languatron
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Life could be this beautiful without NBC-TV in it.
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Ronald D. Moore plays it safe as a producer and writer. Manufacturing crap that makes television executives happy, and endlessly recycling ideas that worked thousands of times before on "Star Trek." Ronald D. Moore's greatest fault, is his unwillingness and inability to venture into new creative territory. If you look at the basic infrastructure of what he created for his television series, you see endless cliches that television executives are comfortable with, run through a corporate meat grinder, and rationed off in tv dinner portions.
His decision to remake "Starbuck" into a female has nothing to do with some "bold, creative vision." It has everything to do with providing his television series with the oldest cliche in television. Having a male and female duo which could provide romantic possibilities later. His characters (he has the nerve to call "Apollo" and "Starbuck") are going through the exact same motions as "Scully" and "Muldar" from the "X-Files." "William Ryker" and "Deanna Trois" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation." "Katherine Janeway" and "Chakotay" from "Star Trek: Voyager." The "on again/off again", "maybe", "possibly", "inevitable", "soap opera-esque", sexual union between the male and female leads in your tv production. Since Universal/Sci-Fi Channel executives had a major hand in the development of Ronald D. Moore's script, it comes as no surprise that one of the things they would demand, is having a male and female duo as the primary cast members in order to provide sexual/romantic possibilities later. The FOX network demanded this of Chris Carter as well, and was constantly pressuring him into getting "Scully" and "Muldar" into bed.
Ronald D. Moore writes by the numbers, recycles cliches (primarily from "Star Trek"), and never ventures into the realm of imagination or original thinking. This is primarily due to his own shortcomings in the profession that he is in, and it is also due to the fact that ever since the "Metro-Sexual Technocrats" took over the movie and tv industry, they have called for the recycling of old cliches to such an extent, that "Copyright Infringement" is now the normal mode of business operations in Hollywood.
If any character reveals Ronald D. Moore's true shortcomings as a writer, it is the character of "Six." When the name and nature of this character was first revealed on the Internet before Moore's production debuted, the groans and rolling eyes were unanimous. Ronald D. Moore recycled "Seven of Nine" from "Star Trek: Voyager", and turned her into a flat out slut. One of the signature cliches of the Rick Berman "Star Trek" series, has always been the "Hot Female" floating around somewhere on the spaceship. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" had "Deanna Trois" in sexy, tight jumpsuits. "Deep Space Nine" had "Jadzia Dax" in tight, sexy clothes. "Voyager" of course had "Seven of Nine" in tight, sexy clothes (The primary inspiration for "Six"), and "Enterprise" had "T'Pol" in tight, sexy clothes.
Ronald D. Moore has never tried to hide the fact that he runs to the "Rick Berman Scriptwriting Manual For Star Trek" everytime he tackles a new writing assignment. He openly flaunts it. This has been Ronald D. Moore's greatest undoing in the profession that he is in. Even though his post-"Star Trek" projects have been nothing more than "Paint By The Numbers", "Fast Food Orders" for what television executives want; his lack of clout in the television industry to challenge these tv executives, combined with his unwillingness to express dignity in simply turning down the producing and writing assignments, has resulted in self-imposed stereotyping within the tv industry that will ultimately come back to haunt him later.
With "Star Trek" now dead, Hollywood will hardly be calling for more "Star Trek-esque" movie and tv productions. Hollywood now won't have anything to do with "Star Trek." Since Ronald D. Moore can only write in a "Star Trek-esque" manner, where does this leave his future career prospects in Hollywood? Dead as a door nail.
Ronald D. Moore's production has nothing to do with "Battlestar Galactica." When watching this production, you get the impression that one of Rick Berman's staff writers "left the nest too soon", before he was ready to express new ideas or any sort of imagination. The audience ultimately pays the price with Ronald D. Moore giving a "low budget", "cliched" interpretation of everything he did as a "Star Trek" staff writer. Moore believes "Starfleet" officers should mumble, have sexual intercourse in corridors, never smile; never have normal, happy family lives or happiness in interpersonal relationships.
This style of writing also points to another problem with Ronald D. Moore. His personal belief that this crap somehow constitutes good drama. This style of writing is lazy writing. When you create miserable, dysfunctional characters; it's alot easier to pile high into their motivational dynamics every cliche in the book. The happier and more psychologically mobile and healthy your characters are, the more you have to use your imagination to plot their dynamics. Ronald D. Moore took the easy way out, and went the opposite direction so he could manufacture the cliched whims of Sci-Fi Channel executives in assembly line fashion.
Ronald D. Moore's production collapses under the staggering weight of cliches and no imagination. His production is a text book example of business philosophies in Hollywood gone horribly wrong. His production is also the sad consequence of what can happen when business people and bean counters are primarily involved in the genesis process of a television program. Ronald D. Moore's production so evolved into being an animal and "Christmas Wish List" for everything Universal/Sci-Fi Channel executives wanted, any ability of Ronald D. Moore's production to entertain the audience was stripped away before any foot of film was shot.
Much of what happened to "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979.
The clothing Ronald D. Moore's characters wear also smacks of television executive interference, because there was no imagination expressed here either. Much the same way CBS-TV executives wanted the "Flash" character to run around in sweat pants and a sweat shirt in the 1990 John Wesley Shipp series, Universal/Sci-Fi Channel executives would also have nothing of the imagination expressed in Jean-Pierre Dorleac's brilliant costume designs from the "REAL 1978 GALACTICA SERIES." Indeed, in Ronald D. Moore's production; though Moore claims in the narrative that his story takes place in a far away universe supposedly having nothing to do with Earth, his characters nonetheless wear business suits, neck ties, casual slacks, and dresses that anyone can buy from a "Wal-Mart", "Sears", or "JC Penny." Never before in the history of televised Science Fiction has a production demonstrated such a staggering lack of imagination in wardrobe. The CRIME is intensified by the fact that Ronald D. Moore's production crew DIDN'T EVEN TRY.
I'll venture to guess that the Art Direction and Set Design in Moore's production is nothing more than left over sets and props from the endless Sci-Fi Channel "Saturday Night Movies" that Bonnie Hammer frequently craps out. Did I see a left over corridor from the "Frankenfish" movie show up in Ronald D. Moore's production?
When Sci-Fi Channel starts putting decent programming on the air, I'll ally myself with it. Until then, thank God for the existence of DVD. 
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