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Ronald D. Moore
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Ronald Dowl Moore (born 5 July 1964 in Chowchilla, California) is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated 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 serves as developer, writer and executive producer.
ing up in Chowchilla, California as the son of a teacher and school superintendent who moonlighted as a football coach, Moore dabbled in writing and drama in high school.
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Encyclopedia
Ronald Dowl Moore (born 5 July 1964 in Chowchilla, California) is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated 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 serves as developer, writer and executive producer.
Personal background
Growing up in Chowchilla, California as the son of a teacher and school superintendent who moonlighted as a football coach, Moore dabbled in writing and drama in high school. He went on to study Government at Cornell University, 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.
Career
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988–1994)
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. 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, bought it and 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 big screen appearance, Star Trek Generations.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994–1999)
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, 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."
Since he left Voyager, Moore has often been suggested by fans as a possible successor to head the Trek franchise. 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 (2000–2003)
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–present)
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."
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. 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.
With the success of Battlestar Galactica, the Sci Fi Channel announced in April 2006 that Moore and fellow Galactica executive producer David Eick would be producing a spin-off called Caprica with 24 scriptwriter Remi Aubuchon and NBC Universal Television Studio. The show would be set 50 years before the events of the series and deal with the creation of the Cylon race.
Moore has been quite vocal about the 2007 Writer's Guild of America Strike, as his Battlestar Galactica series was one of the major flashpoints leading to the strike. Starting in August 2006, the Writer's 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 is, 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 is also among the most heavily time shifted series on television, which the Nielsen ratings system does not count.
His 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 Writer's Strike did halt production on the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica, work has since begun anew.
Due to the outbreak of the Writer's Guild Strike, he felt it inappropriate to continue to communicate to fans using the blog he maintained on the Scifi Channel's network website since season one aired, and has begun his own private website and blog, , in order to continue to freely comment on the situation. Moore has not resumed posting in his blog on Scifi.com even after the Writer's Guild Strike end and also since season four premiered, but has instead continued to post in the blog on his own personal website.
Upcoming projects
Moore is currently working on the script for the remake of the 1982 John Carpenter film, The Thing, which itself was a remake of Howard Hawk's The Thing, John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There". and a new project entitled Virtuality.
In 2009 he will make a guest appearance on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Awards
Emmy Awards
Hugo Awards
Peabody Awards
External links
- at TV.com
- at www.startrek.com
- for Battlestar Galactica
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