<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Creator: Ron Moore's Invitation, February 24, 2003

(This is a Creator article, written by Ronald D. Moore, includes exclusive content, and is not open for editing.)

February 24, 2003

Dear SCIFI.COM and Battlestar Galactica Fans:

Here lies a slumbering giant, its name known to many, its voice remembered by but a few. For a brief moment, it strode the Earth, telling tall tales of things that never were, then stumbled over a rating point and fell into a deep sleep.

I think there's life in that old giant. But I think that just poking him with a stick and expecting him to leap to his feet and resume his journey as if no time had passed would serve only to hasten his final death throes. He needs a makeover. Especially that '70s hair.

So we've set out to bring the old boy back to life and give him a new look and a new outlook on life. And we're going to ask him to tell his stories again, from the beginning. Tell them again, but this time go deeper. See, we were young once and when the old guy spun his tales of Apollo and Starbuck, we were satisfied with clear-cut heroes and nakedly evil villains. But we're older now. We've eaten a lot of popcorn over the years. We're ready for a bigger meal. Make the story more complicated. Make the people less black-and-white. Challenge us, provoke us, grab us by the throat with those massive hands and dare us to invest ourselves in flawed characters who face ambiguous choices in an imperfect world. Dare us to root for heroes with all-too-human weaknesses. See if we'll still embrace them if they fall prey to their imperfections.

Ask us to care for human beings instead of caricatures.

With those words leading the way, I turned in the final draft of Battlestar Galactica. Bold words, perhaps. Arrogant even. But they accurately describe the ambition driving this project:

We believe you can explore adult themes with adult characters and still tell a ripping good yarn.

We believe that to portray human beings as flawed creations does not weaken them, it strengthens them.

We believe that bringing realism to science fiction is neither contradictory nor a fool's errand.

We believe that science fiction provides an opportunity to explore our own society, to provoke debate and to challenge our perceptions of ourselves and our fellow Man.

We believe science fiction can still be relevant.

We believe all these things and more.

If you agree with us, then this is the show for you. If not, then thanks for coming, but the popcorn is in a different aisle.

Stick around—it's going to be a helluva ride.

Ronald D. Moore
Executive Producer/Screenwriter