Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D. Moore/ron052.txt

--- Subj: Answers Date: 8/28/97 11:12:55 PM From:  RonDMoore

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Alexander is coming back, but that's the closest that we have planned.

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There are no "official" blooper reels for sale from any of the series, although bootleg copies of the TOS and 1st season TNG bloopers have been around for years and can usually be found at conventions. DS9 and Voyager haven't made any official blooper reels either, although one suspects that
 * someone* must have them somewhere.

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This is the first I've heard of this. Who started this foul rumor? Sheesh, the things people will say...

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This was part of a gag we did for Robert Wolfe when he left the show. We re-wrote a scene from the final episode where the entire cast was talking in the Wardroom about Robert leaving the show. The final bit in the scene was each of them holding up a sign saying "(sad)" which is an inside joke having to do with our use of parenthetical instructions to the actors (i.e. (with feeling) or (with humor) or (angry)). They were all supposed to be (sad) about Robert leaving the show. You had to be there.

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We assume that not everyone has access to the Orbs whenever they have a question about their relationships (Shakaar was the First Minister after all, and rank hath its priveledges) and also that the messages from the Orbs are often murky or confusing and may not always provide the clearest answers in matters of the heart.

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I think you're right in that Kira's feelings for Bareil were much clearer to her than her feelings for Shakaar and that she must've been questioning the relationship to begin with before they went to the shrine.

<<When she discovered the datapadd on How to Find and Win Your Perfect Mate, it was a datapadd that Odo had acquired when he was a solid...and since he had become a changeling again, her belief may have been that with his becoming a changeling again, that he was no longer interested in coupling....it is interesting to note that she made the effort to try and get him to think about it anyway...she told him that there were plenty of women who would be interested in him if he would just give them a chance...and I could not help but wonder...

Was she fishing?>>

I think she was definitely fishing, but not necessarily out of her own (conscious) interest in him.

Subj: Answers Date: 8/28/97 11:41:27 PM From:  RonDMoore

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Our thinking at the moment is that they were indeed sent out to explore the galaxy and report back, but it's possible that we'll uncover deeper motivations at a later time.

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We've always had older children playing Alexander and justified it on the notion that Klingons mature faster than humans. We have cast a new actor in the role and he should appear to be in his mid-teens on camera.

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I don't think Sela's coming to DS9.

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All Human colonists were supposed to evacuate certain worlds in the DMZ as part of the treaty between the UFP and the Cardassians. Some colonists not only elected to remain behind, but also began a terrorist campaign against the Cardassians, which then prompted retaliatory strikes from Cardassia which in turn threatened to ignite a new war between Cardassia and the UFP. The Cardassian strikes were hitting innocent human settlements in addition to Maquis military camps, which forced the Fed to intercede. While not all the Maquis were living in Cardassian space, (some were in the DMZ and some were even on Federation worlds) the Cardassians certainly blamed the UFP for the Maquis raids just as the Feds blamed the Cardassian government for attacks perpetrated by Cardassian colonists.

That's the official rationale for the Fed campaign against the Maquis, but Eddington's statement that the real problem is that the Maquis have left the Federation and that *no one* leaves the Federation, has more than a kernal of truth in it. There's a sense of betrayal associated with the Maquis in the minds of the people in the Federation, regardless of whether that's an irrational feeling or not. Add to that sense of betrayal the fact that the Maquis have harassed and attacked several Federation targets over the years and you begin to see why the Feds refuse to turn a blind eye to this group.

<< I always thought it was odd for nobody on the station except the O'Briens to be very concerned about Kira while she was giving birth...not Bashir, not Odo, not even Sisko or Dax, all supposedly friends of hers! Was this deliberate or did you just not think it important for anybody else to care about Kira at that point?>>

There was no suggestion that Kira or the baby were in any trouble, so there wasn't much for the other characters to say other than "Hope everything's all right," or "I heard it's going well," so we just decided that the concern and support of Kira's friends should be taken as read.

