Ronald D. Moore

Ronald D. Moore
Ronald D. Moore
	Moore at a Battlestar Galactica Convention, August 27, 2006 Moore at a Battlestar Galactica Convention, August 27, 2006
Born	Ronald Dowl Moore; July 5, 1964 (age 60); Chowchilla, California
Occupation	Screenwriter, television producer
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Cornell University
Genre	Drama, science fiction
Notable works	Star Trek: TNG ; Star Trek: DS9; Battlestar Galactica; Caprica

Ronald Dowl Moore (born July 5, 1964) is an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his work on Star Trek and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, for which he won a Peabody Award for creative excellence in 2005 and an Emmy Award in 2008.

Early life and education

Moore was raised in Chowchilla, California, as the son of a teacher and school superintendent who moonlighted as a football coach, and dabbled in writing and drama in high school. He went on to study Government at Cornell University, where he was Literary Secretary of The Kappa Alpha Society, originally on a Navy ROTC scholarship, but failed his senior year after losing interest in his studies. He was then disqualified from Navy service due to a high school knee injury. He did serve for one summer on the frigate USS W. S. Sims.^[1] He describes himself as a 'recovering Catholic' and is agnostic.^[2]

Career

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988–94)

In 1988, he managed to arrange a tour of the Star Trek: The Next Generation sets through his girlfriend during the filming of the episode "Time Squared."^[3] While on the tour, he passed a script to one of Gene Roddenberry's assistants, who liked the script enough to help him get an agent who submitted the script through the proper channels. About seven months later, executive producer Michael Piller read the script and bought it; it became the third season episode "The Bonding." Based on that script he was offered the opportunity to write a second script and that led to a staff position as a script editor. Two years later, he was promoted to co-producer, then producer for the series' final year (1994).

Moore developed a reputation as the Klingon expert on the writing staff, being responsible for writing a number of episodes that developed the Klingon race and culture, starting with "Sins of the Father" which introduced the Klingon homeworld, the Klingon High Council and the Klingon Chancellor and continuing with "Reunion," "Redemption, Part 1 and 2," "Ethics" and "Rightful Heir."

During his time on The Next Generation, he was credited with writing or co-writing 27 episodes. A number of times he co-wrote episodes with Brannon Braga, developing a successful working relationship that led to them being offered the chance to write the series television finale, "All Good Things..." (which won the 1995 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation). The series also received an Emmy Award nomination in its final year for Outstanding Drama Series, losing to Picket Fences.

The pair also wrote the screenplay for the Next Generation crew's first two big screen appearances, Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994–99)

Moore then joined the production staff of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for its third season as a supervising producer, being promoted to a co-executive producer position for the series' final two years. During this time he also worked again with Braga on the script for the second Next Generation motion picture, Star Trek: First Contact and on a draft of the Mission: Impossible II script that was re-written by Robert Towne for which they received a "story by" credit.

During his time on Deep Space Nine, he continued to write episodes that expanded on Klingon culture such as "The House of Quark," "Sons of Mogh," "Rules of Engagement," "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places," "Soldiers of the Empire, "You Are Cordially Invited..." and "Once More Unto the Breach." He also wrote episodes that dealt with controversial subjects such as genetic engineering ("Doctor Bashir, I Presume?"), co-wrote the episode that featured Star Trek's first same-sex kiss ("Rejoined") and killed off another popular character, Vedek Bareil Antos ("Life Support").

During his time on Deep Space Nine, he also made an effort to engage with fans; frequently posting on AOL forums where he would answer fan questions or address their concerns about the show,^[4] a practice he has continued with Battlestar Galactica through his weblog and in his podcasts.

