Cosmos” to Fox, which will air the premiere on 10 of its networks: Fox, National Geographic Channel, FX, FXX, FXM, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo and Fox Life.
It was also MacFarlane who suggested using animation for the historical re-enactments throughout the series — and who even voiced several characters (including Giordano Bruno in Sunday’s premiere).
The end result, Tyson hopes, is an accessible series that targets everyone — both science geeks and those with a distaste for the subject.
“What ‘Cosmos’ celebrates is all the ways that the methods and tools of science affect your life and our culture and the world so that you can’t side-step it, you can’t think that it’s irrelevant or doesn’t matter to you,” he says.
He is hopeful that the international roll-out (it will air on more than 200 networks worldwide) is a sign that people are coming to recognize the value of science. “I hope by the end of the series you have achieved a cosmic perspective on who we are in the universe,” he says. “That’s transformative to an individual and to a culture.
“Right now I don’t feel we are a culture of innovation.”
And though “Cosmos” adds to a TV resume that already includes frequent appearances on TV news as well as “The Daily Show” and “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Tyson says he has “no TV ambitions at all” beyond this project.
“With regard to ‘Cosmos’ I judged that it would be irresponsible if I did not accept and embrace the opportunity to serve as host,” he says. “I felt I could do it well [and] I felt I could do it possibly uniquely because I have this overlap with Carl Sagan in my past,” he says.
“When it’s done I’m ready to just go back to the lab.”