Fashioning Verisimilitude

Ron Moore On The Muse, Television, And Galactica Redux

By Robert Falconer, HNR Senior Editor

Since French filmmaker George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon in 1902, cinematic science fiction has evolved over the past century to establish an unmistakable identity of its own. Technology has similarly evolved to such an extent that virtually any story that can be conceived can now be produced theatrically.

This has created something of a paradox. For while technology can now keep pace with the writer’s imagination, the writer’s imagination is being increasingly challenged to keep pace with technology. Plausible visions of the future become more difficult to conjure when that future is already upon us: computers, cloning and nanotechnology—once the sole province of science fiction—are but a few of today’s scientific realities.

Moreover, after four decades of provocative moral parables (Star Trek), futuristic and entertaining fantasy worlds (Star Wars), and otherworldly conspiracies (The X-Files), cinematic science fiction has run the gamut. As a consequence, the genre has, in recent years, slowly fallen victim to cliché.

After fifteen years writing science fiction on television, writer/producer Ronald D. Moore was acutely aware of the pitfalls facing the genre. His solution was to revive television sci fi through naturalism. By placing real people—with whom any audience member can immediately identify—into extraordinary, futuristic situations, his new Battlestar Galactica series promises to explore tomorrow, while in a very real sense remaining grounded in today.

Ronald D. Moore and Mary McDonnell attending the premiere of Battlestar Galactica

I sat down with Ron to discuss at length his thoughts on writing and television in general, as well as his vision for the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Robert: Can you tell us a little about your early writing career, before you began writing television scripts? When did you first realize you wanted to write?

Ron Moore: I think I’d always written. I remember writing as a kid, as early as third or fourth grade. I would write little stories about my dog. All through elementary school and junior high I remember writing stories and telling the other kids stories on the playground that I had made up. Then in high school I wrote and directed a play.

I come from a very small town called Chowchilla, in the center of California, by Fresno…just a little cow town. Growing up and being a writer just wasn’t really something that anyone ever did, so I never took it that seriously as a potential career. So I set out to do something else. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, and when I went to Cornell I studied government as part of a pre-law package. I was there on a Navy ROTC scholarship, and in my senior year I bombed out, lost the scholarship and had to start over. At Cornell, I was a member of Kappa Alpha Society, which was a fraternity and a literary society. One of my friends had graduated the year before, and came back. I was still at the fraternity, and he said, “What are you doing?” and I said, “Well nothing.” And he said, “Well why don’t you come back to California with me and be a writer?” He was living in LA and trying to make it as a writer.

I packed my bags, bought a one-way ticket and decided to start over again. So that’s how I eventually came to LA and decided that this was what I was going to do.

Robert: A fortuitous turn of events, looking back on it.

Ron Moore: Yeah, it really was. Looking back on it, I realize it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

Robert: What were some of your early influences when it came to creative writing? Was there any one writer, or writers, who held a particular position of prominence in shaping your style or outlook?

Ron Moore: I’m not sure if there was a particular style of writer. I loved Dickens when I was growing up. That was probably an influence in terms of writers. I liked a lot of pulpy sci-fi stuff, as well as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Azimov and Philip K. Dick. Harlan Ellison was also a big influence. His style of writing fiction, and especially his non-fiction—his columns and movie reviews—were all very influential to my writing style. Beyond that, I was very influenced by film and television. I watched TV constantly as a kid; it was my window on the outside world. That’s probably why I’m in this business, as opposed to writing prose. I really drank in film and television and the way scripts were constructed.

Robert: Do you find genre writing to be easier or more difficult? For example, comparing Galactica to Carnivale, which do you find more taxing to write?

Ron Moore: Carnivale was more taxing because it was a more complicated piece. Carnivale is a long, continuing story with a lot more characters and a very deep and complicated back-story. So there’s a lot of plot threads, a lot of characters, and a lot of mythology to keep straight. Galactica’s a little more straightforward than Carnivale. In terms of difficulty, Carnivale was definitely more difficult.

I find genre writing freeing. It’s a much larger canvas to paint on…you have more things you can do; you’re playing a much bigger game of “what if” than you are with non-genre material. And I’ve done it for so long that it’s sort of second nature for me…I have those muscles well developed.

It sounds contradictory to say this, but Carnivale and Galactica both try very hard to be realistic…to bring realism into the genre…to play character and play story from a realistic point of view and then put them in a genre context, which I think is an interesting juxtaposition.

