Ron Moore began writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation just as the show found its space legs.
Writer Ronald Moore was a Star Trek fanboy long before he joined Star Trek: The Next Generation, just as the television show found its interstellar footing during its third season. A few dozen sloppy episodes had left the impression that the show was nothing more than a sad clone of the groundbreaking ’60s sci-fi series.
“There was definitely a sense that The Next Generation was the Star Trek stepchild that nobody liked,” the Emmy-winning Moore told Wired by phone in a warp-9 interview about the series’ highlights and lowlights. “I’d go to conventions and see bumper stickers, T-shirts and paraphernalia basically saying that there was only one true Star Trek, and it wasn’t us.”
By 1994 — when The Next Generation capped seven seasons with the poignant, Hugo-winning series finale “All Good Things …” — the show had become the Star Trek franchise’s shining light, a critical and commercial television success.
With The Next Generation celebrating its 25th anniversary Friday, Wired talked with Moore about working with franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, how Trek movies differ from Trek TV shows, and why TNG would probably get airlocked today.
Wired: Reflecting on The Next Generation, how has the series affected you personally and professionally?
Ronald Moore: It’s really an amazing thing to look back on. There are personally a lot of different resonances. I was very young when I started on the show. It was where I learned my craft, and where I was introduced to the business of television production. It was where I learned to work with senior writers, and watch them come and go with the show’s politics. Those first few years held a big learning curve for me.
Looking back now on our workload, I just shake my head at our pace. Star Trek: The Next Generation was my first series, so I didn’t know anything about that when I started. I just assumed it was normal to make 26 episodes a year on a seven-day shooting schedule. Sometimes we’d do a show in six days, and it wasn’t uncommon for there to be days on the set where we shot nine or 10 pages. That was just our routine, but now I look back on it with horror. Doing that now would make me nauseous, especially since shooting for eight days is the norm out there today.
‘I’m touched and amazed to see the longevity of the show, and how many lives it has affected.’
Wired: For fewer episodes.
Moore: Thirteen episodes is a good comfortable number now. It was difficult doing 22 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. In fact, it was a marathon. I don’t know how in the hell we did 26 a year for The Next Generation. I do remember being exhausted at the end of every season, when we got two weeks off, which we had to beg Rick Berman for. The writers were always the first back in, and it was nonstop. But more than that, I’m touched and amazed to see the longevity of the show, and how many lives it has affected. I’m running into new and old fans in various parts of the business and in my personal life, because its characters in many ways have become as much a part of pop culture as the characters from the original series.
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