Ron Moore interview on Wired.com: answers

[Robert Maxwell]

Pilot Ace wrote:

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I don't suggest starting a career in Academia.

To be fair, academics get paid. Most people will do things they don't particularly like if there is money involved.

V does this for free.

[The Stig]

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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It's trivial, foolish fantasizing with a heaping dollop of schadenfreude. Who thinks like that? V imagines that he has some idea of what Moore's life and character were like, as a young man; in fact he knows nothing.

I never did understand this. V has, time and time again, fabricated 'inside' info and passed it off as fact. His ridiculous screed regarding the departure of Toni Graphia from the writing staff is a prime example of just how fucking looney this guy is.

[LobsterAfternoon]

I'm honestly surprised that there's this much distaste for Ron/BSG. I think BSG has its flaws (mostly from right after New Caprica to the end of the series) but I also think that Moore is a tremendous writer and that most of BSG is really great stuff. Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions, I've just never seen this perspective before.

[Temis the Vorta]

Well I read the first part of all that, about Moore's too-loose command of the writing room, and that does seem to fit with nuBSG's weak spot, namely plot discipline and focus, but may have allowed its strength to emerge, namely creativity and the sense that this is a big, messy cosmos in which anything can happen. That resulted in a thrilling sense of danger and possibility.

I've seen more shows that are disappointing because they feel too small and constrained by some aritifically imposed formula than shows that fail because of the opposite. If Moore wants to throw another wild, creative, utterly unique mess on TV, I'll watch.

[Sindatur]

LobsterAfternoon wrote:

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I'm honestly surprised that there's this much distaste for Ron/BSG. I think BSG has its flaws (mostly from right after New Caprica to the end of the series) but I also think that Moore is a tremendous writer and that most of BSG is really great stuff. Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions, I've just never seen this perspective before.

NuBSG or Ron Moore apparently ran off with V's dog or killed his homework, or something. He frequently has a lot to say about his belief of how NuBSG went wrong or how Ron Moore is a rotten person

[Temis the Vorta]

LobsterAfternoon wrote:

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I'm honestly surprised that there's this much distaste for Ron/BSG.

It's the internet. Whatever you got, there's someone to hate it.

I've bitched about aspects of nuBSG as well but if Moore announced he was doing a new space opera series, I'd be the first one clamoring to see it as soon as humanly possible. i just hope he doesn't keep dabbling in cop show fantasy, that's an overdone genre.

He frequently has a lot to say about his belief of how NuBSG went wrong or how Ron Moore is a rotten person

The former is fair game but talking about real people as though you know them is creepy and stalkery. Also irrelevant. Moore could be a terrible person, but what do I care? As long as his shows are good, I'm happy.

The reverse is also true. George Lucas is going to give most of his Disney billions to educational causes, but that won't make the prequels suck any less.

[WeAreTheBorg]

RandyS wrote:

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Agreed. This, more than anything else is what ruined (whatever small) credibility New Galactica had with me. Kara Thrace in particular was so annoying and offensive that I had a hard time taking her seriously.

The irony is that in the fourth season, they FINALLY came up with something good. That whole "all this has happened before and will happen again" bit, and the storyline of the first Earth and how the cycle of destruction repeats. If all that had been the throughline from the beginning instead of the over-emphasis on the characters' so-called "flaws", the show would have been MUCH more interesting.

And much better.

"All this has happened before and all of it will happen again" was first referenced in the sixth episode of the first season. And if you listen to RDM talk about the show you know this is when this idea really started germinating in his mind. So yes, it really was a throughline, leaving aside the very beginning which was all about catastrophe, fallout, and survival. Similarly, flawed characters began on episode 1 and ended in the finale. It's not either-or.

[V]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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= And let's not get started with his overreaction to Trek's "perfect people" which led him to create not realisitcally flawed people, but walking bundles of attitude and emo.

Well even I think that's an unfair criticism: many different drama subgenres want to focus on "flawed" people.

But there's a difference between "realistic portrayal of flawed people" and...."make them generically angsty because we've run out of ideas".

The first two seasons, the "flawed characters" writing was great.

Think like...late X-Files, or Buffy Season 6, everyone went full-on emo in Season 3 because the writers couldn't think of WHY they'd be upset.

I mean what they called "Apollo's existential crisis" they later grudgingly admitted was that they had no idea where to take his character.

***But what really annoys me is they didn't even successfully follow through on the "flawed characters" we'd been promised:

By which I mean, consider the whole "Starbuck is screwed up because her mother beat her as a child, to the point that she had broken bones". Right? First two seasons, they mentioned this but it wasn't blatant.

Did we get a serious, developed look at realistic psychological damage that children of abuse continue to play out a adults? Heck no.

The original idea for Starbuck's storyarc in season 3, made in late season 2, was that even though "Kacey" wouldn't really be Starbuck's daughter, she's later find out that the girl was being abused by her mother, and offer to adopt her to save her from that. So it would be a storyline related to the core of Starbuck as a "flawed" character: dealing with parent-child relationships herself. And in the process, it would be an opportunity to give detailed flashbacks about Starbuck's past with her own mother.

They stated all this in podcasts. They scrapped it at the last minute (when it was kind of too late to start over with weeks to go before filming). I'm not sure why, they felt it wasn't what the character would "do" -- maybe they were worried it would "Feminize" Starbuck too much, worried about the stereotype that a woman is only sympathetic in cliche gender roles like "woman is nurturing". I don't know. This may even have a kernel of valid criticism to them. But you don't throw out that idea so close to the deadline!

Regardless, consider that either the Kacey subplot *or something like it* would have followed up on the PROMISE of realistic and flawed characters.

