What Does Ron D. Moore Think About ‘Star Trek’ Fatigue?

Ron D. Moore is sort of science fiction television legend status — having worked in the annals of Star Trek, the short-lived Star Wars tv show that never made it to series, and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

He also is known for giving extremely thoughtful answers when asked questions at conventions (as we know from experience), as made apparent by his response to a Star Trek ‘franchise fatigue’ question during Creation’s annual Star Trek: Las Vegas (STLV) convention earlier this month:

When you say something like franchise fatigue it means that, to me, it means that particular flavor had run dry, essentially, to mix my metaphors, essentially that way of doing Star Trek, that way of telling story, and those kinds of stories had run its course.

You could just see in the shows, it had fatigue, it was tired. It wasn’t really engaging any more or felt like it was just standing in place.

Then it gets reinvented, and then you bring in new people, and you bring in new ideas, and you change up the parameters, and then it all gets reinvigorated again. So, it’s not so much about volume, it’s not really about how many shows there are, it’s really about are you able to still engage the audience and make it seem fresh and exciting. Once you’re in the same place and doing the same show time after time after time, which is what the Star Trek franchise started to feel like by the time that Enterprise ended, it just felt all the same and it didn’t feel new. Then it’s time for a big change, then it’s time to go fallow for a while and plant the ground all over again.

Moore is currently showrunning Outlander for STARZ, as well as developing a new ‘space’ series for Apple, an alternative history take that asks “what if we never stopped the space race?”