Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D. Moore/ron062.txt

Subj: Answers Date: 10/7/97 12:37:45 AM From:  RonDMoore

The moratorium on answers regarding "A Time to Stand" is now over. Proceed at your own risk.

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We've had several discussions on this very point, but we aren't planning to feature Mirror Bashir in the near future, so we haven't made any firm decision on his genetic background and/or abilities.

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This is an error on someone's part. You can call Lolita at the production offices to get an official answer, but chances are you weren't invited to pitch. I apologize on behalf of our overworked and stressed out staff.

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There are quite a few people on the production staffs of both shows who are well versed in Trek lore and try to keep us honest, starting with the Okudas and Pearce Research & Associates (run by Joan Pearce, who used to help with the continuity of TOS).

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The submission guidelines are included with the material sent out with the release forms for spec scripts -- call 213-956-8301 for details. The pitch letter is only sent out to people who have been formally invited to pitch.

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The relationship between father and son and grandfather and grandson is fundamentally different. The grandfather's perspective (typically) is more distant, less involved in the day to day rearing of the boy than the father. We wanted to Sisko to interact with his Dad, the man who'd been there all those years, not the somewhat more remote and much older grandfather.

<< everyone in the house is asking each other, "Why don't they eject the core? Why didn't they change the shield frequencies?">>

Maybe on opening night and maybe at a theater filled with Trek fans, but I daresay not *everyone* had these problems. Not even most people. Criticize the tech if you must, but don't kid yourself into believing that *everyone* cares about core ejections and shield nutations.

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At long last, someone from good ol' C.U.H.S! I was hoping to get into writing as a career when I sent in that first spec, although I did have (faint) hopes of someday ending up on staff. Writing is a tough profession to break into. The best advice I give is not to be discouraged, and keep writing, no matter what.

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Once the secret was out, it seemed pointless to have him continue to hide his abilities.

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It was there, but more a reflection of the situation they were in than a result of something going on between them personally.

Subj: Answers Date: 10/7/97 1:26:39 AM From:  RonDMoore

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I usually do it for the fun of it, hoping that someone out there will get the reference.

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We look up the established Rules first before creating any new ones and even then there's usually a lot of discussion before we settle on the final rule.

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They were there to observe everything and everyone. They were probably running constant battle simulations in their heads or studying the layout of Quark's in case there was a firefight there or something.

<<Not "Star Trek" related, Mind you, but I thought you all might like a piece of history since the topic is big ships... My father served in WWII and, due to a very strange meteorological phenomenon of the Pacific, his destroyer saw the Japanese fleet reflected in the sky on a clear sunlit day from several hundred miles distant. They established their identity, that there were no oher ships in that region of ours, triangulated their exact position, extrapolated their course, realized it was Pearl Harbor and radioed a warning since A: they couldn't take on a fleet that far away and B: they were alone anyway.. They confimed receivership on the other end but::::     That warning was ignored. So, for those of you wondering if Pearl Harbor was a set up to bring us into war... there's your proof.>>

Well....... not to contradict your father or anything.... but... there's no mention of this incident in any of the written histories of the attack that I'm aware of. In fact, I don't recall there being any US warships anywhere near the Japanese fleet on Dec. 7. If there had been such a report, it would've been relayed to Adm Halsey (aboard the Enterprise, BTW) who was trying desperately to locate and destroy the attacking carrier force once he learned of the attack. The only specific warning recieved prior to the attack came from: 1) the Army radar station on Oahu's northern shore which sighted the incoming planes and reported them to a superior officer. That officer wrongly assumed they were a flight of incoming B-17s and told them to "forget about it."  2) a US destroyer (either Monaghan or Ward, I forget which) that destroyed a Japanese midget sub in the waters just outside Pearl a couple of hours before the attack. This warning was not acted on because it was not believed at the time.

As to the notion that the US government knew of the attack beforehand and deliberately allowed it to proceed as a way of drawing us into the war, I've never bought it and the vast majority of historians have rejected it as well. The decoded Japanese message traffic did not say, "We're attacking Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7." The information was spread throughout many different cables and radio intercepts and was open to a lot of interpretation. Some of the analysis was faulty, and some was downright stupid.

Advocates of this conspiracy theory often point to the fact that no carriers were in port that day as some kind of clue, but nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the battleship was considered the queen of the seas right up until the Pearl Harbor attack. US and Japanese strategic thought still centered around the idea of a decisive battle fought between big-gunned ships to determine the course of the war. (cont.)

Subj: Answers Date: 10/7/97 1:26:42 AM From:  RonDMoore

(cont.)

Even Adm Yammato, the architect of the attack himself, still believed in the climatic battleship confrontation (inthe Battle of Midway, he stayed aboard the battleship Yamato, believing that the battlewagons would still land the telling blows). Carrier warfare came into its own only after Pearl Harbor had dramatically showed the superiority of naval aviation over unprotected surface vessels. So it makes very little sense for FDR or anyone else to allow the entire US battle fleet to be destroyed and save the carrriers when they had no idea that the carriers would turn out to be the key to the Pacific War. If they did have an advance warning, wouldn't it make infinitely more sense to be ready to deal a crushing blow to the enemy fleet and thus start the war off with a US victory rather than risk an invasion of the Hawaii Islands? Would they really take the chance that the Japanese might destroy the oil farms and repair facilities at Pearl and force the US Fleet back to the West Coast? (The fact that the Japanese did not hit those facilities was a major mistake.)

It's also cynical to the point of being loathsome to believe that FDR would knowingly allow an attack to proceed without lifting a finger. I don't believe that and I have very little respect for those who do. Disagree with his politics all you want, but the man was a patriot and loved his country as much as you or I, and to accuse him of this kind of foul treachery without any proof whatsoever is despicable in my opinion.

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Speaking of opinions I despise.... nothing like taking hammer and tongs to our leaders because it's fashionable to knock the government. Yep, it's all cynicism and bile these days. Never mind the facts, never mind anything exept our new-found propensity to believe anything as long as it reflects badly on the government. (And hey, why not throw in a slam on the Gulf War while we're at it? Bush couldn't have actually believed any of the things he said.  He's just another cynical man saying cynical things for a nickel of gas.)

To hell with that and to hell with you for saying it.

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I think Picard kept the information to himself.