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Science fiction meets reality with Ronald D. Moore. [T-Minus Deep Space]
00:49:13
Sci-Fi meets reality with Ronald D. Moore. Ron is best known for his work on Star Trek, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and For All Mankind TV series.
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- [00:02]
Host
You're listening to the N2K space network.
- [00:11]
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- [01:41]
Maria Varmazes
They say that you should never meet your heroes, but when offered the option to have a fireside chat with a science fiction legend who has written and produced some of my absolute favorite TV shows, I'm not going to say no. And I can say emphatically that meeting Ronde Moore was an incredible experience, both personally and professionally. After all, science fiction and science reality exist in a feedback loop, with one influencing the other in perpetuity. So how does one create science fiction narratives rooted in reality, and how do you make them compelling? Who better to ask than science fiction TV legend Ron D. Moore? Welcome to T Minus deep space from N2K Networks. I'm Maria Varmazes. Earlier this year, I was asked if I'd be interested in traveling to Washington, D.C. to host a Fireside Chat with American screenwriter and producer Ron D. Moore. Now, Ron's best known for his work on Star the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, and most recently the Apple TV for All Mankind TV series. In case it needs to be said, I'm a huge fan of all of those shows. Our conversation was recorded in front of attendees at the 2024 Beyond Earth Symposium.
- [03:17]
Event Moderator
If you haven't watched T Minus or if you're not listening to T Minus, you should. So go to your podcast, whoever provider. But Maria and Ron, the stage is yours.
- [03:31]
Ron D. Moore
Thank you.
- [03:33]
Host
Thanks everyone. Thanks. Welcome after watching that Sizzle reel, it brought back a lot of memories for me As a budding sci fi nerd in the 90s watching Star the Next Generation with my family and Deep Space Nine. I can say definitively your work is the reason why I'm working in the field I'm working in today. And I've interviewed so many people in the space industry over the last two years and I've had that conversation so many times about how your work has brought so many of us to this field. How does that feel, knowing that, that you've had such an influence?
- [04:07]
Ron D. Moore
Oh, you know, I mean, it's incredibly gratifying, especially for me, because I was a child of Apollo. I mean, I remember seeing Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and I came to science fiction and later Star Trek and my whole career because of those childhood experiences. I mean, those things matter. You know, the space program mattered to us and it was a source of great inspiration for me personally. You know, I watched the original Apollo missions as a very young child and I would just be glued to the television and that made me want to see anything else that had a spaceship on it. So that took me first to Lost in Space, which did have a spaceship, even though it sat on that planet most of the time. And from there then I found Star Trek and Star Trek literally changed my life. It gave me an ethos, it gave me a political philosophy, it gave me a sense of what I wanted the future to be. And then, so now to have worked at Star Trek and the other shows and to hear that the work that I now do matters to people and inspires, it's great. There's a conversation of past and present and a feedback loop of people inside and outside the space program and different space adventures and those of us who dream and those of us who put on these things in space to entertain and hopefully to inspire people.
- [05:39]
Host
Yeah, it's got to be quite amazing, that feedback loop you mentioned about how many people in this room, many people in the space industry around the world, watch your work, think about those ideas, take them with them to their workplace, and then you get inspired in turn to create your next work. And your next work, which I feel like is also a good transition into For All Mankind, which I know a lot of us are huge fans of here. For those who may not know, the few folks that don't know about the show, can you give us sort of the premise of For All Mankind?