Star Trek: Voyager (1999)

With the end of Deep Space Nine in 1999, Moore transferred over to the production staff of Star Trek: Voyager at the start of its sixth season, where his writing partner Braga was executive producer. However, Moore left Voyager only a matter of weeks later, with "Survival Instinct" and "Barge of the Dead" as his only credits. In a January 2000 interview for Cinescape magazine, Moore cited problems in his working relationship with Brannon Braga for his short stay:

"I have very hurt feelings about Brannon. What happened between he and I is just between he and I. It was a breakdown of trust. I would have quit any show where I was not allowed to participate in the process like that. I wasn’t allowed to participate in the process, and I wasn’t part of the show. I felt like I was freelancing my own show. ... I was very disappointed that my long-time friend and writing partner acted in that manner, that crossed lines to the point where I felt like I had to walk away from Star Trek, which was something that meant a lot to me for a very long time, from my childhood right through my entire professional career."^[5]

Moore and Braga mended their friendship after Voyager ended its run; they can be heard talking together on the commentary tracks for the DVD release of Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

Post-Star Trek career (2000–03)

After leaving Voyager, Moore briefly worked as a consulting producer on Good vs Evil before joining Roswell as a co-executive producer and staff writer at the start of its second season in 2000. Moore and series creator Jason Katims jointly ran Roswell until the show ended in 2002. Moore wrote some of the show's most popular episodes, including "Ask Not" and the series finale "Graduation," which he co-wrote with Katims. He also wrote the episode "Cry Your Name."

During this time, Moore also developed a pilot based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern for The WB, but production on the project was halted due to 'creative differences' between Moore and the network. The network tried changing the story (without Moore's approval) until it didn't resemble the original book series. Moore was an original fan of the books, and refused to continue working on the pilot with the changes being made. He forfeited and gave the series rights back to Anne McCaffrey.

In 2002, after a previous attempt by Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto had failed, David Eick (whom Moore worked with on Good vs Evil) approached Moore about a new four-hour Battlestar Galactica mini-series for Universal. Moore developed the mini-series with Eick, writing the scripts and updating the old series, also developing a back-story that could work for a regular weekly series should the mini-series be successful. At the same time, Moore was approached by HBO about running a new television series called Carnivàle, however they decided to offer the position to Henry Bromell instead and offered Moore a consultant position on the writing staff. He accepted, but then Bromell left soon after production started and Moore became show runner. While Moore worked on the first year of Carnivàle, Eick ran the day-to-day production of the Galactica mini-series in Canada. Galactica aired in 2003 to record ratings, being the highest-rated miniseries on cable that year and receiving the best ratings for any show on Sci-Fi in 2003. After Carnivàle reached the end of its first season and the Sci-Fi Channel ordered a thirteen episode weekly series of Galactica, Moore left Carnivàle to assume a full-time executive producer role on Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica (2004–09)

Following the pilot mini-series, the weekly Galactica television series debuted in October 2004 in the United Kingdom and January 2005 in the United States and Canada. Moore's re-imagining of Galactica is noted for taking a more serious tone than its predecessor, something that was foreshadowed in the January 2000 Cinescape interview, where he discussed what he saw as the root problem with Voyager.

The premise has a lot of possibilities. Before it aired, I was at a convention in Pasadena, and Sternbach and Okuda were on stage, and they were answering questions from the audience about the new ship. It was all very technical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn’t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn’t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. That didn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all, and it’s a lie to the audience. I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. Voyager is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spic-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn’t act like this.

^[6]

Moore wrote the first two episodes of the new series, with the first episode "33" winning the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, the second that Moore has received during his career.^[7] In 2007, Moore was nominated once again for an Emmy Award for writing the episodes "Occupation" and "Precipice," which aired together as the third season opener.^[8]

Moore was quite vocal about the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, as his Battlestar Galactica series was one of the major flashpoints leading to the strike. Starting in August 2006, the Writers Guild ordered production to cease on the "Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance" series of webisodes which had been produced as a link between the show's second and third seasons. Tension over this would last throughout the third season. Battlestar Galactica was, along with other popular series such as Lost and Heroes, one of the shows at the forefront of the debate over "new media" revenues, as the series is extensively downloaded from iTunes and recoups much of its production costs from high DVD sales as opposed to direct ratings. It was also among the most heavily time-shifted series on television, which the Nielsen ratings system does not count.