Robert: How do you personally deal with writer’s block, and do you have any little rituals or means of summoning and maintaining your muse?

Ron Moore: I don’t really think of it in terms of writer’s block. It’s something that I just don’t accept that I get [laughs]. I just push through it, and TV kind of beats that out of you, because you don’t have the luxury of having the block. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll push it on the page to a certain point…then I’ll go home and watch TV—I’ll watch Seinfeld for hours on end—and as I’m watching it, it’s sort of like background music so that part of my brain can be freed to think about the problem I’m having, and generally, I figure it out. I’ll think, “Oh, OK, that’s the solution.” I need to sort of distract myself with something else then let the solution come through. But it has to happen on a fairly small timetable [laughs].

Robert: Do you have other interests or projects that give you a total break from the television grind?

Ron Moore: Oh yeah. A childhood friend of mine and I are doing a documentary on our high school band director and our high school band, which was very important in both our lives. It was an organization that really formed how I think of what I do today, because it was a marching band, we won awards, and it was a big deal in the community—unlike most towns, where it’s where the geeks go [laughs], ya know—but in our high school it was actually quite important. The way that our band director directed that band made me feel like a professional, and taught me a lot about what it meant to be part of a professional organization…to take the work seriously. You went out, you were competitive, and you tried to do your very best. Rehearsal meant something and marching meant something, and the way you comported yourself meant something.

The band director died in 1987. What we found when we went up to our hometown and sat down with former students was that this was a touchstone with all the other kids who went through that organization. They told us about things that happened 20 or 30 years ago, and how it changed their lives…and they’re still emotional about it.

It’s the other project that I spend as much time on as I can.

Robert: If I could put you in a time-capsule and take you back and offer you a position on the writing staff of any television series from the 1960s or ‘70s—excepting Star Trek—for which one would you have most wanted to write?

Ron Moore: Hmm. I would have loved to write something for The Man From Uncle, or an episode of The Prisoner. Ya know, I would have also dug writing an episode of Gunsmoke.

Robert: Well, Gunsmoke only had twenty seasons!

Ron Moore: [Laughs] Yeah, I’m sure they could have squeezed me in somewhere.

Robert: The recent best picture Oscar went to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It’s been said that this represents a victory for the science fiction and fantasy genre, since it’s the first time that this genre has won an Oscar for best picture. Do you believe this in any way raises the stakes for science fiction on television, and if so, in what way?

Ron Moore: I don’t know if it raises the stakes on TV. It’s more like a problem. Because Lord of the Rings sets up a false expectation of what you can do on television. Lord of the Rings is an immense, unbelievable accomplishment from every standpoint; from the adaptation of the original material, to the visual effects work, to just the sheer scale of the production. Obviously, television cannot touch that. We do not have the kind of resources to do that on a weekly budget. And even the miniseries formats are limited and cannot really compete with what you can accomplish in a theatrical arena.

But the audience on some level doesn’t care. The audience goes to see Lord of the Rings, and then you try to do an equivalent fantasy piece on TV, and they walk away disappointed, thinking, “Well, man, this wasn’t Lord of the Rings.” What it does is that it makes it harder to accomplish, harder to get the audience, and harder to sell it to the studio and the networks. You’re not working in the same arena, but they expect the same sort of quality of product, relatively speaking. It’s interesting that the audience is looking for that kind of product on TV.

Film is about spectacle at this point. TV is more intimate. TV is about character. TV has an ability to take you on a journey for many episodes. So when you’re pitching science fiction to networks and television, it’s hard to get people to listen to that. Because they’re sort of interested in, “Well, how many dragons are you gonna have?” or “How are you going to afford to produce the fifty-thousand guys coming over the hill, cause that’s what that audience wants,” and you go, “Well, yeah, that’s what they want in the movie, but see, we’re trying to give them a character thing.” Then their eyes kind of glaze over because they think you’re just making excuses on account of you don’t have enough money to give them what they want. It’s a hard format to sell.

Robert: Speaking of dragons, at one point you were attempting to bring the The Dragonriders of Pern to television. That would have been a challenge to do on TV for many of the same reasons, I suppose.

Ron Moore: It was going to be a challenge. I’d approached it so that, in fact, you would have seen the dragons far less than you thought. They were present, they were referred to, you had a connection between rider and dragon to explore, but then there would have been a certain amount of smoke and mirrors involved—you cut to the shot of the dragon landing, and it’s kicking up big volumes of dust; old school techniques where you’re not showing the monster, as it were, as much as you’re feeling it or being influenced by it. So you walk away from the piece going, “Wow, there were all those dragons!”