- [06:08]
Ron D. Moore
The premise of For All Mankind is sort of an alternate history of the space program and in the pilot episode, it posits the idea of what would have happened if the Soviets had beaten the United States to the moon at the last second. Like we fade into the pilot. A lot of people are watching a moon landing, and, you know, the Cronkite of our show is narrating, and for a minute you think he's narrating Apollo 11, and it's, oh, no, it's actually the Russians, and they beat us there. And the show says, if that had happened, how would things have been different? And internally, what we talked about was I wanted to do a show that was about the alternate space program. The space program I thought I was getting as a child. I thought this is what it was going to be. That's when I was growing up. And I literally wrote letters to NASA, and they would send me back full color photographs, and they would send me early brochures on the space shuttle and all these amazing things. And I thought that was the program we were going to get, and it didn't happen. So as I was approaching for all mankind, the question was, well, what could have made the program go forward once we had Apollo, once we had achieved the great goal, how could it have kept going? And I had lunch with a friend of mine who is a former astronaut, Gert Reisman, who flew to the space station a couple of times, and he was a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica, and we'd become friends down through the years. And he and I had lunch, and I just want to pick his brain. And I said, you know what? I have this concept. What could have made the United States keep going? How could it have continued after Apollo? And he just kind of looked at me and he said, you know, a lot of people don't realize how close the Russians came to going to the moon. I said, really? Because I kind of fancied myself a bit of a space aficionado. I knew the US Program pretty well, but I wasn't aware really of how. How the Russians really did try for a time and developed rockets and landers and all this. And then it fell apart for a variety of reasons. And it occurred to me that if that had happened, if the United States had lost not just first man in space, first woman in space, first two manned spacecraft, all those things, and had lost the race to the moon, I thought it would have freaked people out and they would have doubled down on the space program in such a big way that it would have been an almost like, you know, irrevocable decision to go and that it would have kept the Soviet Union afloat. It would have changed the whole geopolitical dynamic. And that is the premise of the show is from actually losing, we actually won.
- [08:44]
Host
So in a way, it's almost like the show is a treatise on the nature of competition and cooperation. That's really fascinating to me. You mentioned sort of not realizing how close we almost got to losing. And also what could have been. Is that why every season is like a gut punch in the opener? Because I've got to say, it, really, when we watch those first opening moments, it is really quite a gut punch of what could have been.
- [09:09]
Ron D. Moore
Yeah, I mean, it is. It's inspiring, and it's kind of sad at the same time, because we kind of feel on the show like this was the future we could have had, but we also feel like, well, it's still the future that we can have if we choose to claim it, if we choose to do the things that are necessary to get there. And I think it's, you know, it's interesting to hear the panels. I've only heard a couple of panels, but they're real problems. I get it. It's not just that flip a switch and we're going to go. But I do kind of feel like you got to want to go is like the thing first. And I feel like the American popular imagination lost interest for a time, or at least wasn't quite as heightened as it was for a time. And it feels like it's rekindled again. Periodically, NASA would do something that would capture the imagination of the Americans, whether it was rovers or, you know, the Voyager probes. And the spectacular things would happen in the country kind of ooh, and sit up again. And now we're kind of at one of those moments where, you know, we're watching reusable rockets land like they did in Forbidden Planet, for God's sakes. You're watching things that seem like science fiction are actually happening in real time. And it feels like there is a rekindled interest and desire to go do these things.
- [10:23]
Host
Do we have the national risk tolerance to go do those brave things anymore? Do you think we still have that spirit?
- [10:30]
Ron D. Moore
I don't know. I mean, I think that's a real question. So it's one of the things we played around with in the pilot episode of For All Mankind. There's a speech where Ed Baldwin, who's the lead character, is in a bar and he's getting drunk, and he's talking about how they had lost the moon to a reporter. And he goes on this whole thing about how the Apollo 1 fire had really make NASA risk averse. It was a national tragedy. It seared the consciousness of people and made NASA as an institution really risk averse. And I could argue so did Challenger in Columbia, to the point where we have elevated the concept of safety to such a height that it's almost like, can we actually do anything with these kinds of requirements to do something that is inherently risky, that is inherently dangerous? We lose test pilots, we lose carrier pilots, we lose Air Force pilots. People die in risky ventures. And we accept that and we go on with our lives and they don't change the national priorities. But with space travel and man space flight, we've got a whole like PTSD about it that we just are deeply, deeply afraid of losing another spacecraft with people on it.
- [11:40]
Host
Yeah. And we wonder if we can conjure that national bravery again. It's a really fascinating question that I really love watching being explored in For All Mankind. It's just really fun to be in that world. And one of the things fans like myself of For All Mankind really enjoy is that sense of being rooted in reality. Can you tell me a little bit about how you achieved that on the show?
