Ron Moore Fills Us In On What It Would Take To Bring Star Trek Back To TV
Dammit Jim!
Many of you know Ron Moore thanks to him bringing Battlestar Galactica back to television but less of you may be aware that he worked on several of the Star Trek series. He’s got a few projects in the pipeline at the moment, one of them being A Knight’s Tale drama series for ABC, but he recently weighed in on how to bring the sci-fi giant back to the small screen.
Speaking with Wired, Moore discussed the difference between each incarnation of the Star Trek film franchise and their TV counterparts. He said the films are mostly action-oriented with very big stakes for Earth or the universe at large.
“But the lifeblood of Star Trek‘s television shows is its morality plays and social commentary. It’s sci-fi that provides a prism on human society and culture,” he told Wired. “The movies are never really going to do what the episodes do, like split Picard into two in a transporter beam and then talk philosophically about the nature of humanity, which parts of our strength come from good and which from evil. The movies are never going to do that.”
But he argued that people are more familiar with Star Trek as a TV show and that he believes another would be successful. “You have to spend some time talking about its form and structure, and how to update it again for a new audience,” he said. “You still want the ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’ part with a ship, crew and ongoing mission. That’s part and parcel of the franchise.”
He did, however, mention a new show would need to be a bit larger than in the past and not rely on the “villain of the week” format.
“That’s really not what the series was very good at. I mean, you could look back at the original Star Trek series or The Next Generation and find some cool action-adventure episodes with space battles, but the show is about so much more than that. If you were trying to do that flavor of Star Trek on television every week, it would just fail,” he said.
What do you think? Could a Star Trek TV show work in the current climate? Would you want to watch another?
(via Blastr)
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