Instead, we barely got a handful of flashback scenes with her mother in "Maelstrom" -- filmed at the LAST minute, they said: because it was on-location filming they only had one day to film it all so they had to rush it through, not film scenes or not have a chance to polish them.

Ultimately, they barely went into Starbuck's abusive childhood, which would have been a realistic character-analysis of her current mentality.

That isn't "about the character".

Tigh being angsty because he's a functional alcoholic? Well, that's "flawed characters". Tigh being angsty because *against all plot logic* he's made a Cylon? Self-admittedly for shock value? That's not even "flawed characters".

My point is that Season 4 Starbuck's "emo angst" over "am I dead or an Angel?" ....had nothing to do with storytelling about "Flawed characters".

****But in many ways it was the "anti-Trek". God help me I said it then, but didn't know the implications.

Consider that Trek is secular humanist; Moore always wanted religion, or spiritualism.

Its not just "religion", its the whole "Enlightenment vs Romanticism" debate in the arts. Spiritualism is part of Romanticism, specifically "Mysticism".

Moore was "the Klingon guy", and that's how "Romanticism" or "Mysticism" was snuck into Trek -- aliens who have their own cultural mythology. Moore was always in touch with that stuff.

But unlike Trek, BSG went headline into "religion" but in the romanticist sense.

I was hoping for a realistic analysis of religiously-based cultural conflict. Instead, oops!, turns out the whole reason for the Cylons attacking the humans isn't because of religious beliefs they ACTUALLY have, but because they were duped by the Big Bad Cavil who reprogrammed his fellow Cylons. and Cavil himself is an athiest. In which case, this show was never actually about religiously based violence, WAS IT?

[V]

Pilot Ace wrote:

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I mostly agree with V and Ian. The show just unraveled as it went on and it makes sense why with V's context here.

Well thanks, Pilot Ace, but I'm just some slob on the internet who paid attention to the DVD commentary.

degra wrote:

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nBSG had a really great first season and first half of the second season but then it went to pieces with the Cylons becoming bland cyphers, the infamous love rectangle, the poorly edited episodes, storylines abruptly dropped, the religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo filling in for the writers as puppetmasters of the characters, a mythology that was half-baked and ultimately went nowhere, the Ellen/Tighe/Caprica/baby saga, the undoing of Tyrol's paternity on his son, overdosing on angst, the focus on bland politics, the increase of mediocre filler, unlikeable characters who felt less like people and more like pawns in Moore's own little personal anti-Trek experiment--although I find it ironic he pines for the good 'ol Trek days. The critical praise went straight to Moore's head and led the series to eventually become a pretentious bore. I tend to think it is highly overrated.

Yeah. You covered that more succinctly than I did. Though I was trying to analyze more detailed, underlying causes for these failures.

I remember that the ham-fisted retcon that "oh...well Nicky wasn't Tyron's baby this whole time" was the point when even io9.com openly lost faith in Ron.

[V]

I never did understand this. V has, time and time again, fabricated 'inside' info and passed it off as fact. His ridiculous screed regarding the departure of Toni Graphia from the writing staff is a prime example of just how fucking looney this guy is.

Well, why did *half* the core writing staff of what was being openly hailed as "the best scifi show of the past 20 years", suddenly leave between seasons 2 and 3?

Who would voluntarily leave such a show? Months after it won a Peabody Award?

I'm sorry if I took the analysis of how Ron got into Trek too far -- even I tried to stress that was wild speculation -- what I wanted to focus on was "how Ron approached writing the TNG finale, while juggling Movie 7" -- and that this really seems to be a pattern with Ron; juggling multiple projects when that's a really risky thing to do. It worked in the past, to the point that he won a Hugo, so I don't think Ron gained a fear of juggling tasks...if anything, it encouraged him that he COULD do that many projects under pressure.

I understand that as the years pass, as with any fandom, those still posting about something will increasingly be those that still like it. On a long enough timeline, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy fans will outnumber those criticizing it, because the naysayers already gave up on it and just aren't here anymore.

I'd actually be interested in seeing other shows that Ron works on as a member of a writer's team, but not the head writer. Not again. I've really been convinced that he can't "make the trains run on time".

[sidious618]

Writers voluntarily leave shows all the time. It's quite common.

[V]

Yes. But so many?

And the mystery surrounding it -- they didn't make any mention that they'd left the show, to the point that fansites didn't even know if they worked on the show until season 3 had ended.

And these weren't just minor writers; Toni Graphia was the third co-executive producer, and Carla Robinson was the Story Editor. Graphia eventually went to Terminator, and later Vlaming went to Reaper (though with enough time lag that I don't know if they left FOR these shows, or got new jobs later). But Robinson didn't leave for another show, she actually hasn't written for any show since.

[Harvey]

(1) Forget how to use the multi-quote button all of a sudden?

(2) By my count, the series had three writers depart after the second season. That's hardly unusual attrition compared to any other show.

[EliyahuQeoni]

V wrote:

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I've developed my own set of points on "what went wrong with BSG", or "how it went wrong",

Nothing "went wrong" with BSG. You may not have enjoyed it from beginning to end, but that's just a matter of taste, not a matter of anything being "wrong" with it.

[The Stig]

V wrote:

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Well, why did *half* the core writing staff of what was being openly hailed as "the best scifi show of the past 20 years", suddenly leave between seasons 2 and 3?

Who would voluntarily leave such a show? Months after it won a Peabody Award?

Seriously, V. Get help. You don't have the faintest idea what really happened in the writers room and it's time that you stopped pretending otherwise.