Robert: To what extent, if any, would you say that the events of 9|11 have had on dramatic television, either intrinsically or in terms of storytelling?

Ron Moore: I think intrinsically it has. It just changed the way we look at everything in some sense. I think certainly that any show that is based in New York city…I personally think about it. If it’s a rerun of Seinfeld, for example, I know it takes place in a pre-9|11 world. That thought still rolls through my mind periodically. Or Friends. In Friends, it bridges the two. The towers are there in those exterior shots…then later, they’re not. So it’s right there in front of you.

I think television was very scared to deal with it, to mention it, but yet how could they not? Sex In The City, for example, would do an episode where “we’re going to go downtown and help them down there…spend money” without really alluding to why. I think it was, and continues to be, a very fine line when you’re writing stuff, because on the one hand you’re trying to root your characters in the real world, so that the audience doesn’t go, “Well, my life isn’t like that anymore when I go to the airport!” And at the same time, you don’t want to be seen as exploiting it just to juice your own drama. So it’s kind of a delicate balancing act.

Certainly in the immediate aftermath it was extraordinarily difficult, but as time has gone on, I think writers and producers and networks have gotten a little more at ease with “OK, this is the world and the audience is smart enough to know that we have to acknowledge it.” And I think on some level the audience wants us to acknowledge it, and explore it, and deal with it.

Robert: Is there a particular topic, a particular subject matter that you personally would very much like to explore via the television medium?

Ron Moore: That’s a tough one. I’m interested in period pieces on TV. That was one of the things I loved about Carnivale. I’m a big history fan, and I feel it has a lot to teach us about today; about where we come from and why—a lot of the things we deal with have been dealt with before. It’s subject matter that I’m fascinated with, but it’s a hard sell in the creative community for monetary reasons, and because there’s the perception that the audience isn’t interested in “old stuff.” It’s silly. The studios will all tell you that “Oh, there’s no way…period pieces are dead, no-one wants to see that,” and then they go make Gladiator or Braveheart, and suddenly studios are like, “Oooh, look at that!” It’s ridiculous.

Robert: Since you began you’re career, what do you think has been the most influential show on television?

Ron Moore: I would say it was a series of shows. I thought The Larry Sanders Show was an amazing piece of work. It was funny and smart. There was no laugh track—they were very real and very human people—but it was just hysterically funny. Yet it had a real sense of humanity to it. I thought it was a brilliant piece of television.

The other shows that have been very influential over the past few years are The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Going back further, Twin Peaks was edgy, dark, whacked-out, though ultimately it didn’t quite work in the end—but an amazing thing to try. I think Thirtysomething was a pretty influential program. It was very self-contained, certainly, and there was a lot of navel-gazing on a certain level—people were just too inside their own heads and too inside their own angst—but it was fascinating character stuff and they played it very realistically without overly dramatic situations.

Robert: What bothers you most about television today? Are there any disturbing trends emerging that you believe are having a negative impact on the medium? With respect to that, where do you see television going in the future?

Ron Moore: First, I think it’s becoming very diverse. In some ways it is the golden age of television. I think some of the best TV done—or ever done—is being done currently. But of course there’s so much of it now, that there’s also a tremendous amount of crap. That’s true of everything, I guess. I think Harlan Ellison once said that ninety percent of everything is crap. That’s a pretty high percentage.

Robert: I’m quite not sure what that says about us as human beings.

Ron Moore: I know.

But in terms of what the broadcast networks are doing; it’s truly schizophrenic. On the one level, they do support quality, intelligent programs: The West Wing, Law & Order, Frasier…smart, funny shows that have a broad appeal. But on the other hand, they’re in this race to the bottom to see how mindless of a show they can make. I mean, how high up can you turn the laugh track on a show that just isn’t funny by anybody’s definition? Or how stupid can these reality shows truly be? It really is becoming voyeuristic. These reality shows are disturbing; not just because they’re on, but because there’s so many people that want to be on them. And the things that people are willing to do to be on TV! Someday, someone is going to be injured or killed on one of these shows.

Robert: Do you watch any of the current crop of shows, like 24, for example?

