Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D. Moore/ron037.txt

Subj: Answers Date: 97-06-24 19:53:22 EDT From: RonDMoore

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Always possible.

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Never take the Stardates too seriously. Remember that Gene never wanted them to make ANY sense at all, and that although we do try to keep them in order and bring some rationality to them, that at the end of the day they're still just made up numbers.

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We have only a vague idea of what the game is actually about and mostly we just make it up as we go along.

<<Can you verify that I understood the representation of Sisko's visions in "Rapture?" The swarm of locusts represent the Jem'Hadar ships. The part about them going to initially Bajor, but going to Cardassia represent how the ships went throught the wormhole, but instead of attacking the stations immediately, they went to Cardassia to join up with their ships. The reason why Bajor needed to stand alone, was if they joined the Federation, they could not sign a treaty w/the Dominion, and therefore would be an easy target. >>

That's a very reasonable explanation, but I'd rather not commit us to that interpretation on the off chance we may want to introduce other possible explanations.

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The Roms are out for themselves and don't give a #%@! about DS9. They were only willing to defend DS9 in Inferno's Light because there was no reason for them to think that the Dominion wasn't going to be coming after the Romulan Empire as well as the Federation. Once the Dominion made a better offer, the Roms were more than willing to sit this one out.

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This wasn't the most expensive ever, I think that honor belongs to "Trials and Tribble-ations" (as a single episode, that is -- "Emissary" and "Apocalypse Rising" were both two hour epics). I do think it's one of the best.

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Technically, they didn't *take* the station, they simply took over administration of it in the same manner as the Federation. Granted, Bajor could protest this, but unless they were willing to back up that protest with guns, I don't think the Dominion would even take notice of the protest.

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Yes, and it was something I'd always wanted to do. The ties between Trek and Forester have been long established and I very much wanted to do something that would put the two of them together on film -- if only we'd had a first rate ship of the line available!! --- Subj: Answers Date: 97-06-24 20:18:53 EDT From: RonDMoore

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Please do not pitch stories or ideas to me here on the board. I cannot accept them under any circumstances. That said, I can tell you that the process works like this: when someone who's been *invited* to pitch to the show sells us an idea, we then commission that person to write a story. They are paid according to the Guild rules. Credit is determined at the very end of the process by the Guild and they make the determination after examining all the input of all the writers who worked on the episode. It is virtually impossible for the writer who wrote the first story to be eliminated from the credit.

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I don't really have a favorite character -- whoever I'm focusing on in a script becomes my favorite for a time. I don't know about my "greatest" contribution -- there're are scenes and episodes that I'm proud of and influences that I believe to be mine, but I'll leave that sort of thing to others to determine.

<< I want to know who's idea it was to make Martok a semi-regular and who's idea was it to make Nog a cadet?>>

We all loved JG Hertzler's performance as Martok and felt it was a real shame we had to kill him off in "Apocalypse Rising" (it really worked in the story is why we did it). When we were talking about "Purgatory/Inferno" I think it was Ira who came up with the idea that we could find the "real" Martok in the same prison camp as Garak and Worf were being confined in. I don't recall how we came up with the idea of Nog wanting to be a cadet.

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It's the exact same Klingon Bridge we've always used -- it just looked bigger on the CD-ROM.

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I have a few favorites, but the one that tops my list is "Conscience of the King". I liked the backstory of Kirk as a young man caught up in a revolution and the nightmarish slaughter by Governor Kodos. I liked the Shakespearean overtones to the episode as well as the use of the plays themselves. And I absolutely loved Kirk in this episode -- a troubled man haunted by the shadows of the past, a man willing to lure Karidian to his ship under false pretenses, willing to do one of his more cold-blooded seductions on Lenore, willing fight with his two closest friends, and risk his entire command in the name of justice. Or was it vengeance? Kirk's aware of his own lack of objectivity, his own flaws to be in this hunt for a killer, but he cannot push the burden away and refuses pull back from his quest to track down Kodos no matter what the cost. It also has some of my favorite lines in TOS:

"What will you do if you decide that Karidian is Kodos? Carry his head through the halls?  That won't bring back the dead, Jim." "No, but they may rest easier."

"If the supply ships had arrived on time, this Kodos of yours might have gone down in history as a great hero." "But he didn't. And history has made its judgement."

The scene with Spock and McCoy in Kirk's quarters is one of the series' highlights. The brooding tone and the morally ambiguous nature of the drama fascinated me and definitely influenced my thinking as to what Trek could and should be all about. --- Subj: Answers Date: 97-06-24 20:27:10 EDT From: RonDMoore

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Trek does have a point of view, and that point of view accepts evolution as a believable and valid theory. Gene himself felt this very strongly and although we do try to embrace many points of view and many beliefs, there are some matters on which we do make our feelings known. That said, I also think that anyone within the Trek universe who espoused a "creationist" or similar view as to the origins of life would find their beliefs respected -- "respected" being fundamentally different than "believed."

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PLEEEEEEAASSE remember that I'm not working on the TNG feature and so the Picard/Crusher thing is out of my hands.