How cool would a Ron Moore-led “Star Trek” series be?
Moore was one of the driving forces behind some of the best episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” Moore honed his craft on both series and while he’s been away from the “Trek” universe for a while now, Moore admits he’d still be interested in going back.
“I’d seriously consider it,” Moore tells Den of Geek. “I think ,at the moment, the franchise is in good hands. JJ Abrams has a really good take on it, I thought the last movie was very good. I’m confident that he’s going to chart a direction for “Star Trek” for the foreseeable future.”
And while Moore learned a lot from “Trek,” he said he deliberately set out to make his version of “Battlestar: Galactica” very different from the universe created by Gene Roddenberry.
“Yeah, working at ‘Star Trek’ all those years really was the place that I learned the craft of television writing, in story, in plot, structure, and character. It taught me how to write and produce TV,” he says. “When I came to ‘Battlestar’, I also decided I wanted to break all the rules that ‘Star Trek; had about how it did stories. From the beginning, we decided that if ‘Star Trek’ did something, ‘Battlestar’ was not going to do it and we would try to, in every way we could, make a different show than what ‘Star Trek’ did.”
Right now, Moore is currently serving as executive producer for “Caprica.” The prequel to “Battlestar Galactica” is currently on a mid-season break and will return for the second half of its first season later this summer.
Moore says that the idea for “Caprica” came to he and producer David Eick while working on the original run of “BSG.” Moore says the two bandied about ideas for a prequel showing the rise of and creation of the Cylons, but that it was put on the back burner while they worked on the final seasons of “Galactica.” Then, writer Remi Aubuchon pitched a show about artificial intelligence to Universal and the studio put the two sides together. The result was “Caprica.”
Moore says that while “Caprica” is set in the same universe, he and the production team have worked hard to make sure it has a different visual style and storytelling focus.
“We wanted to show Caprican society had problems, people coming to the planet and the city who were facing the classic immigrant questions of assimilation and cultural identity, and the different colonies are our stand-in for racial and national tensions of our own,” he said. “So, we did want that element in the show, to see cultures and races colliding in different ways, so we decided that Adama was going to be from Tauron and that he wasn’t really a native of Caprica and that his story was part of an immigrant’s tale.”
Moore went on to say that he didn’t deliberately set out to create a connection between the Daniel mentioned in the final run of “BSG” episodes and Daniel Graystone.
“No, that was a complete coincidence of name. I didn’t realise how much people would glom onto that coincidence and start to read all kinds of things into it. There’s really nothing there,” he says.”
As for the future, Moore says he’d love to direct another segment of “Caprica” and that the series has a few tricks up its sleeve for the final run of episodes.
“There are a lot of twists and turns. There are more revelations about characters that you don’t expect. I think you’re going to be surprised at some of the directions that Graystone Industries takes and the relationship between Daniel and Joseph will shift and change as the season goes on, and certainly the life of Sister Clarice will change quite a bit as well,” he said.
You can read the full interview, including Moore’s involvement with scripts for “I, Robot 2” and “The Thing” prequel HERE.
Michael Falkner says
I would welcome Moore back to Trek, either the Trek that was or the new Trek that is, but only if he offers something fresh. DS9/VGR/ENT got incredibly stale as the team ran out of ideas and even started rehashing concepts, and that approach would most certainly doom a series based in the pre-JJ ‘verse and would cripple a series in the new universe.
P.C. Haring says
Moore and Abrahms teaming up to do Trek…oh man…that’s something I’d want to see.
Kyle Nin says
I’d rather have Manny Coto do it (and since “24” is ending, he’ll be available), but I wouldn’t be totally against Ron Moore taking the reigns.
jay says
I don’t care who does it, as long as they return to telling Sci-Fi stories and get away from the Abrams action/adventure junk. If they want to combine sci-fi with action adventure, even better, as long as there is a good sci-fi story in it.
Moore is a genius story teller IMHO. If he puts that talent toward telling sci-fi stories, and partners with Abrams, we could see the best Trek yet.
However, if they are going to tear down the walls, diverge from the Trek Universe, and simply have the same characters appearing in what amounts to a Bruce Willis endeavor, then don’t bother.