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The first details of an upcoming Ron Moore show just hit the web:
Exclusive: First Details Of Ron Moore's New Show Virtuality
When we first heard Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore was doing a show about a deep-space long-haul crew who lose themselves in virtual reality entertainments, our first thought was, "Oh great, a whole show of Star Trek holodeck episodes." But Moore's new Fox pilot, Virtuality, is a lot more multi-layered and twisted than that, judging from the tons of script pages that have turned up. The pages are "casting sides," for actors auditioning for roles in the series, but they appear to be taken from the actual pilot script. Details, with spoilers, after the jump.
There are three strands in the Virtuality pilot, and only one of them relates to virtual reality as such:
1) The ship, the Phaeton, is nearing a slingshot maneuver around Jupiter, which will either send it back to Earth or send it hurtling forwards to its destination of Eridani. This is the "go/no-go" decision point, which will decide the crew's fate once and for all. At the same time, the ship's doctor, Eyal Meyer, has Parkinson's Disease, which throws an extra wrinkle into the tough decision. Should the ship go forward and risk not having a doctor on board? If they don't go, it may be 20 years before humans can try again — which may be too late. There are also glitches with the ship, and emergency repairs may cost one character their life.
2) The crew are all spending time in virtual reality "modules," including everything from a restful seaside scene to a Civil War battle where Confederate troops attack Union soldiers, only to fall into an ambush. In all their "modules," a mysterious figure known as the Green-Eyed Man shows up and kills the humans in gruesome ways. (Unlike in The Matrix and other scifi classics, being killed in VR doesn't harm you in real life, but it's jarring.) Is the Green-Eyed Man a hack by one of the crew members? A computer glitch? Or something else? Everybody suspects Billie, the computer geek — until she's raped by the Green Eyed Man, in a brutal and horrible scene.
3) Even as the crew is stressed out by the experience of being in deep space alone for 10 years, and losing themselves in VR entertainments, they're also being watched. In particular, the ship is one huge "reality TV" show, which is broadcast back on Earth. The ship's computer whiz, Billie, becomes the "host" of the show, which is struggling with declining ratings — so she has to find ways to increase the show's "drama" to make it more compelling viewing. There are interview segments interspersed with sequences where Billie films the crew arguing. The crew have to take part, or risk breaching their contracts — which could mean their families back on Earth lose their preferential housing. (There are tons of hints that Earth is one huge ecological cesspool, and liveable dry land is at a premium, with long waitlists
The show's most freaky character — sort of a cross between Gaius Baltar and Brother Cavil — is Roger Fallon. He's the ship's therapist (and may have to take over as doctor if Meyer is incapacitated.) But he's also the producer and director of the ship's "reality TV" show, which places him in a weird conflict of interest. He's supposed to be listening to the crew's problems, even as he's urging Billie to create more "drama" to boost the show's ratings. He's a manipulative snake, who's a famous self-help guru with a book that's almost as popular as the Bible back on Earth. We're clearly supposed to hate him and yet find him oddly compelling. His wife, Rika, is having a virtual reality affair with the ship's captain, Frank Pike. (Yes, the captain is really named Pike.)
Other simmering subplots: Manny and Val, a gay couple, have been stuck on galley duty and hate cooking, plus they're bad at it. Another married couple, Alice and Kenji, are having sex in weird spots all over the ship and trying to keep it secret for some reason. (Plus it seems as though Alice had an abortion so she could go on the Phaeton's space flight, and her sister just had a baby back on Earth.) Billie is adjusting to being the host of the "reality TV" show, and her VR module is a hilarious scenario where she's a Joan Jett-esque rock star who's also a superspy. (And her band are all super-spies too.) Another character, a scientist named Jules Braun, is having the computer create a virtual reconstruction of his dead son, Shawn.
