IMDB lists him as a developer.
Rockne only has 2 writing credits, the pilot, and no producer credits.
He's long gone.
No doubt, yet I was talking about the development and implementation of the world. His influence is there in the fabric of the show. He worked on
Defiance for 9 months before stepping down to do another show called "Cult"
Rockne helped create the fraking show.
Excerpt from an interview with Rockne S O'Bannon: (
http://www.iconicinterview.com/2013/08/07/rockne-obannon-farscape-revolution-defiance-cult/)
When you were asked to develop the “Defiance” universe, what did they give you as the premise that you had to run with?
They knew they wanted to have some sort of town with aliens and humans intermingling, but the other versions they had were all a little more amorphous, and I looked at it and said, I’d love to do something that takes on the classic tropes of the John Ford Westerns and television Westerns. I thought that was a great starting place for this, but not to play it like a Western at all. As I kept saying to everybody in production and to the writers — this isn’t retro. They’re not reverting to the 1860s. It’s 30 years in the future, but it’s a world where technology has been churned under, for the most part, or at least conventional technology. I came up with the idea that the town of Defiance is built on top of the old St. Louis. St Louis is down under us, so the St. Louis Arch, we’re not seeing the whole thing — we’re really only seeing the top portion of it. But it gave us opportunities for stories that would allow us to go down into subterranean St. Louis. And then there was Nolan as the sheriff. The different races were already established by the game folks, so then it was just a matter of plugging in who was doing what. The Tarrs — Datak, and Stahma who is the Lady Macbeth. I was involved for the first nine months and brought in the staff — and in the meantime, Mark Pedowitz took over The CW and he was aware of the script for “Cult” from when he was at ABC, and the first pilot he ordered as the new president was “Cult.” So suddenly I get a call saying the CW wants to produce “Cult” as a pilot, and I was in the enviable and not-so-enviable position of having two shows, both of which I loved, in front of me. “Cult” was my baby, so Syfy was very cool about letting me go. Kevin Murphy, whom I had hired as my number two, an experienced showrunner, himself, has done a fantastic job [taking over "Defiance."] So I transitioned over onto “Cult.”
Did you have any part in the casting of “Defiance”?
Grant Bowler is the only one. We had obviously looked at other names, but in terms of someone who is so poised to be a star of his own show, Grant was it. He’s a great action star, but his relationship with Irisa, his adopted daughter, is just fabulous. He carries the show!