- [12:04]
Ron D. Moore
It was really part of the ethos of the show from the very beginning. After that conversation with Garrett, then we did a lot of research into what the Soviet program really was. And as we started to develop the first season in particular, I said, okay, we're going to stay within the guardrails of the technology that was available and things that NASA actually had on the books. Like there were all these like plans for various spacecraft and things I'd never heard of. You know, there were jiminy spacecraft they were going to turn into small space stations in orbit. I mean, there was all these wacky things. And there was like we play around with a rocket called Sea Dragon in the show, which was a water launched rocket of enormous size that could lift like all this enormous weight. But it was a real thing and they really developed it. And so we said, we're going to go with that. And at every step along the way we had Garrett as one of our technical consultants. We had other outside consultants, some of whom had worked in NASA, some have not. And we just tried to play it straight like, okay, how would it really happen? Could this really take place? And that has guided us all the way through the show to where we are even now when we're in the fifth season. We're like, we're colonizing Mars and we're exploiting the asteroid belt and mining it. We're still trying to stay within our lane. Okay. We're not inventing warp drive yet. We're, like, doing things that are at least scientifically possible, that have been debated, that are talked about, and if certain breakthroughs happened, could be achieved. And so the show is trying to sort of paint a picture of a future that could potentially actually take place. Is everything in it the way the space economy works in the show? The helium 3 mining, which is. First they discover ice on the moon, then they have a mining facility, and eventually Helium 3 works, and eventually they get better rockets and they get better engine systems, and they go faster to Mars and so on. All of that stuff, it felt like is still really possible. If you have the desire. And if certain things break your way, if certain politics break your way, if certain discoveries break your way, and there's certain revenue breaks your way.
- [14:08]
Host
Absolutely. Before we move on to sort of what interests you and what's going on in space right now, you mentioned Garrett a little bit, and I know there's a funny anecdote about how he sort of started working with you. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
- [14:21]
Ron D. Moore
Oh, yeah. Well, when I was working, when we were doing Battlestar Galactica, we got a call. It was at Universal Studios, did that show. And we got a call from one of the executives at Universal saying NASA had reached out to them because there were some astronauts in the space station that were Battlestar fans and wanted to talk to us. And NASA had this policy that said, well, if there's an astronaut on a mission and they want to talk to anybody on Earth, NASA will figure out how to make the phone call, and they want to talk to us. So I was like, really? So myself and one of the other producers went to this conference room at Universal, and it was one of the first video conferences I had ever been on. And we're in this room with this big tv, and suddenly there's Garrett, and I believe it was the mission commander at the time. Are both literally. They're like, you know, they're doing the thing. They're floating. They're actually in fucking space. They're doing the thing. Doing the thing, and they're talking to us, and they're asking us about Battlestar Galactica, and we're asking them about being in space. And it was fascinating. And Garrett was a real legitimate fan of the show, and he told stories about going to the space station with his laptop and DVDs of the show, and he would watch Battlestar on his laptop. Watching our fake space while the real space was like right out the window. And that just kind of blew my mind. So we kind of kept. And then we made a. He did a cameo in the show. We put him in the show at one point and he did another cameo in For All Mankind. Oh, really? He actually commands the space shuttle for all Mankind, which he had flown as a. He was a payload specialist.
- [15:53]
Maria Varmazes
Oh.
- [15:54]
Ron D. Moore
And he always wanted to fly and never got. So we put.
- [15:56]
Host
He made wish fulfillment. That's awesome. That's great. All right, so let's shift to current events. I'm so curious to get your thoughts on events. People, technology in space right now that have really captured your interest.
- [16:12]
Ron D. Moore
You know, it's amazing to watch what's been happening. You know the SpaceX thing with the starship. Right, the starship that came down. I mean, that was remarkable. I literally kept going, is this fake? Cause it looks so fake. It looked like a cgi. I had notes. What could possibly be real? The visual effects aren't quite working. They don't really look real. But that's such an amazing achievement in so many ways. And the coming of the reusable spacecraft, which, you know, was supposed to be the space shuttle. When I first sent away for those brochures at NASA and they sent me back this kind of thick, heavy stock thing on the space shuttle where there was all concept art and I remember there was like a whole diagram of the cycle and it was going to be like a two week turnaround or something. Yes, it was going to like launch, go to Edwards, come back in two weeks and they're going to launch it again. But it never achieved that. So it seems like what's happening now, not just with SpaceX, but obviously blue Horizons and the rest of them is moving much closer to that goal, which was always like, well, clearly we can't keep throwing away 98% of these rockets and hope to make it sustainable.
- [17:22]
Host
Right, Right. Yeah. So some mention of helium 3 in the previous panel, is that something that you find interesting as well? I know it's come up in the show as well.
