oswell's co-executive producer Ronald D. Moore doesn't consider himself a science-fiction writer. That may seem odd for someone who has spent most his career working on projects that have Star Trek in the title, especially since he won a Hugo Award in 1994 for co-writing "All Good Things," the acclaimed series finale of The Next Generation. That's one of the reasons he loves working on Roswell, an undeniably science-fiction series that allows him to focus on the characters.
Moore and his series are making the big move to UPN (from that other network), and he's hoping Buffy fans come on by and check out Roswell's third season premiere on Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 9 p.m. (ET) after they finish watching their favorite vampire slayer.
Moore began his career when he sold his first professional script, "The Bonding," to Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1989. After writing or co-writing 27 episodes, he joined the writing staff of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where he went on to co-executive produce the show. Moore was
also an executive consultant of the SCI FI series Good vs. Evil, before going on to join Roswell in its second season. In film, he co-wrote Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, and has a story credit on Mission Impossible.
Moore chatted with Science Fiction Weekly about this season's challenges, Star Trek and feeling loved at UPN.
***Warning: SPOILERS ALERT***
What can you tell us about Roswell's upcoming third season?
Moore: The big thing we have to look forward to this season on Roswell is change. If you watched the end of the second season you know that we closed off a lot of storylines with the departure of Tess and the granilith and the destruction of the pod chamber. A lot of their enemies
stopped chasing them by the end of the season. The three aliens are stranded here without any way of going home. With that in mind, the third season takes that concept and moves it forward. It's like starting over. The kids have always assumed there would be a day when they would go home, and they were
always anticipating that in some way, shape or form. And now that option's been taken off the table.
Max is the only one left with a tie off the planet. His son is out there someplace. That need to find out if his son is OK and get back in contact with him drives Max this season. And it takes him and Liz in unexpected directions. The season opener begins with Max and Liz making out in the car outside of a convenience store. Things are kind of getting hot and heavy and then they look at each other and say, "Are you ready?" and then they pull out ski masks and a gun and they go in and hold up the convenience store.
Clearly, things have changed. What you come to find out is that the convenience store is just a front and it's sitting on top of a hidden underground installation where the original ship that carried Max and the rest of them in 1947 is being stored. Max is trying to get back to the ship. And then the rest of the opening is a two-track story where Max and Liz get caught by the police and are run through the judicial system. Both sets of parents show up and it's a nightmarish event for everyone involved.
As far as the other characters are concerned, Michael is the guy who knew he was going to go home someday, so he never bothered to make much of a life for himself here on Earth. Now he suddenly looks around and says, "My God, I don't have much a life and I better make some changes." He's about to flunk out of high school, of all things. Then he realizes he's got this apartment. He can't pay the rent and he's racking up debts. So he has to take on a second job. In the second episode he gets a job as a night watchman out at Meta-Chem Pharmaceutical on the outskirts of town. That episode is mostly a Michael story with him hanging out on the night shift with a bunch of other slacker losers. It's about him learning things and realizing the value of friendship.
Isabel is the one with the biggest change coming. In the first episode, we find out that she has been having a secret romance with a lawyer who works for her father named Jesse Ramirez. He's much older than her and he doesn't know she's an alien. What will happen over the course of the first six episodes is that the romance will come out in the open and will be accelerated to the point where they're going to get married. This was something we were really intrigued by when we were talking about plot points for next year. We just liked the idea of giving Isabel a steady relationship in her life, which is something she never had. And that she would take it a step further than anybody else. She's out of high school. She's more of an adult. She's trying to set down some real roots here on Earth and let go of the past. She's also passionately in love with this man and things just sort of happen. In episode three, she's dreamwalking him after a hot and heavy date, and he's dreaming about proposing to her. She flips out and thinks he's going to ask her to marry him, but he doesn't know she's an alien. By the end of the episode, there's a real proposal. Then we get them married.
And the sheriff and Kyle?