Bottom line: It's a bleak and disturbing look at the effects of a long space trip on humans, as dark in its own way as Battlestar Galactica. It sort of reminded me of the underrated film Sunshine, in the focus on psychological drama in cramped quarters, plus the dangerous repair sequence and the fact that the ship has a hydroponic garden. But the "reality TV" aspect adds a whole extra sardonic layer to the cake. [Thanks to Lukas for the heads up]
Source
Honestly, I'm interested and annoyed by this. It sounds interesting, but totally unrealistic (as much as you can apply to a SciFi Show.) Space mission = good. Crew dymanics = good. Ron Mood = Good. Reality TV show? Um, what?
Another article regarding Galactica has popped up on the SciFiWire:
Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald D. Moore told SCI FI Wire that he's eager to direct the show's first post-writers' strike episode in his debut behind the camera.
"I'm very excited," Moore said in an interview. "It should be a treat to work with the cast and crew in a different context. It's my first time out. I'll make plenty of mistakes, but I'll have a good support system to sort of save me from myself. And it'll be fun."
Moore laughed when asked if there's anywhere he could possibly place a camera that's not already been utilized by one of his predecessors. "I don't think so, and that's the kind of trap you try not to fall into, because then you start just trying to be clever and [try to] do something that no one else has done," he replied. "I think what's important to me on my first time out is to tell the story well, to really tell a good story, to really make it an interesting character piece and just have a piece of film at the end that I'm proud of."
Moore's episode will likely premiere in 2009. Battlestar Galactica will kick off its fourth and final season April 4 at 10 p.m. with "He That Believeth in Me."
Man, that would have absolutely rocked - Joss Whedon on Battlestar?
According to the Watcher:
'Battlestar Galactica' stars visit Letterman; Joss Whedon bows out of directing the show
Patience, “Battlestar Galactica” fans. It’s not too long until the fourth season of the Sci Fi show begins April 4.
Battlestarwomen And if you’re really dying to see the “Battlestar” cast, they’ll be reading the Top 10 list on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on Wednesday. Galatica Sitrep has more on who'll be doing the countdown.
I garnered some tidbits about the new season from Ron Moore, the executive producer of “Battlestar Galactica” in an interview last week. I’ll post a full transcript of our hourlong talk in early April, but until then, here are few nuggets of news:
* Moore is directing Episode 12 of the fourth and final season; his first-ever directing gig begins March 25. Because Episode 11 had been filmed before the writers' strike began last fall, Moore’s episode is the first episode that the “Battlestar” staff will shoot when the show resumes production in Vancouver. As it happened, the post-strike shooting schedule “worked out for the best,” Moore said. “I’m up here prepping the episode and no one has anything to do but help me. I’m spending a lot of time with the director of photography walking through the sets and talking about things. If we were in the normal production mode, he wouldn’t have the luxury of spending so much time with me.”
* I asked Moore about the rumor that Joss Whedon had been tentatively lined up to direct one of the final episodes of “Battlestar.” Moore confirmed that “Buffy” creator Whedon, a big fan of “Battlestar,” very much wanted to direct a “Battlestar” episode, but it looks as though he probably will not be able to do so, thanks to his commitment to a new Fox series, “Dollhouse.” “He really wanted to do it, but I’m dubious that it will work out,” Moore said.
* Filmmaker John Dahl, who had been lined up to helm an episode before the strike, is still directing an episode of “Battlestar”: He’ll work on Episode 13.
* Fan favorite Romo Lampkin, a wily lawyer played by Mark Sheppard, will be back for one episode before the first 10 episodes of Season 4 finish airing in June. Lampkin should be back once more before the series wraps up for good, Moore said.
* Moore has no idea when the final 10 episodes of the 20-episode fourth season will be shown. The show’s cast and crew will be shooting episodes until June, and it’ll take until at least fall to finish post-production on the last batch of “Battlestar” outings.
* There is renewed interested from Sci Fi in the proposed spinoff series “Caprica,” but Moore has no idea when or even if that pilot will be greenlit.
