Ronald D. Moore

When I grew up, I saw the moon landing, and I was fascinated watching them as a child, and that's what really turned me onto space and science fiction, and I started watching things like 'Lost In Space,' and that led me to 'Star Trek,' which was a major influence on my life.

There is not a new hopeful, optimistic vision of the future that I am currently aware of. Certainly, not one that has penetrated pop culture awareness in the way 'Star Trek' has.

There's a special joy you get having a show on the air that people are interested in and wanting to know what happens next. You really want to enjoy that while you have it.

I have the distinct pleasure of doing exactly what I want to do and get paid for it. It's a joy.

I'm an agnostic in the truest sense of the word. I think about these things - I grew up Roman Catholic, I've been interested in Hinduism, in Eastern religions, but I'm not dedicated to anything - I go through periods where I think maybe it's all nonsense; maybe it's 'The Matrix...' I'm open to various ideas.

There are some good space battles in some of the later series, but that wasn't why you were tuning in every week. You were tuning in every week because Spock was a fascinating character. Because his friendship with Kirk was profound and really unusual.

Battletar' took a while to kinda permeate out into pop culture generally. It hit first with the science-fiction fan community, then the critics, and then it kind of went to the general population.

Essentially, you know, one of the great advantages of working in science fiction is it does give you an opportunity to talk about interesting and somewhat controversial themes and social issues and in a way that doesn't really threaten the audience, because I'm not challenging their particular points of view.

What does it mean to be human, and what is at the human heart, and is there a soul, or is that all there is? Can an artificial being be intelligent? Is 'intelligent' the definition of humanity, or is it something deeper?

I really wanted to write the death of Captain Kirk.

I'm used to something where you have to create an entire world, and I do like that process. I like getting the audience to believe that outside of the frame of your television set, there's a whole real world that exists that is different from your day-to-day reality.

In television, there's this weird sense of isolation from your audience; you kind of get this feeling that you write the show for you and your wife and your friends and the other people who work on the show. It's our little show, and then it goes out into the world, and somebody watches it.