Moore's directorial debut was scheduled to be the first episode of Battlestar Galactica following the final season's mid-season cliffhanger, which he would also have written. Though the Writers Strike did halt production on the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica, work did resume^[9] and the show concluded on March 20, 2009. When the Writers Guild began their strike, Moore felt it was inappropriate to continue to communicate to fans using the "official" blog he maintained on the Scifi Channel website. As a result, he chose to start a personal website and blog, rondmoore.com, so that he could continue to freely comment on the situation without violating the terms of his membership in the Writers Guild. When the strike ended, Moore chose not to resume contributing commentary on the Scifi Channel website. He opted instead to continue providing commentary via his personal web site and blog. He ended posting on it when the Battlestar Galactica series concluded.

Post-Battlestar Galactica career (2009–present)

With the success of Battlestar Galactica, the Sci Fi Channel announced in April 2006 that Moore and Eick would be producing a spin-off called Caprica with 24 scriptwriter Remi Aubuchon and NBC Universal Television Studio. Moore later said in interviews that he and Eick had begun toying with the idea of a spinoff series as early as the beginning of the second season, however. The show is set 58 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica and depicts the creation of the Cylon race and the emergence of a terrorist group which apparently worships the same monotheistic god later worshipped by the Cylons.^[10] After an unusual pre-release of the series premiere on DVD in 2009, the series began airing in January 2010, with Moore as Executive Producer. Moore ultimately only contributed to the pilot made-for-TV movie, then handed off control to new head writer Jane Espenson. After one season Syfy abruptly canceled the show mid-run on October 27, 2010, citing low ratings. This was well before season one had finished airing. There were also several problems in the writer's room, including Espenson stepping down as head writer after the mid-season finale.

In April 2009, Moore, along with several other Battlestar Galactica alumni, made a cameo appearance in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "A Space Oddity."^[11] The episode was directed by Michael Nankin (who directed a number of Galactica episodes), written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle (who both started their TV writing careers on Deep Space Nine, and worked as writer/producers on Galactica) and based on a story by Naren Shankar (who went to school with Moore and started his writing career on Star Trek: The Next Generation).^[12] In the episode, Moore has one line of dialogue as he portrays an irate audience member at a science fiction convention, yelling at the (fictional) producer of a dark-and-gritty remake of a beloved cult series. Several of his Battlestar Galactica colleagues including Grace Park and Rekha Sharma appear in non-speaking cameos, while Kate Vernon is a major guest star in the episode.

Moore also developed a pilot for Fox called Virtuality.^[13] It aired on June 26, 2009, and was not picked up.

Moore was working on the script for a companion/prequel film of the 1982 John Carpenter film, The Thing,^[14] which itself was a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World based on John W. Campbell's short story "Who Goes There?," however his screenplay was scrapped late in 2009 and rewritten by Eric Heisserer, writer of the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street. Moore therefore did not ultimately contribute to the film project. The Thing began production in March 2010.^[15]

Moore developed a series for NBC in 2011 which had been described as "Harry Potter for grown-ups," and it was confirmed on March 3, 2011 that the new show would be called 17th Precinct.^[16] Tricia Helfer, Jamie Bamber,^[17] and James Callis ^[16] had signed up for the new series^[18]^[19] which will center around cops at the local 17th Precinct in the fictional city of Excelsior, with Moore writing the pilot.^[20] On May 13, 2011 it was confirmed that NBC had decided not to pick up the series, and to date the pilot episode has never been aired publicly.

Upcoming projects

In March 2010, following the mixed reception of the first half of Caprica's first season, SyFy channel approached Moore to produce another Battlestar Galactica spin-off.^[21] The show is entitled Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, and will feature a young William Adama's experiences in the First Cylon War. The series was originally designed as a series of webisodes, but with the cancellation of Caprica the show is now being produced as a full television series without any direct involvement from Moore.^[22]