- [17:31]
Ron D. Moore
Yeah. I mean, it was one of the things. When we were talking about developing the show, there were a lot of conversations in the writers room about, okay, how does this economically work? How would this function? Yes. Find ice, find assertion to making rocket fuel on the lunar surface was a big step. And then what? And then it was, well, what are the things that are valuable there? What are the rare earth minerals are there? What are the things that you could profit from? And at some point, probably somebody much smarter than me said, well, you know, if fusion actually worked, Helium 3 would be a big source of it. We think there's a big source of that on the moon. That could be the thing. And it would change the entire Earth economy if that happened. So for all mankind, the trick is somebody has to crack, you know, the secret to fusion. Not a big deal. I don't know why we're not doing it. Somebody, one of you people just go do that. But in the world where that does get cracked, it felt like, well, then Helium 3, then it's like, it's all there. And that's the new gold rush. And they're going to pump in a lot of money because money spent there is going to change life on Earth. And the show also said, though, there would be consequences to that. Yes, there would be negative consequences. You know, people are going to be out of jobs, the oil industry would be wrecked and fossil fuels, and there would be a backlash. And, you know, there would still be a give and take in terms of politics and how all this worked out for all of us. So it wasn't a panacea for everything, but it would move life forward in a dramatic way.
- [18:56]
Host
Yeah. I'm also curious your thoughts on the current state of human spaceflight and where that's going. I'm thinking specifically of Polaris dawn, because we've got Jared Isaacman coming. But when you look at what's going on with human spaceflight and where that seems to be heading, what are your thoughts on that?
- [19:11]
Ron D. Moore
I'm encouraged and also kind of annoyed. I mean, it still feels like it lurches forward, you know, the return to the moon. Now evidently that's in question. You know, I hadn't heard that. But yeah, I've been waiting for that for a while because it does seem like it's the next logical step. Let's develop the moons, get back to the moons, do stuff with the moon, to then move on to Mars and to the asteroid belt. I'm still like, I'm still that kid, right? It's the adventure of it. It's the romance of it. It's the Buck Rogers of it. You know, I mean, Buck Rogers is what generates the bucks. It's the opposite, kind of the right stuff said, you know, the Buck Rogers inspires people to want to go do these things. So now let's get some bucks and go do it. And that's still kind of where I come from. I love the notion of space travel, of living in space, of Expanding the footprint of humanity beyond Earth, of reaching out of the cosmos. All those things you've heard a thousand times from Carl Sagan to everyone else that talks about why we want to do this. It is a big universe out there. There's a very big space. Rick Berman, who was executive producer on both the Star Trek shows, used to sit us writers down whenever he had a problem with what we were doing. He would kind of say, you know what? Space is big. And it'd be like, you don't realize how big space is.
- [20:31]
Host
I think Douglas Adams might have said something about that too.
- [20:33]
Ron D. Moore
Space is big, he kept saying. And space is really big. And it just feels like there's so much out there that we don't know and can't understand yet. I don't know why we don't want to go, why more people don't want to go. We have to sort of keep making Buck Rogers to draw people to go do it. Because it just seems like a natural thing.
- [20:52]
Host
Yeah. Given you are a master of your craft in making these incredible stories. Many times throughout these panels and again in conversations I've had, it comes up over and over that aside from the very obvious splashy things like starship doing incredible stuff, it is very hard to get people outside of the space bubble excited about what's going on in space. So what can we do? How do we make better narratives?
- [21:18]
Ron D. Moore
I think, you know, you gotta boldly go. To put it, it's like, you know, when the space shuttle first came, it was incredibly exciting. People were really excited and engaged with that. Same thing with the early space stations. But Leo, I see I'm learning the jargon. The low Earth orbit stuff is not that exciting to people after a while. Cause it is just going around in a big circle around their planet. Right. It's not that inspiring, I think, when you going out someplace, going somewhere, living somewhere else, taking a big risky journey, setting foot someplace for the first time. These are the things that get people's attention. It's the things that fire their imagination. It's why, you know, JPL's done amazing, amazing, amazing work over the years. And they're always sort of starved for money and doing this incredible stuff because it's just not as sexy. And it just doesn't grab people's attention the way that you want it to. And that's just life. And we have to tell big bold stories if we want to go do big, bold things. And I think you got to seek out strange new worlds and you got to boldly go and that's kind of the promise of what space is. And when it's reduced to other things, the public's imagination kind of goes, yeah, that's kind of interesting. But it's not what they want. They want an adventure. They're promised an adventure and they kind of want it.
