Attention Deficit Delirium

Ron Moore (l) and David Eick with Alessandra Torresani
at the 2010 Syfy Channel Upfront.
(Photo © 2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

I recently spoke with Caprica executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick on the red carpet at this week’s 2010 Syfy Channel Upfront. You can read my Caprica story on AOL here, but there were some extra bits left over that make for a nice feature for ADD.

So here are Moore and Eick discussing their shows, their cultural impact and last year’s controversial Battlestar Galactica finale.


How much of an impact do you think that Battlestar Galactica and Caprica have had on modern sci-fi television?
Ron Moore: That’s really hard to say. I don’t know.
David Eick: We were so busy cribbing from others that it’s been hard to keep track of who we may have begat. Our touchstones were the greats: [Robert] Heinlein, Philip K. Dick and the movies of Ridley Scott, not just the science fiction ones. I think we were fortunate to figure out a way to apply some of that aesthetic to a modern TV show. I haven’t been able to pay attention enough to what else is on out there to see what we may have inspired.
Ron Moore: To me, the biggest and most important impact is that Salma Hayek had a “Frak” T-shirt when she was on 30 Rock. That was a major score because that’s the one they put in the time capsule.

Isn’t it ironic that one’s cultural impact can come down to one word?
Ron Moore: You know what? However you can get there.

Moore with "Caprica" cast member Sasha Roiz.
(Photo © 2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Ron, I saw you speak last year at the New York Television Festival and reminisce about your later years with the Star Trek franchise and how formulaic it got. How hard is it to stay as original as possible with your storytelling on Caprica, especially after four seasons of Battlestar, and to keep the mythology fresh?
Ron Moore: I think you’re always trying to avoid clichés just as a storyteller. I think within the Battlestar universe the smartest thing we did was we developed Caprica while Battlestar was still going, so we were able to make sure that we carved enough blank space for the back story on Galactica to give ourselves a lot of room. So as a consequence there are not huge plot grids that we have to keep tying into. The continuity is not so densely packed that we have to make all this stuff line up. It feels very free, that Caprica can be whatever it wants to be.

As opposed to Lost, where as the story keeps getting bigger, you have to keep checking to make sure the continuity is accurate.
Ron Moore: That’s a very different set of…
David Eick: That was a good, cautionary tale.

Moore and Eick at ease on the red carpet.
(Photo © 2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Many fans found the Battlestar ending to be controversial. What did you think of the fans’ reaction?
David Eick: We were just talking about this. I’ll say this because I didn’t actually write it, and he did, so I could speak about him in the third person. I’m really proud of it. It’s the best possible resolution given what we had set up, and I think if anybody’s longing for something different it’s only because what had been set up was so rich and had such depth and meaning that they just didn’t want it to end. So I’m very happy with what my friend here did with the script. I think it’s the best version of any that could have been conceived.
Ron Moore: I’m very happy with it. I’m very settled with it. I was very happy with it when we wrote it, shot at and saw it, and that’s the end of the show. People can take from it what they will, but I’m very pleased with it.



Ron Moore refuses to "tech the tech" anymore. (Photo ©2009 by Bryan Reesman.)

As keynote speaker for the recent New York Television Festival “Development Day,” Battlestar Galactica and Caprica creator Ronald D. Moore addressed many different aspects of creating and sculpting the new incarnation of BSG. He also discussed how he broke into the business and the eight years he spent working as a writer and producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. The best and funniest moment during the 55-minute discussion emerged when one fan asked Moore why the decision was made in Battlestar to use technology that was similar to, and in some cases behind, our own. His response to the question was illuminating not only in that the audience learned how good the esteemed writer was at doing impersonations, but also how ridiculous sci-fi gets when it becomes diluted by Hollywood formula and how it inspired him to build a better show.

Ron Moore on the reason to not let technology overshadow the characters on Battlestar Galactica:
“That was in the original inception of the show, and that was really a reaction against Star Trek. It’s easy for me to bash Star Trek because I lived and breathed it so long, but I loved it, so let’s make that clear. I don’t hate Star Trek by any means, but I got very frustrated with the amount of technobabble I had to write on it. It became the solution to so many stories and plotlines. You would just be writing these endless pages… It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us. If you look at those scripts you’ll see that.

"We're tired of you teching around. Write a script with a good ending."

Picard would say: ‘Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.’

Geordi: ‘Captain, the tech is over teching!’

‘Well, the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.’

‘No, Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, but it won’t work!’

And then Data pops in and says: ‘Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech…’

It’s a rhythm and it works anyplace. It’s not about anything except going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it. It became so frustrating and so annoying, I just swore I was never going to write those scenes anymore. I just decided from the outset [of Battlestar] that I wanted a phone to look like a phone and wanted a retro technology. I justified it in the story because they had this back story with the Cylons — the technology had rebelled and they had gone backwards. I thought it was interesting to go that route and make the technology relatable in the same way that their coats and ties were relatable as well.”

"Hey, I was making a living. What the tech else was I supposed to do?" (Photo ©2009 by Bryan Reesman.)