Interview with Ron Moore and Esai Morales (London MCM Expo)

The first interview with Ron Moore and Esai Morales from the London MCM Expo showed up online earlier today. For the full article, go to HeyUGuys.co.uk. Here are the parts that mention Caprica:

HUG: Was Battlestar written in the same way [as DS9]?

Ron Moore: It’s changed a bit, but the fundamental is still the same. It’s still a writing staff gathering in a room and putting cards up on the board, and arguing about which scene should go first, and what’s the best story. We thought we were telling this story, but it’s turning into that, or this doesn’t work, or ‘I’ve got a better idea’. The fundamental of working in a writer’s room is really the same.

For me personally it’s different, because shows like Battlestar and Caprica, I create and I’m running so I have more idea and control of what I want to do, whereas Trek was more somebody else’s to begin with and then I was more on the team rather than leading the team. My particular role shifted but the job is still kind of the same. It’s still sitting there and finding the best story. (...)

HUG: Esai, moving into a spin off of Battlestar: you hadn’t watched the show prior to working on Caprica?

Esai Morales: Not really. I was aware that it was a lauded show, but there is so much stuff that I can’t see because I don’t have the time. I just didn’t happen to be a fan, not that I wasn’t a fan on purpose.

HUG: Have you seen it since?

EM: I’ve seen much more of it now, but I remember asking how much should see and what I should prepare. They were like ‘you don’t have to see any of it’. This takes place before hand. If you’re going to do a story about Ancient Rome, you don’t need to know about how Italy does today. I mean, you could, but they didn’t want us to colour it.

RM: They didn’t want him to lead, always trying to get to where Adama, where his son, would be this person. We didn’t think that was necessary.

HUG: Writing and working on a prequel would presumably be a very different process from working on a new concept or an original series or sequel. Do you feel at all constrained by the overbearing and overwhelming Battlestar fifty, sixty years in the future?

RM: Not so much. We had the luxury of developing Caprica while Battlestar was still on the air. We wrote the pilot a long time ago, but they didn’t make it for a long time. So we had the opportunity to separate the two projects and we were careful to end the last couple of seasons of Battlestar in a way that wrapped up all of the internal Battlestar mythology. So there weren’t big, giant hanging questions that we then had to go back and answer in Caprica.

We were also able to set up Caprica in a way that it could just start from its own course, fresh. There was really not a lot of direct continuity between the two that we’re constantly having to make sure that this lines up, or go ‘we can’t do that in Caprica, because that would contradict this’. We really separated them in terms of time, and in terms of storyline. We don’t really feel that much of a burden while developing the story, about trying to make it match up to Battlestar. It’s not like the Star Wars prequels that are so integrated, that it must have been a challenge to try to make sure it all lines up. We’re just separated.