Ron Moore: Do you know, I haven’t watched 24. It’s one of those shows that I know is great, but I tend not to watch a lot of one-hour dramas. When I watch TV I tend to watch sitcoms; something that is different from what I’m doing. It’s the same reason why I don’t read a lot of science fiction now. I want a break from it.

When I watch an hour show now, I can’t help but compare what “they” do, to what “we” do. So I want something that offers a little more of a break.

Robert: Turning to Galactica, did you anticipate the level of success that the miniseries garnered?

Ron Moore: No. I was hopeful, but my attitude going in was that you try to make the best show that you can, and then you wait and see if the audience comes or not. I knew we’d get a good number on the first night. As the reviews started coming in, and as we started to see the response from the critics and the ad campaign—we thought, okay, there’s definitely going to be people who will tune in just to check it out.

We had a decent number the first night, and then we called each other busily the next day and went over the numbers. The betting was, okay, there’s definitely going to be a drop-off on night two, and it was a question of how big it would be: if we could maintain the same number, that would be fantastic…if the drop was a little, then that would still be good…if the drop was bad, well, obviously that would be bad.

Then, when the second night’s ratings went up, everyone was surprised. The network was surprised and we were surprised. It just doesn’t typically happen that way, where you get a higher number on the second night than on the first. So that’s when everybody knew, okay, this is great…this is a success…there’s a series here and how do we put it together.

Robert: Now that you’ve had an opportunity to do a little post-mortem on the miniseries, were there any production issues that jumped out at you that you would immediately like to finesse, be they VFX, lighting, set design, etc…?

Ron Moore: Nothing broadly like that. We’re all happy with the production design and the way the show looked. I think the only thing that we’re going to do in the series, which will be slightly different than in the miniseries, is make it more aggressively documentary style in look and feel. The miniseries—overall as a piece—has really moved us in the direction that we all wanted to go in terms of verisimilitude and feeling like you’re really there. The belief coming out of it was that we could go even further in that direction; that we could make the weekly series truly feel documentary in style and tone.

A lot of that had to do with the visual effects work. We were sending the visual effects team aggressively in that direction. We told Zoic we wanted these to feel like hand-held cameras in space; we wanted it to feel like there’s an actual cameraman who has to find the ships in frame and then zoom in on them and focus. But that was sort of an unknown, because post takes so much longer, so there was sort of a hesitation. We were consequently covering our bases to a certain extent to make certain that the interior shots didn’t outstrip—or have a radically different look—than the exterior shots.

But Zoic was clearly up to the challenge. They delivered exactly what we wanted. So now we feel comfortable that we can go even further with the interior, and have the interior and exterior feel even more seamlessly part of the same world.

Robert: Can you tell us approximately how much each episode will cost?

Ron Moore: I can tell you that it’s well over one-and-a-half million dollars US per episode. It’s a substantial budget, especially when you convert it into Canadian dollars—and what we’re able to get up there—it’s a lot of money.

Robert: While I realize this is not an FX-driven series, can we expect to see the same volume of CGI we saw in the miniseries in the series, relatively speaking?

Ron Moore: That’s hard to say, and I think each episode is going to be different. Conceptually, the show is not going to be combat every week. You’re never going to have that much dog fighting every single week. But you’re also going to have visual effects that are invisible. For instance, very few people even know that in the hangar deck shots there’s significant digital work going on to extend the size of the hangar deck and add ships into the background. So there’s a lot of background stuff going on, and obviously that will continue.

Robert: And I guess the whole concept of the show, by definition, is that of a bottle show.

Ron Moore: Yeah. And it was designed that way from the get-go. When David Eick and I went in and pitched it initially—knowing how expensive space opera can be—we designed it to be affordable on what we could get on a SCI-FI Channel budget.

Robert: Will we be seeing any new, exciting sets in the series that we didn’t have time to see in the miniseries?

Ron Moore: We will. Some of them will be virtual, because we’re going to go into that world a bit. And some we will build practically. And hopefully you won’t know the difference between the two.

The early episodes are not going to focus on brand new big sets. But we will visit new locations and new sets as the year goes on.

Robert: Take us through a typical day for you as an executive producer on Galactica.

Ron Moore: The job changes as the year goes on. Right now, before we start shooting, my time is spent almost exclusively here with the writing staff. I’m writing an episode at the moment. I wrote the first episode and I’m writing the second one. The writers meet by themselves…they break some stories…I come in and give notes…and we talk about directions for other episodes. Then, as time goes on, they’ll start generating scripts and stories, and I give notes on those. I’m also taking notes from the network and the studio on previous existing material.

