Ronald D. Moore’s instincts have always tilted toward the
human-mythic side of science fiction—messy people, faith and
reason clashing, technology as theology—so if he ever came back to
Battlestar, he’d probably
double down on that tone rather than reboot the war story.
Here’s one plausible projection of where he and a reunited DS9-style room could take
it, based on how those writers think.
1. Setting: The Quiet Century
The new series opens 100 years after the landing
on “new” Earth. Most of the colonists are gone; the descendants
have merged with the planet’s indigenous primates into early
humans.
But beneath the ice caps are buried datacores—Cylon and Colonial
archives slowly re-awakening. Think of it as archaeology from the
future looking back on its creators.
A research team (our new cast)
accidentally boots a residual intelligence that identifies itself
as Kara Thrace.
2. Starbuck’s Identity and
Function
Moore has said he regretted not
defining her. With hindsight, he’d probably thread the needle
between spirituality and science:
-
A quantum-echo entity. Starbuck is
the product of Cylon resurrection tech cross-wired with the
“angels” that guided Baltar and Six. She is both software and
soul—literally the interface between carbon and silicon.
-
She doesn’t “return from
death”; she collapses probability. Every version of her across
prior cycles condensed into one pattern to steer the fleet.
Now, centuries later, that pattern begins to re-assert itself
in the re-awakening archives.
She becomes the show’s Miller-in-the-Protomolecule
figure—half guide, half ghost, trying to understand her own
purpose.
3. The Fermi Paradox Angle
Picking up on your earlier
thought, Moore could finally make the mythology explicit:
-
The “Him” that Baltar and
Six heard was a
network of ancient post-biological civilizations—successors
of previous cycles that chose non-interference.
-
Their fear: direct contact
causes recursion and collapse. Every time they intervene, they
create religions that freeze progress.
-
The Cylons were one such
intervention that went too far.
The re-awakening on Earth
threatens to restart the cycle, so these watchers face the same
dilemma again: act or abstain.
4. Tone and Structure
With For All Mankind experience behind him,
Moore would probably build a multi-decade generational story:
Theme |
Treatment |
Evolution |
Each
season jumps a few centuries—early humans,
proto-civilizations, the rediscovery of technology. |
Legacy & Memory |
Myths
about “the Sky People” evolve into religion, then
archaeology, then rediscovery. |
Contact |
The
watchers debate whether to reveal themselves when a new
species of AI—built by humans—starts echoing the old
Cylons. |
It becomes Battlestar Galactica: Deep
Time—a cosmic-archaeology saga where faith, science, and
recursion meet.
5. The Writers-Room DNA
Bring in DS9 alumni (Ira Steven Behr, René
Echevarria, Ronald Moore himself) and you’d get:
-
Serialized moral arcs à la Sisko
vs. the Prophets.
-
Political texture—religions
splintering over what the “angels” meant.
-
Character-driven myth instead of
ideology: exploration of guilt, stewardship, and the right to
create life.
They’d likely contrast two
leads:
-
A scientist trying to prove
Starbuck is a reconstruction program.
-
A believer convinced she’s
the returning herald.
Both are right.
6. Possible Endgame
The show circles back to the
cosmic scale:
Starbuck learns that even the “watchers” are
subject to entropy; they need fresh consciousness to keep the
network alive.
Humanity becomes the next steward species—not by conquest but by
understanding.
Final shot: a
probe—half-biological, half-digital—launched from a future Earth
carrying humanity’s integrated memory into the void.
Echoing the pilot, a whisper:
“All of this will happen
again… unless someone learns why.”
That’s probably where a mature Moore would
take it: not woke or polemical, but mythic, cyclical, and curious
about the responsibilities of creation.
Less a war story, more a meditation on
legacy and cosmic humility
—exactly the kind of science-fiction
television that used to dare to ask why
instead of which side are you on.