Posted in: Star Trek, TV | Tagged: brannon braga, for all mankind, ronald d. moore, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, star trek: voyager

Star Trek: Voyager: Ronald D. Moore Reveals Pitches Before Departure

Ronald D Moore (For All Mankind) offered some details on two pitches he had for Star Trek: Voyager before he departed from the franchise.

Ronald D Moore might arguably be one of the most successful writers post-Star Trek in the industry today. You can also make the case the franchise wouldn't be anywhere near what it is today without his contributions helping establish The Next Generation as a successful spinoff from The Original Series – one of syndication's most successful stories in television. Moore, who also developed the first two TNG films, Generations (1994) and First Contact (1996), took his creativity to the next two Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but it was the UPN series where his franchise journey ended. The creator and executive producer of AppleTV+'s For All Mankind spoke with Cinemablend at San Diego Comic-Con on the stories he pitched on Voyager before leaving the series due to creative differences with EP Brannon Braga.

Ronald D. Moore on What Could Have Been on 'Star Trek: Voyager'

"I was only on Voyager for a few months. But in that period, there was a storyline being developed that was the Voyager for a time starts shepherding some other ships, some alien ships, through some region," Moore said. "I don't remember if it was a war-torn region or if it was some kind of spatial phenomenon or something. And I remember bringing up explicitly, 'Oh, you could do a ragtag fleet here,' sort of like [Battlestar] Galactica did, 'And maybe that becomes something you do in multiple episodes. There's a whole community here.'"

The idea of the caravan is intriguing, considering the recurring alien races the U.S.S. Voyager ran into, like the Hirogen and the Kazon, were often plotting or scheming against Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and company. Both species have largely been forgotten about once Voyager cleared their space. With the second half of the series, it was initially Species 8472 before it eventually circled back to the Borg. When it came to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, you had your share of Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc who have factions and their own agenda, not everyone among them hated the Federation.

Another pitch Moore had created some interesting possibilities with leadership as we would end up seeing on Discovery and other sci-fi shows like The Ark. "I remember saying at one point that maybe there's an election. Maybe there should be an election aboard Voyager. Cause is Katherine Janeway really gonna be the captain of this thing for the next 75 years or whatever it was? And they all looked at me like I was insane! Like, 'We're not gonna have an election on the Voyager.' And you know, it was a Starfleet vessel. So it's a slightly different thing. But even then, I was thinking towards ideas of a lone ship out on its own for an extended period of time and what would the realities of that be. How would you form a social structure? What are the aspects of your civilization that you would take with you?"

Moore, who got writing credit for two Voyager episodes and none of his pitches got through, would go on to be part of another franchise resurgence in the SYFY remake of Battlestar Galactica and also develop Starz! Outlander and For All Mankind. For more, including how Star Trek-type tech may come to the Apple TV+ series, you can check out the whole interview here.

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