There’ll also be more of me going back and forth between LA and Vancouver. And as we get closer to production, then there’ll be more looking at production designs, dealing with budgetary issues, having meetings with directors and actors, looking at casting tapes for guest-star roles. Once we get into production and start generating film, there’s dailies to watch…post moves forward and there’s cuts of episodes to watch…and there’s visual effects sequences to give notes on.

There’s not really a typical day, per say. You have to be nimble and on your feet and able to keep changing direction. You have to cover all these different bases, and sometimes you can’t run to first. Sometimes you have to run to third, and then run back home, and then run to second. It’s never a complete pattern.

I believe very much in delegating authority to the department heads, in empowering people and having them take responsibility for the work. My principal job is to maintain the overall vision of the piece.

Robert: Very different than the early days of working on Star Trek, I presume?

Ron Moore: Oh yeah…very different. Star Trek is structurally a different show in terms of the way the show is run. The writers on Star Trek have always been kept over in their own building, out of the way. There’s very little interaction between the writers and the rest of the production. It’s very compartmented. Post stays over here…production stays over here…costumes stays over here…writers stay over here. I don’t like a show like that. I like more of a flow back and forth. I like people to have an opinion on things that may not be within their own department.

Ron Moore: I would like to do that. I would like to direct at some point. I’m sure I wouldn’t try to do it this year. I think I have enough problems [laughs] without taking that on. But at some point I would like to do that, yes.

Robert: How many of the thirteen episodes have you sorted out yet?

Ron Moore: Well, we’ve broken story on the first four. The first script is written, the second one is on my computer as we speak, the third one is being written, the fourth one is about to go into teleplay, and we’re going to start talking about the fifth one this week. We have an overall arc for all thirteen in general terms; in broad strokes in terms of where people are going to be by the end of the first season. And we know sort of what the finale is about, and what the events are that will happen by the end of the season, even though we don’t know yet what the plot is.

Robert: As you get towards writing your final episode of the first season, are you writing it with another season in mind?

Ron Moore: Yup.

Robert: Of all the Galactica characters, are there any that you closely identify with personally…and why?

Ron Moore: I’d have to say I identify with all of them for different reasons. As I was creating them, I split them out into different aspects of personality and idea and character…and there are aspects of me in probably all of them. I enjoy writing for all of them—I don’t really have a favorite character to write scenes for at this point. I’m still discovering new things about each of them as I go through it.

Robert: The cast in the miniseries turned in terrific performances. Mary McDonnell, in particular, played Laura Roslin with an almost chilling believability. Does having such a talented ensemble further raise the bar for you as a writer?

Ron Moore: Oh yeah, it does. You have to step up a little bit more. You have a set of Oscar-caliber actors, literally, and that requires a certain level of writing. And they have an expectation of what the material is going to be because they came aboard reacting favorably to the miniseries script. And now they’re looking for work of that quality—and better—as we go forward.

Robert: Cylons aside, what do you think is the single, greatest obstacle facing the Colonials?

Ron Moore: I’d say in the short run it will be the situation; the lack of supplies. Everything they have with them is a finite resource, and that’s going to be a problem. I mean, bullets…where are you going to get more bullets? They’re going to have to get creative, and they’re going to have to struggle with very nuts & bolts, day to day living.

Close on the heels of that, they’re biggest problem is going to be themselves. There’s going to be a human tendency to split off into groups, to have competing interests, to have an inability to get along even in the worst of situations. Eventually, internal dissent and internal problems start to arise.

Robert: The thing I thought of at the end of the miniseries was the extraordinary psychological stress that is going to arise when you lock fifty thousand people in tin cans for months on end without any fresh air, sunlight or firm ground upon which to stand.

Ron Moore: Oh, absolutely. And there will be the inequities of it all. The people locked on some sort of freighter, or on the prison ship, are worse off than the people who were on some low-rent ferry that went between planet A and planet B. There’s a lot of different situations, because all these people just happened to be on a ship that through a miracle was able to survive the holocaust. And of course very few of these vessels were designed for long-term living, except for Galactica.

