Ron Moore in SCI-FI Wire

Roswell co-executive producer and writer Ron Moore is featured in the current SCI FI Wire. He discusses his involvement in a possible series based on Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern novels. Moore confirms that he wrote the pilot and has pitched it to The WB.

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12:00pm ET, 18-January-01

Moore Confirms Pern Pitch

Ronald D. Moore–a longtime Star Trek writer and now co-executive producer of The WB’s Roswell–told SCI FI Wire that he has pitched The WB a show based on Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series of novels. Moore said in an interview that he wrote the first script for the proposed show, which is being developed by Fox Regency, and that he is awaiting a go-ahead from the network for either fall or mid-season next year. Timing depends in part on upcoming writers’ and actors’ strikes this year.

“We’re just waiting to see if it will be picked up or not,” Moore said. “The script was very well received. It’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Now it’s just a question of yes or no. I hope to hear about that really soon.” Moore said the series would be a live-action show that he will run. No one has been cast yet. “It’s a series that I had read back when I was in college, and it always stuck in my mind as an interesting world, a different slice of sci-fi that hadn’t been explored,” Moore said. “It has a huge following. … The characters stuck with me through the years. … I remember the mental images that always stuck with me. It seems at this point in time that it’s a show you can do on TV because of the technology.”

Moore’s series has nothing to do with a previous Dragonriders series that was in development at Alliance Atlantis Entertainment and Zyntopo Teo. Alliance reportedly let its option to develop the series drop last March. Moore told SCI FI Wire that it’s unlikely he’ll make use of any of the ideas developed for that series, including the elaborate computer models for flying dragons. “We won’t use the old stuff,” Moore said. “We will start up doing our own thing.”

But Moore added that McCaffrey would have a say. “She has a big proprietary concern about her dragons,” Moore said. “I talked with her and met her years ago … in Ireland through mutual friends. … She’s a lovely lady. … She’ll have no formal involvement, but it’s her series. She’s the creator, and she’ll definitely be involved.”