By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When somebody brings back a beloved intellectual property, they usually make noise about how much they loved the original. For example, J.J. Abrams talking about how much he loved the Star Wars Original Trilogy right before he tried to kill the whole franchise. However, there’s one beloved sci-fi reboot whose showrunner never stopped butting heads with the man who brought it to life. We’re talking about Ronald D. Moore, the Battlestar Galactica reboot showrunner who never forgave original Galactica creator Glen A. Larson for insisting on a story credit and then making Moore look inexperienced.
Ronald D. Moore vs. Glen A. Larson
How the heck would a story credit from the original showrunner make the new showrunner look worse? In short, Ronald D. Moore wasn’t the first person trying to bring this franchise back. In fact, original creator Glen A. Larson had been trying to make his own Battlestar Galactica reboot, but it never made it to the screen. Moore’s show built on some of the ideas Larson had, causing the original creator to insist on having his name in the credits, but he changed his name, making it look like Moore needed help from a random nobody rather than the franchise creator.
The full tale of the beef between Ronald D. Moore and the late Glen A. Larson is full of all the twists and turns you’d expect from a good Battlestar Galactica episode. For starters, Larson hated many of the changes in the reboot; as his son David later recalled, including the decision to make Starbuck a female character. “To just say we’re going to gender-swap, we’re going to do this, we’re going to move this around, and we’re going to change some of the mythology, was painful for him,” the son said of his father.
While Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot changes rubbed Glen A. Larson the wrong way, the real drama came when the original creator wanted a credit on Moore’s miniseries. Because Larson created the whole franchise, Moore was perfectly willing to give the man a story credit, which simply means that he helped develop the story in some way. Unfortunately, Larson wanted a teleplay credit, which would mean that he had a direct hand in writing the miniseries script alongside Moore.
Ronald D. Moore disagreed with that idea, though some of his Battlestar Galactica reboot arguably bears a strong resemblance to some of what Larson wanted to do with his own failed reboot. The dispute between the two men went all the way to the Writers Guild of America, which ultimately decided in Larson’s favor. The creator got his wish and received a teleplay credit on the reboot’s miniseries, but then he decided to get extremely, extremely petty.
The Final Insult
You see, Larson didn’t use his actual name for the teleplay credit. Instead, he used the pen name “Christopher Eric James.” This irked the reboot’s showrunner because “it’s not written by Ronald D. Moore and Glen Larson, which at least sort of would acknowledge the roots of it and my contribution versus the creator” of the original Battlestar Galactica. Instead, “It’s my name and some other guy’s name, which makes it look like I was either rewritten or someone else contributed in some way.”
In looking back on this incident, Ronald D. Moore didn’t mince words about the Battlestar Galactica creator’s actions: “I never quite forgave him for that.” Still, you could say that Moore had the last laugh. Not only did his reboot end up becoming a phenomenal success, but Larson’s final attempt to bring Galactica back on his terms (as a movie this time) ultimately crashed and burned. That film was deliberately going to have nothing to do with Moore’s hit reboot. Now, with the most recent Galactica reboot attempt scuttled, Moore may have what Larson so desperately wanted: the definitive word on sci-fi’s quirkiest franchise.