Former TNG and DS9 writer/producer Ronald D.
Moore talks in an extensive new interview with IGN Filmforce in anticipation of the
premiere of his new BATTLESTAR GALACTIA mini-series. Moore recollects his early
days in TNG's third season and talks freely about the politics going on behind
the scenes and the flaws of the first modern STAR TREK series.
"Michael Piller came in my first day and he was like, 'Well, you know, we'll see if this works out. I don't have a lot of high expectations for you, and if it doesn't work out, don't be too disappointed. We'll just kind of see'," Moore recalls of his first days on the TNG writing staff. "And I was like, 'Ughhhh... Okay.' And it was week-to-week, you know? He could have dropped me at any week, but what sort of happened was... they sort of forget. You kind of forget that that guy over in the corner is on a week-to-week contract. And nothing ever gets said, so every Friday would come and nobody would say anything, so I would just assume that I should come back on Monday, and I'd walk in the building on Monday morning and I would really hope that none of the secretaries would stop me and say, "Oh, didn't you hear?" That went on for three months, and at the end of three months it was starting to really wear at me."
Eventually, Moore says, writer Ira Steven Behr noticed Ron's predicament and spoke with Piller, who offered him a story editor contract. Moore says that NEXT GEN was governed by what has come to be known as "Gene's edict," something he thinks was alien even to the original series.
"Making the show ultimately about them was a very key and important decision," he says in reference to the efforts to write more character-centered stories beginning in year three. "But we were still operating, for quite awhile, under 'These people have no flaws.'... I don't know how Gene got on that particular hobbyhorse, because Gene was a writer from way back and he knows better. I think on some level, the franchise -- in the interim years between the original series and the return of Next Generation to television -- all the fan adulation and sort of pop cultural phenomena... people started calling Gene a utopian and that he was a "visionary of the future," and that he "saw mankind as IT REALLY SHOULD BE." And on some level, Gene started to believe that."
After Roddenberry's death, Piller felt strongly about honoring his vision for the show, even if it put clamps on the writing staff. Moore says it was difficult because his familiarity with the original STAR TREK didn't mesh with Roddenberry's TNG philopsophy.
"That drove me particularly crazy, as a fan of the original series, because I kept saying, 'Well, wait a minute. The original series didn't work like this! I mean, the original series people were not perfect. My god -- Spock and McCoy were at each other's throats for big chunks of time, and sometimes McCoy thought Kirk was an idiot. They were flawed people. Kirk had quite an ego and arrogance to him, and sometime it cuts him short.' The problem is, you couldn't do a show like 'Errand of Mercy' on Next Gen -- where Kirk says, 'We're at war, and I'm a soldier, not a diplomat.' And at the end of the piece, he kind of goes, 'Wow... Look what I was doing. I was so focused on fighting my enemy, the Klingons, and then these aliens had to sort of show me a thing or two.' And he learns a lesson. It's a great, classic episode..."
One character that Moore felt got a raw deal as a result of Roddenberry's TNG ideal was Wil Wheaton's 'Wesley Crusher', whose flaws helped create a better kid character on DS9, Cirroc Lofton's 'Jake Sisko'.
"Once you let Jake be a kid -- and let him be a human kid, and let him not want to put on a uniform and follow in his father's footsteps... Once you're off of that track, then he's not a threat to the other characters," Moore explains. "Because, ultimately, Wesley was a threat to the rest of them. He's "The super smart kid who can save the ship every week!" And viewers hate him! They don't want him to save the ship -- they want Geordi to save the ship... or Picard to save the ship."
He says that Marina Sirtis's 'Troi' was also a challenge for the writers. How do you effectively convey her telepathy to the viewer? And what is a counselor doing on the bridge, anyway?
"Joe Menosky always maintained that when people look back at NEXT GENERATION, they would single her character out as the one thing that made the show anachronistic, because it was such an '80s idea that the role of a therapist was going to be so important in the future that you would actually give her a chair right next to the Captain. Which seems patently absurd, even now. There's like the captain, his first officer, and his therapist! What? That's the trio that sits on the bridge in command decisions?"
By the time the seventh season of TNG rolled around, Piller was busy with DEEP SPACE NINE, and Moore and Brannon Braga and Rick Berman were spending a lot of time on the feature film GENERATIONS. Moore says this lack of focus may have contributed to the seventh season's overall letdown.
"I haven't watched the show in a long time, so all this sort of is as I remember it, but I always felt that Season 6 was our best year. In Season 6 we tried different means of storytelling, we went into different territory, the stories were more ambiguous and more challenging, and it was a really, really enjoyable year on the staff, so I always think back that Season 6 was sort of the apex of the experience there. And that season 7 was one season too many."
Moore says he championed the idea of doing a musical episode of TNG or even DS9, but Rick Berman's "rule" was that TREK was strict action/adventure. He says the "rules" of Roddenberry and Berman after him seemed so arbitrary that years later, Berman couldn't recollect ever having one in particular.
"Rick's rule was that you couldn't mention Kirk or Spock, in any context. Their names were not allowed to be mentioned." Moore says Ira Behr had to fight to get the one mention of 'Spock' in the Mark Lenard-guesting episode "Sarek." "It was absurd. And years later, this came up in some context with Rick, and Rick just looked at us like, 'I never said that. Did I? Did I ever have that rule? I don't know why I had that rule.' But it didn't matter anymore.