- [22:41]
Host
Oh, and it feels like sometimes we have to throw cold water on people and say, you got to slow down a little bit because, you know, pace of progress is slower than you might imagine. Which is a very unsatisfactory thing to say.
- [22:51]
Ron D. Moore
Nobody wants to hear that.
- [22:51]
Host
Nobody wants to hear that. Yeah, it's a tricky problem, but, yeah, boldly going. I mean, it's a good mantra for many reasons. So how do you draw inspiration from what's going on in space, not just for all mankind, but just in general?
- [23:04]
Ron D. Moore
You know, I mean, it does make me happy to see us doing it. It does feed that part of me that wants to believe there's a future that we can all hope for and dream of. You know, that whatever's happening today or whatever happening tomorrow, that the day after tomorrow or next week, there's going to be a better future for all of us. And that, you know, that stepping out into space and that, you know, claiming our. Whatever our birthright is in the universe is an important thing. And that it will take us, you know, to a better sense of ourselves. It will make us treat our brothers and our sisters better and that we will all live a better life and that we will leave a greater legacy for our children. And so these steps that are taken by all the people in this room and all the various space organizations, I think are positive. And I think it's, you gotta keep your eyes on the prize. We're doing it because we feel like it's gonna make life better. We're not doing it. We don't give ourselves to these endeavors and to these ideas just to make money. There's a lot of ways to make money. This one is something that speaks to us, it inspires us. It makes us want to participate in it. It makes us want to do the hard work to get there. And the fact that there are so many people that are willing to do the hard work to get there despite all the obstacles, I find inspiring.
- [24:16]
Host
Yeah, absolutely. When I think of science fiction, I'm a giant sci fi nerd. As I'm sure you've probably figured out, many sci fi creators, they don't opt towards optimism. Many tend to go towards dystopia. But your work is so hopeful. Why optimism?
- [24:35]
Ron D. Moore
I Think it's the combination of the Apollo program and Star Trek. You know, Star Trek, if you look around science fiction, Star Trek is kind of the only one that says, you know, it's going to work out, it's going to be ok, we're going to get there. It might be hard, it might be difficult. It's gonna have a lot of problems along the way. But Trec says to all of us there is a better future. We're gonna solve poverty, we're gonna wipe out disease, we're gonna come together as one race and one society, and we're gonna step out into the universe in a positive, embracing way. And I take great solace from that. And I try to infuse my work with that same sense of optimism, because it touched me, it touched the people around me. And yeah, I love Alien, I love Blade Runner. I mean, they're great, they're fantastic. I don't really want to live in those worlds.
- [25:27]
Host
Same.
- [25:28]
Ron D. Moore
I want to live in the Star Trek world. That's the place. And I think if you kind of scratch the surface of most people, at least in the United States, I can't speak to the world community. But Star Trek's kind of appeal has always been, if you think about what you want the future to be, this is kind of what you want it to be. You want heroes like this that make ethical choices, that are coming from a positive place, that are representing a world that has, like, figured out its shit and has got things done in a good way and that it's all good. And you kind of hope that that's our future.
- [26:10]
Host
We'll be right back.
- [26:16]
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- [27:39]
Host
Often there's a shorthand that I've come Across many times when I've had discussions with folks, like many of the folks in this room, that people got into this industry because they want to build the Star Trek future. It's an understood term. So not that you can solve all the world's problems, but how do we get to the Star Trek future?
- [27:56]
Ron D. Moore
I think it's very different. It's hard, it's hard to get from here to there and you have to deal with the world that you got and you know, the world. We got a lot of problems, a lot of difficult things to work through. But I think you have to have a sense of where you're trying to go. Even if we're not going to get there and we're not going to be part of that future, don't we want our children or our grandchildren or our great grandchildren to get there? So aren't we trying to take whatever step forward we can take right now and not say, well, I'm not going to see the payoff, it's not going to be me. And you know, the United nations is never going to like figure its, figure its stuff out. It may not in our lifetimes, but shouldn't we try to move forward at least a foot, you know, and another foot and just keep trying? Because that's. Where are we trying to go as a people? What are we trying to achieve as a people? What do we want from ourselves?
- [28:48]
Host
I'm going to just let that one marinate for a second and I know we want to get questions from the audience and I've taken so much of your time. Before I finish, I just want to make sure I ask, what are you working on next?