Robert: That leads me to my next question. This calamity provided no opportunity for the Colonials to choose their best and brightest to survive. This would create enormous potential gaps in the knowledge and expertise base of the survivors, i.e. are there enough doctors, technicians, artisans, teachers, etc. left among them? Moreover, despite Baltar’s culpability, he actually has the Colonials over a barrel, since he may be one of the few, if not only, surviving scientists—and certainly the most gifted. So even if they did uncover his treachery at some point, could they really afford to punish him for it? Any thoughts on any of this, and will you be introducing a medical doctor as a regular cast member at any point?

Ron Moore: That is a very interesting problem, and I think you’ve laid your finger on one of the interesting things about the show. Now that they’re in this situation, the value of all these individuals, and what they contribute, is magnified. They can’t really maroon Doctor Baltar someplace, or execute him, because they do kind of need him. But then it’s a question of, if you can’t trust him, then how do you use him? Yet as they try to find supplies and try to manufacture things, they’re going to need people with scientific and technical expertise.

They’re still in the process—and we the writers are still in the process—of discovering “who” is among the fifty thousand. We want some people to have gifts and knowledge, and we want others to be big, gaping holes. And it’s sort of a question of determining where we want those holes to be at this point.

We will be introducing a medical doctor, but I don’t know if he’ll be a strong, regular character at this point. Right now, I’m thinking of him in a recurring role.

Robert: In the original series, the Cylons were little more than one-dimensional antagonists who often behaved like lemmings. Will we be treated to a look at Cylon society in such a way that may enable us to empathize with the way in which they have evolved? And does this create an inherent danger that the audience may become slightly less sympathetic to the Colonials?

Ron Moore: I think we will be doing that. Bit by bit we will peel back the onion of Cylon society, who the Cylons are, what there values are, and what they care about. We will treat them as people. And just because they’re people doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of doing horrific things. Complicated and interesting villains are the most effective. And no, I’m not really concerned about the audience consequently losing sympathy or empathy for the Colonials.

Robert: Religion plays an important role not only to the Colonials in the new series, but also to the Cylons. Have you given any detailed thought to the significance each holds for their respective “worshippers” in terms of motivation?

Ron Moore: Quite a bit. I discussed some of it in the series bible I put out to the writers. Then the writers and myself and some of the actors discussed how it’s a very important part of this universe. The Cylons’ belief system and the Colonials’ belief system is intrinsic to who the two parties are in this show.

Robert: I would imagine, too, that since the Cylons are originally a product of humanity, that their whole concept of religion originally would have been taken from humanity, and then mutated to suit their own evolving nature.

Ron Moore: That’s correct. They literally can refer to a creation point. As thinking beings, they wonder, “Okay, these guys created me, but who created them?” And on and on. It’s the existential question: Why am I here? And ultimately the humans don’t really have an answer for that either. The Colonials believe in a polytheistic view of the universe with multiple gods: the Lords of Kobol, with their own mythology and backstory. The Cylons look at that differently. They looked at that belief system and then evolved on their own, ultimately reducing the multiple god system down to one. The Cylons believe in a single god, a larger, single creator of the universe who guides all things…closer to a monotheistic system.

Robert: You have to wonder what the Cylons could teach the Colonials about their own religion, or vice versa.

Ron Moore: Yeah. I think they have a lot to learn from each other ultimately, in many ways.

Robert: At the end of the miniseries, Commander Adama and his son appeared to be moving towards reconciliation. Will their relationship improve, or suffer another setback as a result of differences of opinion about their immediate crisis?

Ron Moore: I think it will go up and it will go down, like any father-son dynamic does. I think they bridged a gap in the miniseries that certainly had held them apart for a couple of years. I don’t think that issue has been completely resolved, but they’ve moved past it to a certain point. Now they’re in a new relationship and a new dynamic…they’re father and son and they’re also serving on the same ship, and the stresses and pressures of that will affect the relationship. I think it’s interesting that Lee Adama has a strong relationship with Laura, and that he in some respects is a bridge between her and his father.

Robert: Commander Adama is clearly a career military man. In the miniseries we get the sense that he’s a little weary, a little weathered, yet at the same time melancholy over the Galactica’s retirement. Would you say that the destruction of the Colonies has given him a reluctant sense of purpose, or a renewed sense of purpose…or perhaps a mixture of both?