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Let me be crystal clear: Colm Meany is not, has not, and will not be leaving the show. Period.

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I haven't got the slightest interest in reading this thing.

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This is territory we haven't discussed among the staff as yet.

Subj: Answers Date: 8/29/97 12:10:40 AM From:  RonDMoore

<<DS9 isn't writing the stories that it used to, and isn't working its strengths. The first two seasons were phenomenal. The Bajoran issues were exciting, and the Cardassians fit in well in the backdrop as 3-Dimensional interesting aliens in relationship to Bajor. The Maquis were then brought in, and they are perhaps the most interesting villians in the Trek universe. Then we got the Dominion and the Defiant, and    3-Dimensional aliens that you could understand were moved to second place and we got the Jem H'dar, bad guys to the core. In the third season, we got only a couple Bajoran stories, and while they were some of the best, they were the exception, not the rule. In season four, we got the Klingons, and the Bajoran stories were all but gone. Season five has done a lot to bring Bajor back into the picture, but I agree that DS9 seems to have shifted in the last few years. Do you think that the series would have been better off as it was in the first two seasons? What do you think?>>

Well, it depends on what you think of as our strengths. I personally don't think of the first two seasons as playing to the strength of the series. While Bajor was and continues to be an interesting place, I think that the show is about the characters on the station first and foremost. Bajor is a cool place to visit, but I wouldn't want the show to live there. I've never been in love with the Maquis or regarded them as good villains primarily because their fight was about issues having little to do with DS9 (the DMZ being a fair distance from the station). I felt that the Maquis only got interesting when we learned that Kasidy and Eddington were in the organization.

I think that DS9 has been at its best in the last two seasons because we've found a balance in our storytelling that allows us to do a wide variety of shows featuring the Bajorans, the Klingons, the Cardassians, etc, and I wouldn't want the show to go back to the way things were in Seasons 1& 2.

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It's been a deliberate decision on the part of the writers starting in Season 3. We hate the (TECH) and try to keep it at a tolerable minimum.

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First of all, I never said the Bajoran earring has no significance. I said that I didn't think that the Bajorans had a "thing for ears" just because they wore earrings and that's the way you read someone's pagh. Of course the earring is significant! And of course, there's some reason you read a pagh by grabbing an ear, but that doesn't mean they have an ear fetish, which is all I meant.

Second of all, the writers have not lost interest in Bajor. As I said above, we simply like to tell a variety of tales with a variety of aliens, I mean, we're on a Bajoran station, Kira is a Bajoran, Odo works for the Bajorans, Sisko is the Emissary to the Bajorans -- we don't feel like we're neglecting them.
 * including* the Bajorans. Bajoran culture is part and parcel of the show --

Thirdly, market research done on the show a few years ago did indicate that by and large the audience didn't like the Bajorans. Not just the males, mind you, EVERYONE. And we're talking *fans* here -- people who know Odo from an Orb and Sisko from Seska. That had an impact, I won't tell you that it didn't, but I will stress that the current mixture of Bajoran and non-Bajoran stories is driven by the desires and interests of the writing staff, not a dictate from Paramount. If you don't like what we're doing, blame us, not the studio.

Subj: Answers Date: 8/29/97 12:31:45 AM From:  RonDMoore

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You never know...

<<I'm not sure, did you say that the Playmates Gen uniforms will replace the FC uniforms?>>

No. The FC uniforms will not be changing in the foreseeable future and the only places you'll see the aborted uniforms for Generations are on the Playmates figures.

<<What I don't buy is the "no changeling has ever harmed another changeling" garbage...they hurt Odo the moment they sent him away in a space craft...strapped a helpless defenseless infant alone in a space craft and let him drift in space.>>

<<ANY sexual contact between the female founder and Odo is, in my opinion statuatory rape...even if Odo consents to it...because the female founder knows that Odo is young for a changeling.>>

You're on dangerous ground when you start comparing "baby" changelings to baby humans. It's apples and shapeshifters. The Founders certainly don't see themselves as "abusing" their young nor do they even have true genders, much less sexual taboos.

