Battlestar Galactica: Ronald Moore talks about Earth

CraveOnline: Are you planning a definitive end with no questions left? Will we see what life on earth is like?

RONALD MOORE: Well, I think at the end of season three, we showed you a glimpse of earth. You actually saw it and I think that you will see more of it. We will get to a place that we're going to call Earth by the end of the series. Yeah, you'll get to see it.

CraveOnline: But will we know what existence is like on earth?

RONALD MOORE: I think there's a good chance. I'm being sort of deliberately vague, not just for surprises. Also because we haven't written that show yet so it's a little premature.

CraveOnline: Do you want to leave the series open-ended to do a feature, or do you want to have a closed end?

RONALD MOORE: The plan is to end the show.  The plan is to bring us to a definitive conclusion.  There are no plans, or even thoughts, in our heads of then doing a feature or mini-series, or anything, beyond that, but it’s also the kind of thing where you never say never because who knows how we’ll feel when we actually write the conclusion.  Will there be a plotline or a story that springs to mind, or that we create on the page that then opens a later door?  It would be foolish to say, “Absolutely not.” But, right now, the plan is for a definitive end.

CraveOnline: Do you think you’ll have time to bring closure to all of the relationships between characters?

RONALD MOORE: Well, that’s the plan.  That’s how we approached the storylines as we were breaking them out for the season.  The intention is certainly to concentrate on the characters and their relationships, and bring them all to an endpoint.  I don’t know if we’ll resolve every single thing about every single relationship.  I think there’s value in leaving some things open to the imagination and having some things that are tantalizingly unresolved.  But, the intention is to move towards what is a final chapter.

CraveOnline: How will the next season play out, in terms of timing?  Is it going to be divided up again? Do you have that mapped out yet?

RONALD MOORE: At the moment, the network has not settled on a definitive schedule yet.  All we can really say definitively is that season four officially begins sometimes in early ‘08.  But, we don’t have any kind of air schedule yet. 

CraveOnline: Will reaching Earth be on tap for the beginning of the season, or is that the last shot?

RONALD MOORE: I don’t want to be that definitive about it, but the show has always been about the search for Earth.  To end the series without getting to Earth, or a version of Earth, or something we call Earth, or at least having somebody say Earth would be unsatisfying.  It will definitely figure in to this year’s storyline.
 
CraveOnline: Did your idea for the end of the show change along the way?

RONALD MOORE: I think it continued to head in the same general direction since I first started thinking about where the endpoint of the series would be. I think what's changed is sort of the path to get there, who is going to get there, what it would mean to them, what context, but I don't know that the end point of the series has really changed that much since I first started really thinking about it.

CraveOnline: Will Lucy Lawless come back?

RONALD MOORE: It's possible. It's sort of in the planning stages. Nothing firm. It's one of the things we're talking about.

CraveOnline: Will you encourage Sci-Fi to run Battlestar without a hiatus?

RONALD MOORE: The truth is, they're probably good ultimately at their own scheduling. We've bounced around the schedule a little bit. We started on Friday nights. There was sort of a strong lineup. Then some of those shows were leaving, the Stargate’s and so we changed nights. It's never been easy. The circumstances have not been easy but I think from a marketing and scheduling standpoint, it's a really strong network so we tend not to get real heavily involved in discussions about how we're being cheated or what their air pattern is for these gaps in between original episodes. They tend to have a pretty aggressive approach to things like making sure the audience that loves Battlestar Galactica is getting some measure of an injection, whether it's marathons or the occasional special that they've done or documentaries that they've done, so I think we're pretty confident in whatever it is they decide to do. 

CraveOnline: How did you view the fan reaction vs your expectations of the big Cylon reveal?

RONALD MOORE: I think it was probably what we anticipated. I sort of took as a guidepost the way people reacted to the season two finale. When we made the jump ahead, the year ahead jump and then put them all down on the planet, people were ecstatic and people were outraged. There wasn't a lot of middle ground. I kind of felt like, "Well, that's what they're going to do when we reveal the Cylons." And that's pretty much what happened. 

CraveOnline: How did you select who would be the four human Cylons?