- [28:58]
Ron D. Moore
I just, I've started a new deal at Sony Television and I've just been asked to take over a project that's based on a video game called God of War. Maybe somebody. Yeah, Yep. God of War is in development. It's been in development for a while. They're starting over. They asked me to take it over. It's for Amazon and there's at least a two season commitment. So that's. I'm just starting in the beginning, putting the writer's room together and starting to work on scripts.
- [29:26]
Host
As a Greek, I'm very excited. That's awesome. Thank you so much. And I know we wanted to get some questions from the audience, so. Is there a mic going around? There are mics going around somewhere.
- [29:41]
Ron D. Moore
Mics are floating around.
- [29:42]
Host
Yeah. Yes, go right ahead.
- [29:55]
Ron D. Moore
Hello, it's good to have you here. I am fascinated by the accuracy in Broad Strokes. Of the internal politics, particularly of NASA aerospace industry. How did that come about? A lot of that had to do with the fact that myself and several other members of the key writing staff were already space aficionados. So we had read lots of books about NASA and studied it and sort of, you know, were amateur historians about it. But it was also that, you know, we then consulted a lot of outside people and a lot of research and we just kept. We always had the scripts vetted, we always had the stories vetted by people who knew what the way these things really worked. We did a whole episode that was about, you know, there was an accident in season one where Saturn V blew up on the pad. And then that got us into congressional, you know, how they spread out the contracting to all the different congressional districts. And it was kind of a granular idea of how of some of the, you know, the way the sausage was made at NASA, which was kind of interesting stuff. And we just were always dedicated towards trying to make it as real as we could. It's still an entertainment show, but we wanted to have a sense of authenticity to it.
- [31:05]
Host
That's a great question.
- [31:07]
Audience Member
Yeah, I can quickly. And then we have questions over there. Ron Moore, I want to thank you very much by the way. And you're used to Comic Con with thousands of people out there and you to come to us. This is a very curated. A lot of thought leaders here in different domains. So please don't underestimate the impact of your presence. Secondly, the real was fantastic and I'm sorry about the lighting, but fantastic real. Just curious about the economics of the world you live in. And if you could give those of us in Washington a sense, how do you manage to persuade you and your colleagues, the studios to invest? Because these are non trivially investments, non trivially capital investments you're making in these shows. So I'm curious your insight into that and is there a continuing appetite from.
- [32:04]
Ron D. Moore
Well, it's a difficult time in television and somehow it's always a difficult time in television. I feel like we've been saying this since I joined the business. Oh, this is a hard time in tv. And there's. The three networks are breaking down, it's all good. So I mean now we're at a place where the studios and networks in their infinite wisdom decided to break a very lucrative model that was generating untold profits and they just destroyed it and have no idea how to rebuild it. Because the whole method of cable and syndication and DVDs which were enormous moneymakers, they just decide, well what if we're all Netflix? And then one day woke up and said, but what if there's only one Netflix? How do the rest of us make money? And they haven't quite figured that out yet. What they have figured out and why they will still give me lots of money to play with on television shows and other people like me is that there is a rock. There is a foundational belief that no matter what, people want to be entertained. And we're the boys and girls who entertain the rest of you with our song and dances. And that as long as people want to be entertained, there's going to be entertainers and someone's going to fund the shows and fund the movies and fund the songs and all that. It's just one of those things. During the Depression, Hollywood did just fine, thank you. And we will probably continue to doing. Some platforms may collapse, some companies may collapse, but somebody's going to be making entertainment.
- [33:42]
Audience Member
Thank you. Thank you for being here so much. My name is Adina Mignona, and I work for Northrop Grumman as a mission architect. And like Emery and a lot of people, I got into the industry because I was watching Star Trek Next Generation as a teenager, completely devoted to that show. And just to explain how deep the Trek ness goes, I'm also a science fiction author with some stories in Star Trek Explorers. I'm a podcaster. I was this past weekend at a Trek convention. So I'm very. I say that because I'm very attached to the Star Trek community. And my question is somewhat related to what you were just talking about. The community is really hurting right now, mostly because of the election last week, coming on the heels of the strikes, coming on the heels of the generative AI explosion into the industry and how this is affected. So when you're telling a story right now, like for all mankind, is it harder, given how grounded in reality is, are you finding it? Are people having difficulty working on the show, or is it just, this is another show, this is work like normal and go on?