<<The questions is, do you see much more develop in the works for Ferengi "commerce" characters like Quark and the Nagus, or will the focus be more on the issues of Ferengi integration into Starfleet with Rom and Nog stories?>>

I think we'll be doing both types of shows this year.

<<Why is it that, in a 24th century society where science dominates daily life, visions of the future seem to be in such short supply? Have you ever considered showing the audience what would pass for science fiction in the eyes of Sisko and Co.?>>

It's a notion that's come up from time to time in our discussions. The problem is that we're already pushing the envelope of what's scientifically believable in the 24th century. Trying to come up with what these characters would dream of in their own science fiction constructs is extremely difficult if not impossible (at least for me).

<<Got a chance to watch "Yesterday's Enterprise" for the first time in a while the other day. Still an excellent epiosde. Two questions: First, there was an amost overt hostility between the alternate Picard and Riker. Was there a rationale behind this, or was it just thrown in to add another facet to the difference between the altered timeline and "our" reality.>>

This was just another nuance we threw in to show the differences between "our" reality and the darker alternate reality.

<<Second, I recall reading somewhere that this episode evolved from a story involving the Guardian of Forever and someone having to repair the timeline by go back in time and assuming the role of Surak. Was this the original sotry, and if so how did you get from Surak and the GoF to Tasha Yar and the Enterprise-C?>>

Although Eric Stilwell and Trent Ganino's original story may have had these elements, the script they wrote (and which I began working on soon after my arrival on staff) did not contain them and instead featured a version of the "temporal rift" that is in the current episode as the method of time travel.

<<And a question about All Good Things. In that episode, the concept of a "medical ship" was introduced. Is you feeling that this type of ship that exists "currently" in Starfleet and we've just never seen one, or that it was something that was developed sometime during the alternate future? >>

I think that there are such vessels in the "current" Starfleet, albeit of a different design than the one seen in AGT.

Subj: Answers Date: 8/29/97 12:44:55 AM From:  RonDMoore

<<Can you tell me why you bring back characters that no one even wants to see.>>

It's a conspiracy. We're all in on it.

<<Why don't you bring back some people that the audience want to see, like Sito Jaxa, Shannon Fill, probally one of the best guest on TNG, I know that her return has been brought up several times, well follow through on it. Thomas Riker, a golden character. Ensign Ro, probally the most liked walk-on, besides Garak, what happened to her after she joined the Maquis? She just died, I doubt it. TELL ME RON!!>>

Sito's dead. Tom Riker may or may not get rescued at some point. And no one's burning to tell an Ensign Ro story. DID YOU HEAR THAT??

<< I was wondering if you could give me a guestimate on how long it would take for the Defiant to melt the crust of a planet (like in The Die is cast).>>

It depends on whether there's whipped cream on top or a yummy fruit filling inside or a dozen other factors too technical to get into on this board.

<<Will you ever give us any details to the game Parisi Squares, or will that just remain one of the ST mysteries?>>

It'll probably remain a mystery.

<< In "Soldiers of the Empire", right before Worf fought Martok, there was a small clip of Dax pushing some buttons on a control panel. What was she doing?>>

Dax was actually sending a message to Ortakin (Tavana's lover) warning him of the impending mutiny. Ortakin shows up on the Bridge a few seconds later with two other armed Klingons. The cutaway to Dax didn't read as well on camera as we had hoped and now Ortakin's arrival is a bit mysterious.

<<Why is there no Voice over in the opening of DS9? Or Voyager for that matter? >>

This was a decision made by Michael and Rick when they created DS9. Personally, I think it was a mistake and I wish we had Sisko saying some version of "Space, the Final Frontier..."