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Alternate Universe | RON MOORE '86 IS TAKING SCI FI WHERE NO PERSON HAS GONE BEFORE

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK IS NOT A real person.

This truth may seem self-evident, but it bears pointing out when you're talking about the life and career of writer-producer Ron Moore '86. As a child,Moore was a big fan of the original "Star Trek" television series; as an adult, he spent a decade working on three of its spin-offs. And as a screenwriter, he co-wrote the film Star Trek: Generations, in which Captain Kirk met his demise.

Moore got death threats. For killing off a fictional character, some of the show's more unhinged fans threatened to kill him for real. "Somebody got hold of my home number and was leaving these deeply profane messages," Moore recalls. " 'You S.O.B. --how dare you kill Captain Kirk? He's immortal. I'm gonna come and [expletive] kill you.' It was kind of disturbing. It's not just a show to some people."

That particular fact was hardly news to Moore; after ten years as a writer-producer on "The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," and "Voyager," he was already well acquainted with the oddities of "Trek" fandom-- like the anonymous person who, every week for a decade, sent dozens of travel brochures from around the world to the production offices in envelopes crafted from old National Geographic covers, with no explanation. "There was a level of insanity that was ever-present around those shows,"Moore says.

His latest project--a re-imagining of the 1978 cult TV show "Battlestar Galactica" for cable's Sci Fi Channel--has also ruffled the feathers of some diehard fans. The new incarnation, like the original, follows a hardy band of humans whose home worlds have been destroyed by the Cylons, robots created to serve them. Like Jews wandering in the desert, they're seeking a promised land: a planet called Earth. But Moore's "Galactica" is no slavish homage to the original. One of its main characters, the crackerjack fighter pilot Starbuck, has been recast as a woman--a seemingly innocuous bit of artistic license, but enough to get Moore vilified on the Internet.

Even more provocatively, he's taken the man-versus-machine concept and tossed it on its head. Not only do some of the dreaded Cylons have human form--and human feelings--they also have religion. In Moore's universe, the Cylons believe in one true God; the humans are polytheists, worshiping a pastiche of Greek and Roman deities. "It's interesting to keep playing with the audience's expectations,"Moore says. "Who are you supposed to be rooting for? I like the fact that the show's complex. It tries not to present itself as a morality tale. It's very anti-'Star Trek' in that sense. On 'Star Trek,' each week you're learning something as Captain Picard or Captain Kirk solves a tricky moral dilemma."

If this new "Galactica" has contemporary undertones, it's no accident. Although the remake has the same basic premise as the original--the near-annihilation of a democratic civilization at the hands of a monolithic enemy--Moore and his colleagues knew it would have particular resonance in the age of terrorism. "I realized if you tried to tell that story today, the audience would bring an emotional connection to 9/11," he says. "They'd look at the show through very different eyes than in 1978. There was an opportunity to do science fiction that was relevant, that could comment on a lot of things in society today."

Moore's love of sci fi goes back to his childhood in rural California, where his mother was a teacher and his father a football coach and school superintendent. Growing up, he penned short stories and wrote and directed a high school play. But, he says, "no one becomes a writer in Chowchilla, California. It's not a real job." He came to Cornell on a Navy ROTC scholarship; he pledged Kappa Alpha, majored in government, and figured he'd be a lawyer. "On some fundamental level, I didn't really want to be a lawyer--I wanted to be Perry Mason," he says with a laugh. "I wanted to bang on tables and interrogate witnesses. I didn't want to spend ungodly hours in the law library." By his senior year, he says, "I just started imploding."He stopped going to class and slept all day. "I basically wasn't happy," he says. "I just sort of flunked out. I stopped doing anything vaguely academic. You can't skip an entire semester of Russian classes and then show up to take the final--which I actually tried to do."

One night around 4 a.m., while eating gravy fries at Manos Diner, a friend suggested to Moore that he move to L.A. and try his luck as a screenwriter. But degree or no degree, he still owed the Navy a few years. Out in California, he dutifully went to an induction physical--only to find that an old knee injury had worsened. "The flight surgeon opened this drawer in his desk," he says, "and took out a rubber stamp marked PERMANENTLY MEDICALLY DISQUALIFIED."Moore was a free man. He spent the next few years supporting himself with day jobs as a messenger and receptionist in an animal hospital while writing scripts. In 1989, he sold one to "Next Generation," which led to a staff writing gig and a prominent position in the "Star Trek" universe.

But if "Star Trek" defined science fiction on the small screen, Moore's new "Battlestar Galactica" flies against its conventions at warp speed. There's no time travel, no alternate universes, no colorful uniforms; while the good ship Enterprise was a bright and cheery vessel promising a future of technological innovation and racial harmony, the Galactica is much more gritty. "It has a different aesthetic," Moore says. "It takes a documentary approach.We de-emphasize clichés.We're playing it more as a straight-up drama, as realistic as we can. It's a chance to reinvent science fiction on TV."

-- Beth Saulnier

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