- [34:49]
Ron D. Moore
I think, to be honest, I think in the show internally, it's like we feel good about what we're doing. Like, we kind of feel the optimism that we're all talking about. You know, there's several hundred people that work on this show, not just me. It's a huge team of people. I know a few, but they get to come in every day and do something that they feel like is positive and something that they can show people and something that they're proud of and that provides a Way to kind of get up in the morning and do what is very hard work. You know, camera crews work very hard. Makeup artists are up at the crack of dawn. You know, people on these shows work extraordinary hours under difficult circumstances. But if they're doing something they believe in, if they believe in the essence of what it is, it makes it easier. Battlestar Galactica was the same way. People sometimes have said, well, Battlestar was such a dark show. I never thought Battlestar was a dark show. I thought it was about a dark time. But I thought about people that were trying every day to make life a little bit better and were struggling towards the light. And those of us who worked on the show believed in that very much. And that gave us a reason to keep doing it. And it made no matter how the world, and the world at that point was not a lot of fun either. You know, the post 911 world in which we were creating that show was very dark and very scary and very depressing. It was like, oh, my God, is anthrack in the mail? And are they going to blow up this next? You know, what's going on? And torture and all this stuff. And we were just trying to do something we believed in and something that we felt was positive and something that we felt was meaningful and that allowed everyone to really hang in there and do it.
- [36:26]
Host
Oh, yes.
- [36:27]
Audience Member
Hi. Big fan of your work. Thank you. I can't believe I'm asking this question here in Washington, D.C. but my father was in the military. And the reason he stopped watching Battlestar Galactica is because he said that it wasn't very militaristic, that people didn't follow orders, and he found it deeply appalling. So can you speak to that so I can tell him?
- [36:50]
Ron D. Moore
Well, you could tell him. You tell him. My late father, who was a military veteran, is a Marine officer in Vietnam, sometimes said the same thing to me. He's like, you know, some of those people would not last very long on a real ship, but it's still a pretty good story. And he appreciated the fact that we really did try to take military culture seriously, that there were people like Adama that took it extraordinarily seriously. And that military, like any military, was composed of a lot of a variety of people who were in it for a variety of reasons, and they reacted in their own ways. And there was always a show about characters and people and that there wasn't really a cookie cutter approach to anybody. Just like there's not a cookie cutter, really, of anyone who wears a uniform. But yes, you can tell my dad. My dad lectured me a couple of times about some of those same issues.
- [37:48]
Host
That's a great question.
- [37:50]
Audience Member
Hi there. My name's Joe Welch. I'm visiting from London, Ontario, Canada right now. So I'm doing a PhD in my dissertation at law school. So I'm doing a law PhD on how science fiction can be of some use to policymakers. And I'm arguing a whole walk of things. And generally, I think science fiction is very good at highlighting or alerting potential pitfalls, bad things happening, makes compelling stories. But is the reverse true? Is there a way? Can you think of any examples of science fiction that can highlight positive policies about emerging technologies? Because we're in the room of policymakers, and I know Star Trek's big, but can you dig down in any examples of that, sir?
- [38:34]
Ron D. Moore
I mean, that's an interesting question. I have to really think about that, unfortunately. I mean, there's definitely notions in science fiction that predate all of the space program and all of computing and all of the Internet, that great writers like Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov were playing around with those ideas and showing how they could change society in a very positive sense. And there's probably connectivity between some of those early books or magazines and short stories and how they affected later engineers and computer sciences. I'm sure that that's the case, even if I don't have those exact examples for you.
- [39:15]
Maria Varmazes
Yeah, we have a question here.
- [39:17]
Host
Go ahead.
- [39:17]
Audience Member
I'm going to follow up on that question. Last year we had one of the showrunners for the Expanse, and one of the questions that I asked at that one was in policy circles, especially on the Hill, I have actually been quoted the Expanse as something that should be used for developing policy. That showrunner, I'm blanking on his name, Naren Shankar.
- [39:41]
Sponsor
Yes, thank you.
- [39:42]
Ron D. Moore
He's a good friend of mine. Yes. And he worked with me on For All Mankind in season one.
