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:
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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.
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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:
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The “Him” that Baltar and Six heard was a network of ancient post-biological civilizations—successors of previous cycles that chose non-interference.
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Their fear: direct contact causes recursion and collapse. Every time they intervene, they create religions that freeze progress.
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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:
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Serialized moral arcs à la Sisko vs. the Prophets.
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Political texture—religions splintering over what the “angels” meant.
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Character-driven myth instead of ideology: exploration of guilt, stewardship, and the right to create life.
They’d likely contrast two leads:
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A scientist trying to prove Starbuck is a reconstruction program.
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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.