Moore: Since the sheriff lost his job he has been sitting on the couch watching TV a lot and sleeping. Kyle has had to go out and get a job to support the family. The roles have really reversed for father and son. Kyle is starting to get sick of trying to hold down a job and paying all the bills while his slacker dad does nothing. He pushes his dad out into the world and his dad says, "Well, I've got this thing I've always wanted to do and it's my dream and I hope you're proud of me." Then he's like, "I'm going to be a country western star." [laughs] Kyle goes berserk, but Valenti is going to pursue his dream and try and make a mark in music. We're going to play that for a while.
That's wild. How did you guys come up with the idea?
Moore: We really liked the idea of him losing his job as sheriff, because it seemed that it would just destroy the character and make him reassemble his life. Then it was, "OK, which way would he do it?" It just seemed that the Valenti you saw the whole first season, somewhere back there was this guy who really wanted to sing and play guitar and be in a band. That is an interesting character.
So there are changes for all the characters.
Moore: The kids are all growing up now. Everyone is in their senior year, except for Isabel, who graduated early. They're all starting to move out in the world. Max moves out of his parents house at the end of the first episode because of conflict with his father over what happened with the convenience store hold-up, and he winds up moving in with Michael.
They should be interesting roommates.
Moore: Yeah, already you want to write those guys. [Hums the theme to The Odd Couple.]
What's been your favorite episode so far?
Moore: I really liked the Max From The Future show ["The End of the World"]. I thought that was a really good solid story. It took Liz's character and really put her in a vise, and it was really romantic. It was the show at its best. It was a relationship show about these interesting characters with a science fiction twist. It was a show you couldn't really tell on any other series. I really liked that. I also liked the Alex Dies episode. I thought that was interesting and touching and moving. The production really came together on that episode.
It's the point where Max realizes he can't do everything. He can't bring Alex back.
Moore: Yeah, and I liked the fact that all the characters reacted differently to it. They all had their own individual ways of dealing with the death of a friend. It also was a sort of marker in the series, because up until then no one they were close to had really paid a price for the secret they were holding. There was danger in the air, but it really never landed on any of them. And then it did.
How was the decision made to kill off Alex?
Moore: It was a couple of different factors. Colin Hanks (Alex) had gotten an offer to be in Band of Brothers and we were certainly eager to let him do it because it was a big opportunity. But it meant that he'd have to be out of four or five episodes in Year Two. So we sent Alex to Sweden.
Then as soon as he came back and we wrote him back in, he promptly got an offer to go do a feature film. We were in a position where we all felt internally that we weren't using the character very well or being very effective with him.
Which was a shame, because we really liked Colin and he did great things with the character. Everyone liked Alex but we were having trouble using him in the show. Then we were in the situation where we were going to have to write him out of another block of episodes for the remainder of the second season and then reintroduce the character all over again in Year Three. And it just became one of those situations where it made more sense to let Colin go pursue what is obviously a burgeoning career and use his exit from the show to then give us something really interesting to play. So all those factors helped us come to the decision of "let's kill Alex."
And get rid of the interloper, Tess.
Moore: Yes. Jason [Katims] had always thought in the back of his mind that Tess was working against them in some way, he just didn't know how. She bonds with them. She bonds with the Valentis. She's accepted. She becomes part of the family. But there's this one thing she's still holding back
somewhere in the recesses of her brain. And ultimately that was true.
It also creates the interesting dilemma, because in the Future Max episode we found out that keeping Tess as part of the group was vital to the survival of humanity.
Moore: We know that those events are in the future. They are a while in the future, so we don't really have to face that dilemma yet. But over the course of the series we'll probably have to start hinting in those directions. Everyone probably knows what happened in that episode, because Liz would have told them by now. And if things start happening they are all going to go, "What are we going to do? Tess isn't here." Which is a great place to put them.
What's your biggest challenge this year?
Moore: The biggest challenge is to balance bringing a new audience to the show while retaining the old audience. It's a new network. We're relaunching it. We want the show to be accessible to anyone who hasn't seen it yet. We would love for all the people who've been watching Buffy to
stick around and watch us, even if they've never seen Roswell before. That means the show can't be so complicated and so caught up in its own backstory that it puts people off. And at the same time it has to maintain enough continuity with what's gone before to keep our fan base happy. That's the
biggest challenge.