* By the way, before the strike, he and fellow “Battlestar” writer Jane Espenson had been working on “Warehouse 13,” a series in development at Sci Fi, but both have exited the project.
* Along with several other film and TV projects, Moore and fellow “Battlestar” writer Michael Taylor have a sci-fi flavored pilot in development at NBC.
* Finally, Moore, who worked as a writer for many years on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” recently wangled a visit to the Los Angeles set of the new “Star Trek” film, which is being directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Damon Lindelof (both of whom are also executive producers of “Lost”).
Here’s the part of our conversation that touched on that experience:
MR: I saw a trailer for the new “Star Trek” film over the holidays and I got excited, just because it was a little glimpse of “Trek” and I realized we hadn’t had anything from that realm in so long. Do you have any feelings about the new feature film? Will you go see it?
Ronald D. Moore: “Oh, I’ll see it. I actually got to go down to visit the set. I actually wangled a set visit that I can say nothing about, other than that I was very excited. It was really a treat for me personally. I was very grateful to J.J. and Damon for making that happen. I saw the sets and thought the production design was just great. I just really liked the visual of it. And the vibe on the set was incredibly positive and very up. People were feeling good and confident and happy. It was really great for me. It was great to be back at Paramount and to walk into a stage where there was a Federation starship.”
MR: Did you think Paramount did the right thing by going outside the “Trek” family, so to speak, for this film?
RDM: “Absolutely. I think that was a very smart decision. God love all of us that did all the series and the movies during those years, but that’s a long time. There were a lot of tired people. A lot of tired blood. And it’s time to bring in fresh eyes to it all.
“I think it’s akin to when they brought in Harve Bennett to [write the second ‘Star Trek’ movie,] ‘The Wrath of Khan.’ [Creator] Gene [Roddenberry] had lived and breathed ‘Trek’ for a long time. He did [‘Star Trek:] The Motion Picture,’ and ‘The Motion Picture’ is what it is – I certainly went to see it and loved it at the moment, but it was bloated and [had] overruns and there a sense of it not really finding its feet yet.
“Then they brought in [writer] Harve Bennett, who had no connection to the show, and [director Nicholas] Meyer, who had never seen the show, and they reinvented it. They started over. They went at the costumes differently, the storytelling, the vibe of it, the style of story that they were going to do. They rescued the whole franchise. ‘Wrath of Khan’ makes all the subsequent ‘Star Trek’ projects possible.
“And I think that’s where they are with the franchise now. They’ve brought in someone new, someone with no connection to the what’s come before, who cares about it and says, ‘Wipe the slate, let’s make this version.’”
MR: Have you seen the script?
RDM: “No, I didn’t even ask. I didn’t ask anything about the plot. I just wanted to take a look and be nostalgic.”
With various podcasting news:
March 26, 2007
Q & A Podcast on its way
I'm uploading a podcast to SciFi.com tonight that is a recording of an extended Q & A session I did with a large group of fans in Berkeley following the airing of the finale on Sunday night. I'll record my normal podcast on the episode tomorrow and hopefully they'll have it up day after tomorrow.
(And yes, I'm steadfastly not commenting on the fact that my last blog was months ago.)
Posted by Ron at 11:44 PM
The SciFi channel webpage has posted up an interview with Galactica producer Ron Moore:
Executive producer Ronald D. Moore offers a sneak peek at the third season of Battlestar Galactica—and beyond
By Melissa Perenson
Battlestar Galactica returns this week with the start of its red-hot third season. Set about four months after the show's doozy of a second-season cliffhanger, year three's opener focuses on the Colonials and their life under the thumb of the Cylons on New Caprica. In our first installment of interviews with Galactica cast and crew, executive producer Ronald D. Moore plays it close to the vest, giving us some juicy morsels about the upcoming season, the forthcoming prequel and the show's creative process.
What are you trying to do with the upcoming season?