RONALD MOORE: It was a process. We sat and we talked about it. Who would be the final four? Actually, we gravitated kind of quickly to these four names for various reasons. Tigh was the sexiest because he was the one with the biggest hatred for the Cylons. He had killed his own wife because she collaborated with the Cylons. He was a drunk and he had all these completely human qualities and there was something amazing about realizing that he's a Cylon. Anders had participated in two resistance movements and was drawn to Kara Thrace for reasons unknown and she had a specific destiny within the mythos of the show. Tyrol was the everyman, in some ways one of the most human characters and there was something amazing about finding out. He was just very unexpected to believe that he was a Cylon and yet we'd already built into his backstory that he had a religious connection that seemed greater than anyone else's. He was at the temple of the five on the algae planet. He was sort of drawn there by reasons that had nothing to do with logic or rationality, had had a specific sort of connection. He had dreamed about being a Cylon, he'd had emotional reactions, thought he was in love with a Cylon at the beginning of the miniseries. And then Tory, Tory was a wildcard. Tory was the one that we knew the least about and we could have more fun with because we weren't locked into as many choices with her as we were with the others.

CraveOnline: Where will you take their four storylines in season four?

RONALD MOORE: Well, you can see from the end of the third season that they all sort of are still the same people. They're still the same characters. They didn't switch over and become robots suddenly. So essentially you're going to see an extension of that initial moment where they try to figure out what does this mean to them. If they're Cylons, when did that begin? What are their true backstories and what are they meant to do? What are they supposed to do? Are they dangerous to each other? Are they dangerous to the ship? Do they trust any of the people around them? Should they keep the secret only among themselves? That's essentially where their storylines are going to pick up. 

CraveOnline: And, the first episode of season 4 is going to be a two-hour prequel?

Ron Moore: It’s two episodes that are not really part of the fourth season.  They’re not connected to the cliff-hanger where we ended season 3.  We were approached by home video, in between the seasons, who expressed an interest in releasing a couple episodes on DVD for domestic and foreign distribution and, as we talked about them internally, we realized that there was no way we could really pick up the cliffhanger in that form, and we would preserve that for the official beginning of the fourth season.  The way that made the most sense to all of us was to go back a little bit in time, not before the series began, but back a season or two ago, and tell a story then.  We found a way to connect the events of that story to things that will happen in the fourth season.  It sets up some things that will happen in season 4. 

CraveOnline: It will also air?

RONALD MOORE: It will air on Sci-Fi Channel.  I don’t have a date for you, but the plan, as I understand it, is to air the episodes on Sci-Fi, and that it will be released on DVD either the next day, or two days later, or something like that. 

CraveOnline: Before the official season 4 starts?

RONALD MOORE: Yes.  The extended episodes, as we’re calling them, will be broadcast in the fall and the official start of season 4 will begin in early ‘08.

CraveOnline: Are there specific episodes in season two the prequel will take place between?

RONALD MOORE: There is a specific point that I cannot remember off the top of my head to be honest, but essentially it ties into the story of the Pegasus, which you know was destroyed at the beginning of season three. There are sequences that involve Admiral Cain but it does not take place like during the Pegasus and Resurrection ship because those episodes pretty much happened continuously. But some of the events of the Pegasus's backstory back during the original Cylon attack are dramatized. And then other events after the death of Admiral Cain while the Pegasus was still in the ragtag fleet are covered in the two part-er.

CraveOnline: What has surprised you most about your run with Battlestar Galactica?

RONALD MOORE: The response the show has generated, the amount of press that we’ve gotten and the acclaim and the awards that the show has garnered has been gratifying and very surprising.  I think I speak for David and I when I say that, at the beginning of the whole process, we believed in what we were doing and thought, “This is going to be good.  We can really make a good show here,” but I don’t think we really anticipated we’d be getting a Peabody and we’d get those kind of accolades.  That’s really just been icing on the cake of what’s been a really wonderful, creative experience.

CraveOnline: Did you have long-term plans for the series, or have you been figuring it out as you went?  And, how do you feel about the amount of time you’ve had to tell that story?

RONALD MOORE: Each season, we mapped out where we wanted to go by the end of that season.  That’s how I like to approach things.  At the beginning of season one, we talked about where the end of the first year would be.  And then, into the second year, we broke it up into groups of the first 10 and the second 10, and kept that style of planning, all through the show.  I would say, somewhere mid-way through the second season, I started thinking seriously about what the end of the series itself might be.  Ideas for where we were headed and what it all meant started to coalesce over the course of the third season.  In season three, we started talking in earnest about, “Well, okay, if we do end it next year, what would it really be?,” and it just felt like, “Yeah, this is the right time to do it.”  In terms of whether we’ve had enough time, I feel like we have.  We’re really taking our cues from the story itself, and it just feels like the story has moved forward aggressively.  What I’m proud of about the series is that it’s been unafraid to take risks and it’s been unafraid to move strongly forward, instead of trying to tread water.  It just feels like the momentum of the series is now moving towards a conclusion. 