- [39:46]
Audience Member
And that was the point he got to was if you were actually basing the Expanse on reality, you would not have Belters because you would be using robots to do all the mining, to which point the authors would respond with. And that would make a really blank, boring TV show. In the cases where, for example, as the last question was about when you're writing something and doing your shows, how often do you actually get policymakers coming to you, asking about what you're doing and the shows from a policy standpoint, and how do we indicate to policymakers when science fiction is. Is useful for looking at what a potential Future might be. And when, in the case of the expanse, it's really 17th century allegorical story about colonialism and not actually predictive about the future because this does affect us in policy circles.
- [40:46]
Ron D. Moore
Wow. I don't. That's really interesting. I don't get a lot of questions from people who make or create policy about what you're asking, so that there's been only a few conversations I've had with people over the years. We did an event of the United nations once for Battlestar Galactica, which was fascinating. And there were a lot of interesting people that talked about not the science fiction aspects of it, but how the show was talking about terrorism and security and civil liberties and the threats and balance and fundamentalism. And so I've had more of those kinds of conversations about sort some of the themes that my shows have talked about. I think it's interesting to think about. You know, you can hold up science fiction, I think, to policymakers as well. This is something audiences and people and constituents are excited about. This captures their imagination. What is it about this world that they want to do? What is it about this story? You know, whether it's a science fiction story or not, you know, the people you represent and the people that, you know, you're trying to advocate on behalf of, this has captured their imagination. This speaks to them in some way. How can you, like, get from here to there, you know, using this as a model? I think that's probably the closest that I could come.
- [42:05]
Host
That's a great question. I think we have time for one, maybe two questions if they're quick.
- [42:10]
Maria Varmazes
Hey, Ron, go ahead.
- [42:11]
Ron D. Moore
I've got the mic here.
- [42:12]
Audience Member
I love the show for all mankind is just amazing. And I'm curious to know how or where you think God and religion will play a role as we expand into space. If you look back historically, you know, it's played a huge role in the history. Spirituality has played a huge role in the history of mankind. Where might we see that?
- [42:33]
Ron D. Moore
I think it'll play a part. I think it's a big part. I think, you know, in Battlestar, I made a deliberate choice to use religion and belief and faith as part of the fabric of the show. Because it felt like, well, that's part of the fabric of our world of people. People, believers, non believers. It's in the conversation. Is there something else? Why are we here are the big questions. Right? And it feels like as we move out into space, we're coming literally kind of face to face with that. You know, you stare into the abyss the abyss sometimes stares back. And now we're looking at the abyss out there. Why is this all here? How does this happen? Is there anybody else? Is a huge question. Is there any other life out there? And when that moment happens, what will it say about us? How will we think about ourselves after that? Whether it's an amoeba or whether it's a Vulcan, it changes the nature of what we thought we were in some fashion. And I don't know, maybe it'll be a blip, but it'll probably be a blip. That sort of is always a pivot point in our history. And then there was the moment where we found out that there was somebody else, there was something else, there was something else alive. And it raises, I think, theological questions, I think existential questions. And I think however we step out in this space, we will always be wrestling with that. Why are we here? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more? And I think we will always ask ourselves those questions. And I'm sure there will be churches on the moon, and I'm sure there will be shrines, and there will be things that we will take with us. Cause that is part of who we are.
- [44:08]
Host
Well, I think that has to be our last question. Thank you, Ron Moore, for joining us today. It's been a pleasure.
- [44:13]
Ron D. Moore
Thank you. It's a pleasure.
- [44:19]
Event Moderator
Guys. Ron, could you. Ron and Maria, could you just hang out just here for a minute? I'm going to send these guys to the reception and we want to take a picture up here with you guys. So thanks. Hey, listen, this has been a fantastic day. Again, Ron, Maria, thank you so much. This has been just tremendous. I too, am a huge fan. I'm actually a huge fan of Outlander. I'll admit it right here. You know, I have no problem with that. Anyway, listen, we have a reception outside. It's been an incredible day. We're going to be back here at 9:00. You could see what's going on. This is a rich conversation that we're having up here. We're going to continue it tomorrow and get even deeper, especially as we go international with the Beyond Earth Symposium. So. So enjoy the reception and we'll see you back here early tomorrow morning. Registration opens at 8. The program starts at 9. Have a good night.
- [45:24]
Maria Varmazes
That's it for T minus Deep Space, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us@space2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes, your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. T minus Deep Space is produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I'm your host, Maria Varmazas. Thanks for listening.