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Introduction
When science fiction author Harlan Ellison introduced Ronald D. Moore at the recent Screenwriting Expo 5 in Los Angeles, Moore received a standing ovation. It was a testament to the success, critical acclaim and passionate following of "Battlestar Galactica," which has become the reigning champion of science fiction.
Ellison, dressed in a black suit with an orange tie and orange shoes, gave Moore the Screenwriting Expo's award for Television Writer of the Year. "You were given swine and you made pearls out of them," Ellison said. "This award is for the astonishing job of making one of the worst television series ever made into one of the best television series ever made."
Slide Show!
Moore humbly accepted the award, thanking his many writing partners over the years for helping him become a better writer. "The truly best part about writing for television is something called the writer's room, where you get to sit in a room with other very talented people and write stories day after day and hour after to hour," Moore said. "They become your family. It's a very singular experience. And if I'm here for a reason, it's because I've sat in writer's rooms for 13 years, and 'Battlestar Galactica' is in many ways a result of that process."
Moore dedicated the award to the dozens of writers who helped him, especially the late Michael Piller, who worked with Moore on Star Trek before dying last year after succumbing to cancer. Moore discussed Piller and his fellow writing partners at Star Trek, and how those experiences influenced his work on "Battlestar." Moore and Ellison also discussed the real world parallels of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War in the science fiction show.
Ellison: Tell us what kind of trepidation you had [about "Battlestar"].
Moore: I didn't have much trepidation by the time they made the offer. I got this phone call where someone asked, "would you be interested in doing 'Galactica'?" And I wasn't sure at first. I hadn't seen the original show in a long time, since its original run, and I had done a very long time at Star Trek. So I had a lot of years out in space and I didn't know that I wanted to keep doing it.
I took a weekend to think about it, and went out and found the pilot of the original show, which I hadn't seen in 20 years. I brought it home and watched it, and you can certainly pick apart the pilot 50 different ways. It doesn't work on a lot of levels, and there's some really bad stuff in it. But I was really intrigued by the premise. At the heart of that show was a really interesting idea.
The original show has the same premise that ours does, which opens with an apocalyptic attack on the human colonies; it opens with the genocide of man. And then the show is about the survivors, who are not fighting back, but running away from their enemies perpetually into the night. And I thought that was an intriguing place to be.
When I was looking at the pilot, it was January or February of 2002, so this was just a few months after the 9-11 attacks. I realized there was no way you could do this project without the audience bringing to the party their feelings, memories and emotions from that event on some level. And I thought that it would be an interesting series if you treated that idea truthfully, and tried to go to what really happens to people in those circumstances, and tried to tell an honest story about what happens when an unthinkable event like that occurs to everyday people. When they're not the crew of the Enterprise, when they're not the best of the best, but rather people on a broken down ship that nobody cares about anymore, crewed by a bunch of screw-ups, and that's humanity's last best hope. And I jumped at it after that, because I realized it was an opportunity. Since then, I've always thought that what we do on the show is to take the premise of the original series more seriously than they did.
When science fiction author Harlan Ellison introduced Ronald D. Moore at the recent Screenwriting Expo 5 in Los Angeles, Moore received a standing ovation. It was a testament to the success, critical acclaim and passionate following of "Battlestar Galactica," which has become the reigning champion of science fiction.
Ellison, dressed in a black suit with an orange tie and orange shoes, gave Moore the Screenwriting Expo's award for Television Writer of the Year. "You were given swine and you made pearls out of them," Ellison said. "This award is for the astonishing job of making one of the worst television series ever made into one of the best television series ever made."
Slide Show!
Moore humbly accepted the award, thanking his many writing partners over the years for helping him become a better writer. "The truly best part about writing for television is something called the writer's room, where you get to sit in a room with other very talented people and write stories day after day and hour after to hour," Moore said. "They become your family. It's a very singular experience. And if I'm here for a reason, it's because I've sat in writer's rooms for 13 years, and 'Battlestar Galactica' is in many ways a result of that process."
Moore dedicated the award to the dozens of writers who helped him, especially the late Michael Piller, who worked with Moore on Star Trek before dying last year after succumbing to cancer. Moore discussed Piller and his fellow writing partners at Star Trek, and how those experiences influenced his work on "Battlestar." Moore and Ellison also discussed the real world parallels of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War in the science fiction show.
Ellison: Tell us what kind of trepidation you had [about "Battlestar"].
Moore: I didn't have much trepidation by the time they made the offer. I got this phone call where someone asked, "would you be interested in doing 'Galactica'?" And I wasn't sure at first. I hadn't seen the original show in a long time, since its original run, and I had done a very long time at Star Trek. So I had a lot of years out in space and I didn't know that I wanted to keep doing it.
I took a weekend to think about it, and went out and found the pilot of the original show, which I hadn't seen in 20 years. I brought it home and watched it, and you can certainly pick apart the pilot 50 different ways. It doesn't work on a lot of levels, and there's some really bad stuff in it. But I was really intrigued by the premise. At the heart of that show was a really interesting idea.
The original show has the same premise that ours does, which opens with an apocalyptic attack on the human colonies; it opens with the genocide of man. And then the show is about the survivors, who are not fighting back, but running away from their enemies perpetually into the night. And I thought that was an intriguing place to be.
When I was looking at the pilot, it was January or February of 2002, so this was just a few months after the 9-11 attacks. I realized there was no way you could do this project without the audience bringing to the party their feelings, memories and emotions from that event on some level. And I thought that it would be an interesting series if you treated that idea truthfully, and tried to go to what really happens to people in those circumstances, and tried to tell an honest story about what happens when an unthinkable event like that occurs to everyday people. When they're not the crew of the Enterprise, when they're not the best of the best, but rather people on a broken down ship that nobody cares about anymore, crewed by a bunch of screw-ups, and that's humanity's last best hope. And I jumped at it after that, because I realized it was an opportunity. Since then, I've always thought that what we do on the show is to take the premise of the original series more seriously than they did.
What's this i hear about a 'Dragonriders of Pern' series? anyone got more information on that?
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