Ron Moore: I think it’s a mixture of both. I think it put him into the center of power and authority and decision making, at a point in his career where he was no longer that guy. He was commander of the oldest ship in the fleet that was about to be retired, and had been on the ship for a while. He wasn’t an admiral; he wasn’t at the heart of the Colonial Military. This was a guy, who for various reasons—and we’ll explore some of them in the series—was not a hard charger climbing the ranks of the military structure. He went off into this backwater assignment…which he nevertheless loved. He has an affinity for the Galactica…it was his first assignment when he was a youth, and he came back to command it. There’s a nostalgic element to it…he believes in the things the Galactica stood for when it was originally built, and there’s a very deep connection between the man and the ship.

But the destruction of the Colonies falling in his lap has certainly put him in a different place than he has been for many, many years, and I do think that brings with it a renewed sense of commitment and a renewed sense of relevance. There is a role for Adama to play now, and it’s a hugely important one.

Robert: In the miniseries, I was surprised to see the Galactica take a nuclear hit and survive relatively unscathed. Clearly, she may be old, but she’s still a tough and powerful vessel. Can you tell us how big the Galactica is in this version?

Ron Moore: Galactica was designed to withstand a nuclear hit. Don’t forget that nuclear weapons in space have a different impact than they do in the atmosphere. There’s not really a shock wave in space, it’s more the immediate blast, heat and radiation effects. Galactica is shielded against radiation. However, I’ll tell you that we’re going to get into that as the series goes on. That nuclear hit will come back to haunt them later; there will be consequences to what happened to the ship structurally when it took that hit. We’re taking the approach conceptually on this show that we must live with things that have happened to us, and that there are consequences.

As to the Galactica’s size, I don’t know the exact figure off the top of my head. I was asking Gary Hutzel to give me the technical specs just last week, actually. I think he described the flight pods [hangar decks] as being about four football fields in length.

Robert: Comparable to the original Galactica, then, which was about a mile long.

Ron Moore: Somewhere in that ballpark. It’s an enormous ship.

Robert: The “bullets” that the Vipers fire…are those really bullets, or are they some sort of an explosive charge?

Ron Moore: We settled on them being bullets, for a variety of reasons.

Robert: Bullets as we think of them today, or would they be more advanced?

Ron Moore: Some sort of caseless ammunition. We had long technical discussions about some of this. What mattered to us was that they weren’t laser blasts. We just felt that had been done to death, it wasn’t as interesting, and it wasn’t realistic. From our research we discovered that such weapons would take huge amounts of energy, and that fighters would probably be better served by using actual bullets. But presumably they’re more advanced than what we’re using today, although we haven’t actually sat down and defined them as such.

Robert: You’ve been quoted recently that you would like to invite certain members of the original series cast to appear in the new Galactica; and I gather you’ve already extended the olive branch to certain individuals. I just interviewed Richard Hatch and asked him pointedly if he would appear in the new series. He responded by telling me that he would base his decision upon the quality of the role, not upon his feelings one way or another about the reimagination. Bottom line: He told me he would love to do it if it were a juicy part.

Ron Moore: [Laughs] You must remember, Richard Hatch is an actor, and that is an honest actor’s response. I can respect that.

Robert: Can we expect to see Richard or any other original cast members in the new series this season?

Ron Moore: We’re actually writing the script at the moment. The idea is to do it this season, and we’re working on the role—a role I’m discussing with Richard.

Robert: Just Richard at the moment?

Ron Moore: At the moment. I had met Richard and talked to him previously. He’s obviously the lead figure in the Galactica universe—very passionate, with a following among the fan base. He’s the logical person to begin with.

Robert: Would you have more than one original series cast member at one time?

Ron Moore: Potentially, yeah.

Robert: And that could happen this season?

Ron Moore: It could.

Robert: Not to sound insulting, but will you make a point of ensuring that such roles are significant and dramatically interesting to them as actors…given who they are?

Ron Moore: I think it would only serve me to do that. To go to the trouble of doing all this, and to entice one or more of them to do it, by all means give them a part they’re going to want to do.

Robert: Last question: Arthur C. Clarke was once quoted as saying that politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Would you agree?

Ron Moore: I think that’s a very insightful comment. Politicians should read science fiction because of the natural extension of “what if” and what can happen. Theoretically, politicians are all about forming the future of our society and making decisions that have consequences. It would be nice if they read ideas about consequences; about how decisions they make today could backfire and go horribly awry, or conversely, incredibly well.

Robert: And perhaps they should read their history as well.

Ron Moore: Yes, exactly.

Robert: Thank you very much, Ron, for an insightful interview.

Ron Moore: Sure. Thank you.

My thanks to Ron for taking time out of his increasingly busy schedule.