I'm always tempted in the back of my mind to continue to write things in the Star Trek universe, in the novels or the comics, just because I don't get to play in that universe and I don't get to hang out with those characters any more. You spend hours upon hours of your life, day after day sitting in writers' rooms, talking about these people and these situations, and it becomes very real to you. They're friends of yours, in a lot of ways.

Ronald D. Moore

Categorized in : Character Writing Real

The flower inside the fruit that is both its parent and its child. Decadent as ancestors. The portal and that which passes. Nuclear devices activated, and the machine keeps pushing time through the cogs, like paste into strings into paste again, and only the machine keeps using time to make time to make time. And when the machine stops, time was an illusion that we created free will.

Ronald D. Moore

parent flower children

It's a gift. Never lend a book.

Ronald D. Moore

book

And your typical TV series, you've got your police station, your apartment, the hospital, the starship, or whatever it is, and you're constantly going back to those sets and shooting, which saves you a lot of money and time. You can do that faster because you become really familiar with it and you become really good at it.

Ronald D. Moore

typical shooting police

There were a lot of lessons of production to be learned. On the page, the biggest thing you learn on any TV show is how to write to your cast. You write the show at the beginning with certain voices in your head and you have a way that you think the characters will be, and then you have an actor go out there, and you start watching dailies and episodes. Then, you start realizing what they can do and what they can't do, what they're good at and what they're not so good at, how they say things and what fits in their mouth, and you start tailoring the voice of the show to your cast.

Ronald D. Moore

writing character thinking

It was difficult, and yet I was very eager to do it. It was a really odd thing. I really wanted to do that story. I really wanted to write the death of Captain Kirk. I really wanted to do it in the movie.

Ronald D. Moore

odd-things stories writing

When Kirk dies it was very emotional and very strange, in the moment and all the way through the process. I'd read it in the script and I'd always be struck by what I'd just done and what we were doing, and that this was my childhood hero and I was writing his death.

Ronald D. Moore

emotional hero writing

Even then, I didn't quite know what to make of it [captain Kirk death]. I was mystified by why I was doing it, why I was so driven to do it, and why it was affecting me like it was. I still don't know what it means. It's a strange singular experience. I don't even know anyone to talk to about it because I don't know anyone who's had that experience.

Ronald D. Moore

captain-kirk captains mean

I think people are screw-ups, and even our greatest heroes are deeply flawed human beings. People make bad decisions for all the wrong reasons, and then somehow they'll do the right thing, and then somehow they'll save somebody, or they'll be compassionate. Horrible people can do wonderful things, and wonderful people can do horrible things.

Ronald D. Moore

hero people thinking

Now I know that if I'm in a fight or a big argument with executives or the studio or whoever, and it's getting to a point where it's starting to get bad, I don't have to have the fear of, "Am I strong enough to see this through? Would I really make a stand here? Would I really quit over this issue?" And I know in my heart that there is a place where I would walk away. I don't have to make it about my ego. I don't have to make it about whether I'm being strong enough or tough enough.

Ronald D. Moore

fighting strong heart

I'm used to something where you have to create an entire world, and I do like that process. I like getting the audience to believe that outside of the frame of your television set, there's a whole real world that exists, that is different from your day-to-day reality.

Ronald D. Moore

different real believe

Romance classically has tragic underpinnings to it.

Ronald D. Moore

tragic romance

I like interacting with fans and I like hearing what they say, but you have to take it all with a grain of salt.

Ronald D. Moore

grain-of-salt hearing fans

You have to realize that people who bother to log on to anything and talk about a television show is a very specific fraction of the audience. It's not the general audience, so you can't get too crazy listening to just that. That's not representative, but they are the most dedicated.

Ronald D. Moore

crazy listening people

After you get a season under your belt, you learn a lot of lessons. It's a much bigger challenge, logistically, in terms of production.

Ronald D. Moore

bigger lessons challenges

When we're shooting, I commute to the UK, every three weeks or so, and that's hard. That's probably the toughest, physically, on me. It's a much longer commute than I've ever had to deal with. And then, there are the challenges of this particular production. It's not the kind of show that has standing sets.

Ronald D. Moore

shooting three challenges

I grew up as a fan of the original Star Trek series. When I was in middle school, I think in the 6th grade, I remember going to a book fair and finding a book called The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen Whitfield, and I grabbed it and took and home and just devoured it, over and over again. It was a really influential book. It was very nuts and bolts.

Ronald D. Moore

stars home book

When I finally got my break in TV, as a staff writer, I always wanted to be at the top of that pyramid. I always wanted to make the decisions. I always wanted to be the one that was saying, "This is what the show is, and this is what the show is not. This is where we're going. It's going to be this kind of series." It was just something I always had my eye on, when I started in the business.

Ronald D. Moore

eye decision pyramids

I'm always looking for vacation. I'm always trying to step away from it to watch movies. I'm always trying to carve out free time for myself. But, I love it. I don't think I've ever not wanted to run a show. When I have a show, I'm always really excited. I always enjoy the process.

Ronald D. Moore

vacation running thinking

I'm a writer. That's who I am, at my core. I'm a writer, and then I learned production and administration, along the way. I feel like most people can learn it because production and the administration part is all about logic, and it's all about learning rules and budgets.

Ronald D. Moore

who-i-am people way

Writing is like that. You have to have some basic creative spark, and then, if you have that, I feel like you can learn the production side of it. You can learn how to be a good producer. And I guess it does take a certain balance of those two skills in your head to be a successful showrunner.

Ronald D. Moore

skills successful writing