Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988–1994)
In 1988, he managed to arrange a tour of the
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 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
First Contact.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994–1999)
Moore then joined the production staff of
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,
First Contact and on a draft of the
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
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
Carnivāle, 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
Carnivāle, 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
Carnivāle reached the end of its first season and the Sci-Fi Channel ordered a thirteen episode weekly series of
Galactica, Moore left
Carnivāle to assume a full-time executive producer role on
Galactica.
Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009)
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.
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.
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 "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 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.
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. 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.
In April 2009, Moore, along with several other
Battlestar Galactica alumni, made a cameo appearance in the
Crime Scene Investigation episode "A Space Oddity". In the episode, Moore has one line of dialog 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. He also developed a pilot for Fox called
Virtuality. It aired on June 26, 2009, and was not picked up.
Upcoming projects
Moore was working on the script for a companion/prequel film of the 1982 John Carpenter film,
The Thing, 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 the writer of the upcoming remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" Eric Heisserer. That film begins production in March 2010.
Moore has recently been approached by the SyFy channel to produce another Battlestar Galactica spinoff to run concurrently with Caprica. The spinoff is entitled
Blood & Chrome, and will feature young William Adama's experiences in the First Cylon War. The series will begin as a series of Webisodes, with a possibility of further Webisodes or even a fully-fledged series if it is well-received.