Moore: Well, a lot of it was informed by where we ended the second season, which we ended with them down on a planet with the Cylons a year later in our narrative, with the Cylon occupation beginning on New Caprica. Now, the remaining [Colonial] ships are out there someplace, trying to figure out a way to get back and rescue the people down on New Caprica. The show is going to deal with suicide bombing, it's going to deal with issues of security and freedom, and it's going to deal with issues of collaboration in a time of war and freedom of speech.
We're going to be going through some pretty tough stuff this season. We're going to lose some people along the way, and there are some beloved characters that are not going to make it all the way through the season. But we're also going to get some victories that we've never gotten before, and we're going to get an insight into the Cylon society by doing a long-running story inside a Cylon base ship for the first time: We'll get a firsthand look at how they operate and what they're all about. I think it's a really interesting season.
The series was created five years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11. It's been interesting to see how the show is paralleling the events and issues in the real world, only in the context of the struggle between the Colonials and the Cylons.
It's been fun to sort of move back and forth on the perspective and to take issues and themes that are happening around us today and then do them differently. I really like the fact that there are some times when you're not quite sure who you should be rooting for in the show. And I think that's a really interesting accomplishment if you can take a viewer to a place where suddenly they're not sure who the good guys and who the bad guys are. I think that's a really provocative place.
Tell us about the Web-only episodes that appeared online at SCIFI.com, leading up to the start of this season.
Moore: [The network] came to us about webisodes almost a year ago. And at first it took a while to work out some of the logistics involved, budgets, legal questions. We still haven't cracked all the questions involved, but we moved forward with doing them [anyway]. We decided we'd do 10 webisodes, each of them two to three minutes in length, because that was what's [considered] the ideal download length for people. We wanted them to be one story that would lead up to and help launch the season-three premiere. So I essentially took it to the writer's room and threw it to them and said, "OK. Come up with a bunch of ideas." And they did. They churned out a couple of pages of ideas and concepts that we could do for webisodes. We culled through them and decided on the resistance movement, the one that we're doing now. It seemed like the best for a variety of reasons, and it set nicely backstory to some events that are going to take place in the television show. If you're a fan, it's like "Here's added background and texture about why certain things happen." But if you don't see them, you don't lose anything. You could still watch the series without having to see the webisodes.
Battlestar has been on quite a roll lately, from rave critical reviews to awards. Earlier this year the series nabbed a George F. Peabody award—something that few series ever achieve, let alone series categorized as science fiction.
Moore: That was an enormously gratifying and very surprising award to get. It's not something that's usually even on your radar, because it's just so outside the norm to get that. There's no nomination: They just tell you you've won, and so it was very surprising. I remember we went to the ceremony in New York, sitting in this big ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria, and they were showing clips of all the winners. You're there with people that are doing documentaries about AIDS in Africa, and Katrina and all kinds of really weighty issues—and [then they showed] Battlestar Galactica.
What can you tell us about the status of Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar?
Moore: It's in script right now. We're doing some rewrites for the network, and we're waiting to see whether they're going to give it a green light or not.
How will Caprica differ from Battlestar?
Moore: Caprica is set 50 years before Battlestar Galactica. It's the story of the creation of the Cylons. And it's a very different format than Galactica. It's not a war show; it's not even a space show or an action-adventure show. It's a family drama and a political drama about corporations and politics. It's almost [more] like a sci-fi soap than it is an action-adventure series. And again, we're trying to do something different within the genre and give a different flavor to the material than Battlestar Galactica does. [The story] centers around two families, one of whom owns an enormous corporation, à la Microsoft, and it builds the first Cylons; then the other family is Adama's father, who's a lawyer at the time and starts to become an opponent of what they're trying to do.
Doing a prequel concurrent with the original series is unheard of. What made you decide to go this route?