For much, much more from Ron Moore, in which he talks about Worf, the forbidden blooper reels, and how he got into the biz, visit this page. Part two of the interview will follow soon.
"Michael Piller came in my first day and he was like, 'Well, you know, we'll see if this works out. I don't have a lot of high expectations for you, and if it doesn't work out, don't be too disappointed. We'll just kind of see'," Moore recalls of his first days on the TNG writing staff. "And I was like, 'Ughhhh... Okay.' And it was week-to-week, you know? He could have dropped me at any week, but what sort of happened was... they sort of forget. You kind of forget that that guy over in the corner is on a week-to-week contract. And nothing ever gets said, so every Friday would come and nobody would say anything, so I would just assume that I should come back on Monday, and I'd walk in the building on Monday morning and I would really hope that none of the secretaries would stop me and say, "Oh, didn't you hear?" That went on for three months, and at the end of three months it was starting to really wear at me."
Eventually, Moore says, writer Ira Steven Behr noticed Ron's predicament and spoke with Piller, who offered him a story editor contract. Moore says that NEXT GEN was governed by what has come to be known as "Gene's edict," something he thinks was alien even to the original series.
"Making the show ultimately about them was a very key and important decision," he says in reference to the efforts to write more character-centered stories beginning in year three. "But we were still operating, for quite awhile, under 'These people have no flaws.'... I don't know how Gene got on that particular hobbyhorse, because Gene was a writer from way back and he knows better. I think on some level, the franchise -- in the interim years between the original series and the return of Next Generation to television -- all the fan adulation and sort of pop cultural phenomena... people started calling Gene a utopian and that he was a "visionary of the future," and that he "saw mankind as IT REALLY SHOULD BE." And on some level, Gene started to believe that."
After Roddenberry's death, Piller felt strongly about honoring his vision for the show, even if it put clamps on the writing staff. Moore says it was difficult because his familiarity with the original STAR TREK didn't mesh with Roddenberry's TNG philopsophy.
"That drove me particularly crazy, as a fan of the original series, because I kept saying, 'Well, wait a minute. The original series didn't work like this! I mean, the original series people were not perfect. My god -- Spock and McCoy were at each other's throats for big chunks of time, and sometimes McCoy thought Kirk was an idiot. They were flawed people. Kirk had quite an ego and arrogance to him, and sometime it cuts him short.' The problem is, you couldn't do a show like 'Errand of Mercy' on Next Gen -- where Kirk says, 'We're at war, and I'm a soldier, not a diplomat.' And at the end of the piece, he kind of goes, 'Wow... Look what I was doing. I was so focused on fighting my enemy, the Klingons, and then these aliens had to sort of show me a thing or two.' And he learns a lesson. It's a great, classic episode..."
One character that Moore felt got a raw deal as a result of Roddenberry's TNG ideal was Wil Wheaton's 'Wesley Crusher', whose flaws helped create a better kid character on DS9, Cirroc Lofton's 'Jake Sisko'.
"Once you let Jake be a kid -- and let him be a human kid, and let him not want to put on a uniform and follow in his father's footsteps... Once you're off of that track, then he's not a threat to the other characters," Moore explains. "Because, ultimately, Wesley was a threat to the rest of them. He's "The super smart kid who can save the ship every week!" And viewers hate him! They don't want him to save the ship -- they want Geordi to save the ship... or Picard to save the ship."
He says that Marina Sirtis's 'Troi' was also a challenge for the writers. How do you effectively convey her telepathy to the viewer? And what is a counselor doing on the bridge, anyway?
"Joe Menosky always maintained that when people look back at NEXT GENERATION, they would single her character out as the one thing that made the show anachronistic, because it was such an '80s idea that the role of a therapist was going to be so important in the future that you would actually give her a chair right next to the Captain. Which seems patently absurd, even now. There's like the captain, his first officer, and his therapist! What? That's the trio that sits on the bridge in command decisions?"
By the time the seventh season of TNG rolled around, Piller was busy with DEEP SPACE NINE, and Moore and Brannon Braga and Rick Berman were spending a lot of time on the feature film GENERATIONS. Moore says this lack of focus may have contributed to the seventh season's overall letdown.
"I haven't watched the show in a long time, so all this sort of is as I remember it, but I always felt that Season 6 was our best year. In Season 6 we tried different means of storytelling, we went into different territory, the stories were more ambiguous and more challenging, and it was a really, really enjoyable year on the staff, so I always think back that Season 6 was sort of the apex of the experience there. And that season 7 was one season too many."
Moore says he championed the idea of doing a musical episode of TNG or even DS9, but Rick Berman's "rule" was that TREK was strict action/adventure. He says the "rules" of Roddenberry and Berman after him seemed so arbitrary that years later, Berman couldn't recollect ever having one in particular.
"Rick's rule was that you couldn't mention Kirk or Spock, in any context. Their names were not allowed to be mentioned." Moore says Ira Behr had to fight to get the one mention of 'Spock' in the Mark Lenard-guesting episode "Sarek." "It was absurd. And years later, this came up in some context with Rick, and Rick just looked at us like, 'I never said that. Did I? Did I ever have that rule? I don't know why I had that rule.' But it didn't matter anymore.
For much, much more from Ron Moore, in which he talks about Worf, the forbidden blooper reels, and how he got into the biz, visit this page. Part two of the interview will follow soon.
Charles Mims
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