Star Trek's Ron Moore. A bio. Tells me something.

[coloradodem2005]

Ronald D. Moore is a writer and producer of several Star Trek series, as well as several other science fiction and genre programs.

Moore graduated Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. He then moved to Los Angeles for a career as a writer. He sold his first script, called "The Bonding" to Paramount in the setting of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was hired in 1989 as a staff writer. In 1991 he was promoted to supervising producer. He remained at that position throughout the final season. He co-wrote 27 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation including the series finale, "All Good Things..." for which he won the Hugo Award for excellence in science fiction writing along with Brannon Braga. Moore and Braga also co-wrote two films featuring the Next Generation cast, Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

After Next Generation ended in 1994, Moore joined the writing staff of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a supervising producer, a post which he held from that show's third to fifth season. In 1997, he was promoted to co-executive producer. He is credited as writer or co-writer of 30 episodes of DS9.

In 1999, after DS9 finished its run, Moore briefly joined the staff of Star Trek: Voyager. However, Moore became frustrated by the atmosphere in Voyager's writers' room, and his relationship with former writing parter Braga soured. Moore soon left Voyager to pursue other writing opportunities, including the series Roswell and Carnivàle and the updated version of Battlestar Galactica.
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http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore

Seems to exemplify what I have thought about the direction of Star Trek.

[The Traveler]

1. By "direction of Star Trek" do you mean

plunging from the heights staight down the towlet bowel???

[coloradodem2005]

2. I don't get it.

I loved the original. Yeah it was campy and it did use sex to an extent but it made a lot of statements and made people think. I feel that TNG and DS9 did so as well and I love those shows. But I could not get on board with Voyager. And Enterprise sucked until this season but it was too late.

[The Traveler]

3. I gave up on Enterprise

when they jumped the shark. Badly. Too bad ... it could have been great. Voyager never worked for me. DS9 and TNG were freakin' awesome.

[cheezus]

12. Enterprise didn't get good until this season

before this season I didn't even consider it star trek, just "action-adventure sci-fi"

which reminds me... I miss Firefly, and September 30 is so far away!

[Pab Sungenis]

5. What's sad is....

I can sympathize with Ron Moore's opinions.

I'm a freelance writer, and had been invited to pitch for "Voyager" before it started shooting. They sent me the original Series Bible and Pitch Documents. This was before Brannon Braga was associated with the series.

The show that aired had almost nothing in common with what the original concept. I won't attribute that entirely to Braga, but I'm sure he had some influence on the show.

For one thing, as originally envisioned, no one on the show liked each other. Captain Elizabeth Janeway couldn't stand Chakotay, but tolerated him. Tuvok (the ship's counselor, age 175) didn't care for Torres. No one liked Tom Paris, except Harry Kim (who was gay, by the way, although not to be discussed in spec scripts). I had a couple of concepts, but told them I'd rather see the show as it aired, and had a sense of the characters' voices before pitching.

The show debuted, and except for a few little hints in the pilot, all that conflict was gone. The characters were reduced to cardboard cutouts with no personality and no desires or objectives. I was completely disillusioned.

Maybe it's a coincidence that DS9's quality shot up when Ron Moore went to work for them while Voyager's potential was flushed when Braga went there, but I doubt it.

Also makes you wonder what "Enterprise" could have been if Berman had asked Moore back to co-create it with him instead of Braga. Or Joe Menosky. Or any other of the great writers that had been in the Trek stables for years.

[coloradodem2005]

6. Or Ira Steven Behr.

I have read that Behr complained a lot about TNG during the third season in terms of the writing environment, but it was one of the best seasons of Star Trek in any incarnation. And he did well with DS9 too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. I loved TNG and Voyager, but not DS9. I never felt like that was Trek but

just another Babylon 5. :shrug:

[Cannikin]

4. TOS, TNG, and VOY did it for me, but DS9 and ENT killed it for me

[Mutley]

8. I liked the Original

TNG, and Voyager. DS9 was entertaining but I wasn't all that into it.

[Gothic Sponge]

9. TOS is King.

I also loved TNG, and DS9. However, Voyager and Enterprise didn't do much for me.

[coloradodem2005]

10. You echoed my sentiments perfectly.

Though the 4th season of Enterprise has been really good.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. TNG Is King!

Wanna fight about it?

Seriously, i liked the first series, but the NextGen flipped me out. Character depth, and by season three far deeper, more exciting and smarter storylines than anything they had done to that point. DS9's storylines were pretty taut and sophisticated, but by then, TNG had proven the fanbase would lap up more complex stories.

Voyager, eh! Enterprise was fatally flawed in the concept stage. No matter how they tried to develop tension, it would never work, because we already knew that 200 years later the earth would be the political center of the Federation and the Federation would dominate the quadrant. So, no war, no conflict, no alien attack or infiltration would change the fact that we already knew the outcome.
The Professor