Moore: David [Eick] and I have been kicking around ideas for a spinoff for a while. We talked about all the different possibilities. Do another Battlestar, do the first Cylon war, etc. We started talking about a prequel as a concept, as something that we were interested in, but we hadn't really worked out a storyline. We'd had a couple of preliminary talks with the studio and the network about it. And then separately, Remi Aubuchon came in to the studio to pitch a series of his own that had a lot of similar themes and a lot of similar ideas to what we were considering for Galactica. So the studio called us and said, "Why don't the three of you get in a room and see if there's something there?" So we sat down, and we all got along really well, and the idea started to really come together.
How many episodes are you writing this season?
Moore: This season I wrote the first two hours myself, and then I rewrote a handful of the next few. I think my next credited episode probably won't be until possibly one of the finale episodes. Although at this point I might not even do that. I might just take a hand in rewriting.
Do you have a particular five-year plan in mind for Battlestar?
Moore: It's still pretty organic. I still take it in 10-episode chunks. We've mapped out clearly the end of the third season, and we know how we're ending this season. I haven't started the conversation yet about the first 10 episodes of the fourth season, but I have a general idea of where we're going to start.
At the beginning of each year, I always feel like "Oh man, this may be the last one, because I don't know if I can fill up 20 episodes." But somehow by the end of a season you always end up with more stories than you could ever get around to doing. It's a judgment call. Right now I feel like maybe we have just another couple of years in the show. But you ask me again next year and I might give you the exact same answer. So it's really hard to say. When I was at Star Trek, I had two different experiences. On Next Generation, I think the writing staff universally felt like we went one year too long. The seventh season was not our best season, and we probably should have ended at six, because we all felt that that was one of our best seasons. At Deep Space Nine, we all felt like the show was going out at a high point, like it still had more life left in it and we could have gone for another year or two, because we still had plenty of stories to tell. And that's the point when you do want to get off the stage, when you're at the top of your game and you have more to give, but you leave [the audience] wanting more.
How does the writing staff approach writing the stories we see on screen?
Moore: I like to stroke out the first about 10 episodes in a generalized arc, and I'll discuss that with the writing staff. And then they'll start generating ideas, story suggestions and pitches, and there might be some specific story ideas I've got, too. We'll put them [all] up on a big board in the writer's room, and we start culling through that to decide "OK, here are the first three or four episodes; now let's break them." I'll have a preliminary discussion with the writing staff about what the episode is and what we want to try to do here, and then I'll set them free. They go off and they sit in a room for hours on end and hash out a storyline and start to break the show and put it up on a big board. And then when they're ready, they'll call me in and they'll run me through the break. And usually I'll change it and talk, and we'll go through some points, and we'll rework it a few times, and maybe they'll go and break it one more time, and I'll come back and review it again. I'll sign off on it at some point, and the writer of that specific episode will now generate a story outline that is then sent up to the network and the studio for comments.
Once the script is written, how much do you rely on storyboarding the scenes, early in the game?
Moore: It depends on the requirements of the particular show. For action sequences—and depending on the director—we like to have a storyboard artist engaged. Our visual-effects department usually delivers some kind of storyboard, and oftentimes now they've gotten to the point where it's actually an animatic. It's like a video storyboard that they'll use to show you movements—how the fighters will move and what Galactica is doing. It's pretty sophisticated in terms of visual-effect storyboards. The other storyboards [we do] really depend on the director. Some directors need it, some directors want it, and other directors hate it. And sometimes we'll force them to do it if we feel like it's a particularly complicated sequence; other directors, they don't storyboard at all. Each episode is a little different.
Do you continue to enjoy working on science fiction?
Moore: I do enjoy it. There are times I feel like "Gosh, I need to do something with people without space suits." But I keep finding things that are fascinating to do, and the canvas is just much broader. You can play a much bigger game of "what if?" in science fiction than in contemporary drama. And I find that challenging, so I continue to do it. But I'm also reworking a pilot for FX at the moment that has nothing to do with science fiction. And I have other movies and things on my desk that I continue to try to do.