The series was canceled by The WB after two seasons and you were suddenly picked up by UPN. What was going on behind the scenes?
Moore: There was just a lot of maneuvering, and as we were closing in on the dates when the networks were going to be announcing their schedules, we didn't know where we stood. There was a three-way game going on with three different series, with Buffy and Angel and us. They are all produced by Twentieth Century Fox and were all on The WB. Buffy's very public renegotiation of its license fee and its public spat over that license agreement didn't help anybody else affiliated with Twentieth Century Fox. So we just wanted someone to pick us up.
Once it became a strong possibility that Buffy was going to go to UPN, suddenly it became a possibility for us and Angel. Then there was just a very gray period where we didn't know how things were going to shake out. We kept hearing rumors. Oh they want Roswell, they don't want Angel. Or vice versa. Or UPN won't take more than one show. Or they'll take all three shows. No, they'll only take
two. We just kept hearing different things. It was a little maddening and we were trying to complete the episodes for Season Two. In the end I think this was the best option for us, because now we're on behind Buffy, which is a perfect lead in for our series. The demographics of the two shows are
identical. It's the same audience. It's just that they have a bigger audience. So our task is simply to bring more of their viewers along and get them to try the show and get them to like the show.
So how has UPN been to work with?
Moore: They've been great. It's nice to be in a place where you're loved [laughs]. Right now the love us. They really want the show to succeed. They like what it is. They like what it's doing. They're promoing the s--- out of it. I see billboards and ads and on the air promos. They're getting the cast out and they're putting a real push on it. They want Tuesday night to work for them. So it's a good thing. It's a relaunch of the series. If we'd stayed at WB, we just would have gone into a third season. We weren't going to get a relaunch.
Your ratings were pretty good last year.
Moore: The ratings were solid. There was nothing wrong with the ratings as far as we could see. I think it just all got caught up in bigger politics.
It probably ended up better for you guys in the long run.
Moore: I think it did.
Does your future seem more secure now?
Moore: It does, but we won't really know until the show is actually on the air and we start seeing some numbers. Right now, it's in a good place creatively. We feel really good about where the show is. The network is happy. The studio is happy. We're very positive with what we're doing. Now we'll see if the audience agrees.
What's the one episode that you wrote, that when you saw it, it just blew you away?
Moore: I'd say it was "Max in the City." It was the second part of the Duplicates episodes last season. I liked the script and thought it was intriguing in some ways. But what I saw on the screen was much better than I anticipated. I thought the direction was outstanding. I thought the
cinematography and the editing and the direction had created this whole world, this weird underground New York world that the Dups lived in. What was happening back at Roswell, the way the two stories interwove, the use of music. I just loved it. I thought it was a tremendous piece of work.
Are you planning any crossovers?
Moore: We're doing a crossover with Enterprise in episode five. We have a storyline that takes Max to Los Angeles. He's looking for a shapeshifter. There was a gag we came up with in the writer's room where we thought it would be a kick if he comes onto the Paramount lot in pursuit of
something and while he's there his excuse to get on the lot is that he's going to read for a part on Enterprise. The part he's trying out for is an alien, and he doesn't get it.
We've got a cameo by John Billingsley, who plays Doctor Phlox on Enterprise, and Jonathan Frakes is playing himself as the director of this Enterprise episode. The scene is Max going in and reading this part, which I took a hand in writing. It's a classic Star Trek bit with Max reading, "I am Korgan. My people are called the Bantoo. We claim this region of space." [laughs] I threw in a couple references to the original series for the true die-hard fans to pick up. It's a funny piece. It's a cool little crossover and I'm sure [UPN will] do a big promotion. But I don't want the audience to think it's a complete crossover. We're not beaming Max up to the Enterprise.
You have a long history with Star Trek. How is working on Roswell different than working on Star Trek?
