Battlestar Galactica Creator Admits How To Improve Star Trek: Voyager
When the Battlestar Galactica reboot was gearing up, one of the reasons many audiences were excited was because Ronald D. Moore was the showrunner. He had worked extensively on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine before abruptly leaving Voyager after only two episodes. Many assumed the talented writer was held back by the restrictions of Paramount, and he later dished on his blog about exactly how Battlestar Galactica was telling the kinds of stories he wasn’t allowed to explore on Star Trek: Voyager.
“All Good Things” Must Come To An End
Before we can dive into Moore’s revelations, we need to do a quick refresher on the man himself. Moore began his Hollywood career writing and producing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was considered one of the show’s best writers, and he even took home a Hugo award for “All Good Things,” the series finale that he wrote along with Brannon Braga.
The future Battlestar Galactica showrunner and Braga made for quite the team, later working on the first two TNG films. It looked like they were going to go the distance in writing for Star Trek: Voyager, but Moore left after only working on two episodes. This temporarily soured his friendship with Braga, and after Galactica came out, most of Moore’s fans assumed that he was using the new show to tell the kinds of stories that he couldn’t tell on Star Trek.
Moore Felt Held Back By Voyager
Historically, the creator of the Battlestar Galactica reboot has kept things classy: he never explicitly badmouths Star Trek: Voyager, for example, nor does he feed into the rumors that the show creatively held him back. But in his old blog for the SyFy Channel, a fan asked Moore point-blank if he was doing the kinds of things with the new show that he would have done if he was the showrunner for Voyager.
Moore Wanted To Explore New Territory
Moore responded affirmatively and said that some of what he would have liked to do on the Trek spinoff was to tell stories about the “lack of resources, the development of unique cultural and civil institutions, and internal strife among people trapped aboard ship(s) without any reasonable hope of finding sanctuary anytime soon.” As Star Trek fans know, he is explicitly referencing all of the unique difficulties that Voyager would have faced because it was stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
Surface-Level Similarities
As Moore pointed out, his Battlestar Galactica reboot had some surface-level similarities with the plot in Star Trek: Voyager. Each show involves a singular ship that can’t rely on anyone else for support and whose inhabitants can’t return home. In Voyager, that’s because the ship is stranded in a far-flung corner of space; in Galactica, it’s because everyone’s homes were bombed and then occupied by Cylons.
Battlestar Galactica Blazed A New Trail
While it’s always easier to criticize a show decades after it went off the air, we can’t help but think that Moore’s ideas for Battlestar Galactica were great and that Star Trek: Voyager would have been stronger for embracing them. Back then, Paramount wanted every episode to stand on its own, but it was Moore who effectively predicted a future where audiences would want intricately interconnected episodes. His foresight paid off, and Galactica became one of the best sci-fi shows ever made whereas Voyager was a spinoff that (sorry, fans) never even lived up to the quality of TNG or DS9.