Ron Moore has just written an article for the New York Times about Star Trek and Science Fiction:Mr. Universe
By RONALD D. MOORE
Published: September 18, 2006Altadena, Calif.
FOUR decades ago, when the starship Enterprise first settled into orbit around Planet M-113 on Sept. 8, 1966, I was 2 years old. I could not have known it at the time, but “Star Trek” would literally change my life.
To say that any television show has changed one’s life is to invite both mockery and pity for a poor, shuttered geek who must surely have been denied direct sunlight and the attention of women for the better part of his days. But in lieu of offering documentary proof that I do not, in fact, still reside in my parents’ basement, let me simply tell you how “Star Trek” informed the way I look at the world.
“Star Trek” is often reduced to kitsch: Kirk’s paunch, Spock’s pointy ears, green-skinned alien girls. But it was more than escapism and rubber-suited aliens. It was a morality play, with Capt. James T. Kirk as a futuristic John F. Kennedy piloting a warp-driven PT-109 through the far reaches of the galaxy.
Kirk, for me, embodied an American idea: His mission was to explore the final frontier, not to conquer it. He was moral without moralizing. Week after week, he confronted the specters of intolerance and injustice, and week after week found a way to defeat them without ever becoming them. Jim Kirk may have beat up his share of bad guys, but you could never imagine him torturing them.
A favorite quote: “We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we won’t kill today.” Kirk clearly understood humanity’s many flaws, yet never lost faith in our ability to rise above the muck and reach for the stars.
“Star Trek” painted a noble, heroic vision of the future, and that vision became my lodestar.
As I grew into adolescence, the show provided a handy reference against which to judge the questions that my young mind began to ask: What is the obligation of a free society toward the less fortunate? Does an “advanced” culture have the right to spread its ideas among more “primitive” ones? What does it mean to be human, and at what point do we lose our humanity to our technology?
And as I grew into an adult, and my political views took shape, I treasured “Star Trek” as a dream of what my country could one day become — a liberal and tolerant society, unafraid to live by its ideals in a dangerous universe, and secure in the knowledge that its greatness derived from the strength of its ideas rather than the power of its phasers.
In my 20’s, through a combination of luck and determination, I fulfilled my childhood dream — I became a writer for “Star Trek.”
For 10 years, I helped propel the latter-day incarnations of “Trek” into new territory while keeping alive the set of moral principles I’d taken to heart. As I plotted the adventures of the Enterprise-D and the travails of the space station Deep Space 9, I gradually became interested in pushing the boundaries of “Star Trek,” and began to let Captains Picard and Sisko find the shades of gray in a universe Kirk sometimes saw only in black and white.
Science fiction on film and television has, over the past four decades, moved decisively away from the optimism of “Star Trek.” “Blade Runner,” “Alien” and “The Matrix” posit much darker, dystopian futures; even the “Star Wars” movies posit the rise of a galactic empire founded on “the dark side.” Social and commercial explanations abound for this shift, but my theory is that “Star Trek” set the gold standard for the idealistic vision of tomorrow and no one has successfully challenged it.
Nowadays, it may appear that I’ve turned a blind eye to my lodestar as the crew of the battlestar Galactica behave in ways that would’ve been unthinkable in the “Star Trek” universe that Gene Roddenberry created. But “Battlestar Galactica” remains very much informed by the lessons I learned from that slightly paunchy man in the gold pajama top on the good ship Enterprise.
My characters may not have all the answers (sometimes they’re not even aware of the questions) but they contain kernels of both good and evil in their hearts and continue to struggle for salvation and redemption against the darker angels of their natures. Their defeats are many, their victories few, but somehow, some way, they never give up the dream of finding a better tomorrow.
And, thanks to a 40-year-old television show, neither do I.
Ronald D. Moore is the writer of “Battlestar Galactica.”Source