Moore: It's more of an intimate show. Star Trek is space opera. It's very big. It paints on a broad canvas. It's exploration of the galaxy, about entire star systems and empires and missions of war and peace and deep psychological and sociological questions. That's what the show's bread and butter is. And Roswell is a very small show about a very small group of kids in a small town, and their relationships to each other with some science fiction mixed in. It's a much more intimate and human kind of show. It's more character-driven and it's less heavy on science fiction than Star Trek is. I really like it. It's a great change of pace.
It's interesting that it's more human considering the focus is aliens.
Moore: I know. That's the great irony.
What is your main concern when you sit down to write an episode?
Moore: I just want to make it entertaining and different. I'm always trying to find a different way to tell the story and to write the scene a little bit differently than maybe I've done in the past or than I've seen done on television. I just finished writing Isabel's wedding, which we're
shooting now. How many wedding shows have you seen? Well, the challenge is to make a different one, and to do one that tells the story in a slightly different way where the issues are a little different and the relationships are a little different. That's the primary challenge to me going in.
What got you into writing science fiction television?
Moore: Star Trek did. I was a Star Trek fan growing up as a kid. I was really into the show. I still have a model of the Enterprise that I built when I was 12 years old. It sits on my shelf. Which, as a side note, ended up in Kirk's quarters in Star Trek six. But I was a big fan of the original series. When I came to Los Angeles I was trying to be a writer, and I started dating this girl who knew I was a fan of the show. She had a connection to Star Trek: The Next Generation. She knew some people over there and said [she could get me] a tour of the sets. It was going to take about four weeks before they could do it. And I just decided if I was going to get that close, I should take a shot.
So I sat down and wrote an episode. I tucked it under my arm and brought it with me. I conned the guy who was giving the set tour into reading it and he liked it. He was one of Gene Roddenberry's assistants. So he put me in touch with my first agent, who then submitted it formally to the show, where it sat in the slush pile for about seven months. Then, a new executive producer named Michael Piller came aboard and he found it in the slush pile and bought it and produced it. Then he asked me to write a second, and I wrote a second one. Shortly after that he called and said they needed a staff writer the next day and could I do it. And I said, yeah. [laughs] I showed up and was there 10 years.
Can you tell us a good story about working on Star Trek?
Moore: I can tell you about the first time I met Patrick Stewart. I had sold my first script to Star Trek: The Next Generation already and I was working on a second one. I was a freelancer and I went down to the set. They were shooting my episode and I was really excited. Patrick was shooting a scene and they called him over afterward to introduce me. And he said "Oh, very nice to meet you. Wonderful script. Are you doing any more for us?" And I said yes, actually I'm working on a second one right now. "Oh, tremendous. But remember one thing. The captain does not do nearly enough screwing and shooting on this show." And then turned and walked off [laughs]. That was my introduction to the captain.
Do you think of yourself as a science-fiction writer?
Moore: No, I really don't. Which is the irony of my career. I don't consider myself a science-fiction writer. I just a writer who keeps getting these jobs in science fiction. This is what I'm known for now, but I'm not a scientist. I have no real background in it. I was the guy at Star Trek
who, when I was writing their really technical scenes, filled in a lot of it with just blanks. It was like "Mr. La Forge, tech the tech 15 percent." And Geordi would say, "Captain the tech is overloading." "Well, tech the tech." "Captain, we can't tech the tech anymore or the warp drive will overload."
I
hated that stuff. I hated it. I was much more interested in what the people were doing. The interesting part of science fiction is that essentially it gives you more colors to paint with on the palette. What I like about writing is taking people and putting them in situations and seeing how those particular characters react. Well, in science fiction you have a much broader range of choices to choose from. You can't do the Future Max show in any other genre. You can't do it as a Western. You can't do it in a medical drama. It's an interesting question. A guy comes from the future and tells his girlfriend
to break up with him. It's a really cool place to put a character. Science fiction allows me to do that.
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Also in this issue: Adrian Paul
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