“Trek” producer lands in “Roswell”

Thanks to Dottie0062 for this “I found this in a local t.v guide but it was written by Kate O’Hare from Tribune Media Services. The Arizona Republic the week of Sept 10-16” Hmmm..wonder why Kate never sent it over to me or gave the heads up that she was talking with Ron–and to think she called the office today too. Oh, btw, I happen to know Kate so that’s why I wondered out loud about not knowing about this article.

“Trek” producer lands in “Roswell”

” I did a good, long run on Star Trek,” writer/producer Ron D. Moore says. “Ten years is a long time. It’s an eternity on television. Doing something else…I feel
like Star Trek, the experience there, really prepared me to do good work.

“Now I feel like I had a graduate degree in television writing that I can now take and apply.”

After a stint on GvsE, which became “good vs. evil” after it moved from
USA Network to the Sci Fi Channel, longtime Trek staffer Moore was ready
to leap bck into a producer capacity.

“When I sat down and started writing good vs. evil, it was something
completely different from Star Trek, in every way you can imagine. But it
was fun. They liked it, and it got the juices flowing. It was a nice
intermediary stage between going full time on a staff and there.”

Now Moore has joined the WB’s Roswell in a co-executive producer
capacity, working with executive producers Jason Katims, Jonathan Frakes
(a former Trek star) and Lisa J. Olin. The drama, which currently airs on
Monday night, follows the adventures of Max (Jason Behr), his sister,
Isabel (Katherine Heigl), and their friend Michael (Brendan Fehr), teen
aliens who look like humans and were raised by human parents.

Now high school students in Roswell, N.M., site of the infamous 1947
crash, the three were kept alive in stasis pods for decades before
emerging as small children. Over the course of the first season, they
began to find it increasingly difficult to keep their alien identities a
secret, particularly from the local sheriff (William Sadler), the son of
a dedicated UFO hunter.

To complicate things, all three aliens have become romantically involved
with humans-Max with Liz (Shiri Appleby); Michael with Liz’s pal, Maria
(Majandra Delfino); and Isabel with Liz and Maria’s buddy, Alex (Colin
Hanks). These relationships-both the emotional and hormonal
components-have served as a catalyst for uncovering even more or the
aliens’ history, including the existence of a shape-shifting alien and
the discovery that there is a fourth teen alien, Tess (Emilie deRavin),
from the original group.

As the season ended Max escaped the clutches of the government; the
sheriff threw his lot in with the teens after Max saved his son (Nick
Wechsler); and the teens learned from a vision of Max and Isabel’s true
mother (played by Frakes’ wife, Genie Francis), that they are leaders
from an alien world sent away for protection from enemies, that their
mission is far from over, and that they are not alone.

And, worst of all, Liz’s heart broke upon learning that Tess and Max
were lovers in their alien lives.

The show was in some danger of cancellation-how much, nobody knows but
the WB-but a move from Wednesday night to Monday helped in the ratings,
and fans began a concerted campaign that involved flooding th WB offices
with bottles of Tabasco sauce (the aliens’ favorite condiment).

“I can’t help but think the Tabasco helped,” Frakes says.
What lessons did Moore glean from his years on Star Trek: The Nest
Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and Trek films Generations and
First Contact) that will help him on Roswell?

“Ultimately, all I learned about science fiction is that it’s still
about characters. It’s still about human beings. I always looked at Star
Trek that way. It’s just about people.”

But his Trek experience did help him get the job. Says Frakes: “I
certainly tried to push him through. Everybody seems to think this was
one of my wonderful contributions as a producer, that I could finally
help expedite the Star Trek family over.

“I kept selling him to Jason (Katims), who hadn’t met him, by saying
that Ron virtually created the Klingon mythology on Star Trek. He was a
real fan of the Klingons and expanded them, especially on Deep Space
Nine, mythology is an essential part of our new alien bent on Roswell.”

At the end of the season, the human and alien teen had been gone for
probably days in search of the aliens’ origins. Didn’t their parents
wonder where they were?

“I think we have to deal with that,” Frakes says. “I have a feeling
that’s going to be what’s happening this first three or four episodes.
We’ll clean that up, because that’s an ugly loose end out there.”

In the last six episodes of the first season, Katims ramped up the the
science fiction content of the show, moving it out of the claustrophobic
confines of the high school and the Crashdown Cafe, the diner owned by
Liz’s parents where the characters usually meet.

“I’ve been watching the episodes in chronological order,” Moore says.
“It’s an evolution of the show, but it feels like a very organic
evolution.

“The set-up ws so strong for the characters in the pilot, but after
midseason the feeling became, “How much longer can we play just this,
just trying to hide their identities week to week and them in the
school?”

“Even Jason started to feel like there was more, that they could amp up
the stakes and move outward. There definitely is a stronger science
fiction bent to the show this season, but the heart and soul of the show
is still the relationships between those characters.”

Were ther concerns that the final six episodes maybe gave out too much
information too fast.

“That’s an interesting question,” Frakes says. “We discussed it quite a
lot, and we actually cut some back, because there was too much
information about where we’d come from.

“Those aliens really have to change the way they lead their lives now,
which is cool.