CraveOnline: A lot of viewers see very specific metaphors in the show for what’s going on in the world today.  Do you ever feel like fans get too literal in their own interpretations, and do you ever wish that people would just relax and enjoy the show on its own merits?

RONALD MOORE: Part of the point of science fiction, at least in its roots, was always to give the audience an allegory to present a metaphor for what was taking place in the culture.  I think we’ve always enjoyed, and taken a certain satisfaction in, the fact that there are those who watch the show and assume that there is a liberal bias and those who watch the show and assume there’s a pro-military bias, and that’s how it’s supposed to work.  You’re supposed to bring your own point of view to it, and then be able to extrapolate out whatever messages you want.  The show tends to not be terribly definitive.  We were pretty clear from the outset that this wasn’t going to be about protagonists espousing lessons and rules, and arriving at the end to save the day and tell everyone what was right and what was wrong.  The line separating the protagonists and antagonists would often blur with the audience often asking themselves if they’re rooting for the right side.  There’s always going to be a question mark of sorts at the end of most stories, and I think that applies to the political element as well.  There really isn’t a definitive answer to anything that’s being espoused by any given story.  It’s more just about the idea that there are two sides to every equation.

CraveOnline: Now that you have a timetable, is there something you had in mind that you didn't have a chance to do, or something about the pacing you would change?

RONALD MOORE: I don't know if there's any regrets that we never did. No, I don't think so. I think everything that we kind of talked about found its way into the show in one form or another. The only regret that I remember we had towards the end of the third season was saying, "Oh, you know, too bad we got rid of the Pegasus. That was the great ship and it's too bad we couldn't keep it around longer and tell some more stories." Now we get a chance to do that too. 

CraveOnline: Do you still regret the Sagitarian plot like you said on the podcast?

RONALD MOORE: I think it was a misstep but also in the planning of it, it was a storyline that we were very excited about, we really liked. It was very charged and had a lot of racial, political overtones to it which are the things that we generally love to do in the show. So I can look back at it and say, "Yeah, ultimately, that didn't pay off and we had to sort of retrofit a lot of things to cover our tracks," but I think when you're doing a show like this, if you're going to swing for the fences and keep trying to knock 'em out of the park, there's going to be a few times you're just going to whip and you're not going to make it. I think that just goes with the territory.

CraveOnline: Was it easier breaking 20 stories for this season since it's the last?

RONALD MOORE: Yeah, I mean, the burden then became okay, now we have a great deal to wrap up and bring resolution to and we wanted to pay off a lot of things and we wanted to tie up a lot of loose threads. It felt like we had more than enough to get to where we were going to, whereas usually when you're facing the 20 episode order, it's like, "Okay, whew, we need 20 of these? Where are we going to get 20 of these?" You have to start breaking it down into smaller, bite sized chunks and move yourself along. This time, it was almost like, "Okay, let's make sure we've got enough time to get everywhere we need to go."

CraveOnline: How does it feel, one year after the Peabody, and does it take the sting away from losing at the Emmys?

RONALD MOORE: Well, hope springs eternal and we'll see what this year's slate of Emmy nominations bring us. We certainly hope that we score some nominations in a lot of different categories, but you never know. I guess the answer to your question is the Peabody was a tremendous honor. It's a singular honor in a lot of ways. I think I'm perfectly willing to rest on that laurel. It was just a great moment in the life of a show.

CraveOnline: Was having a plan more freeing or restricting in the design of the show?

RONALD MOORE: It felt very freeing. It felt like we had a definitive direction. There was a premise. This is a search. The ragtag fleet is searching for earth with the remainders of humanity and they're pursued by the Cylons. It just felt like, "Okay, well, that's the path and it's a question of what to do along the way." The show just had a strong point of view and a definitive direction. I think it was very helpful.

CraveOnline: Is anything going on with The Thing?

RONALD MOORE: I'm working on the script. 

CraveOnline: Any date you're aiming for?

RONALD MOORE: I don't think they've officially decided. I think until they get the script, they don't really make the decision on when it's going to go.