Ronald D. Moore explains how he got Star Trek’s open submission policy started

Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Bonding”

Ronald D. Moore is a name needing little introduction to fans of Star Trek. In addition to being a series producer, he has written more than 40 episodes across three different series for the franchise, as well as co-writing two Star Trek films, Generations and First Contact. Moore spoke with Collider this week, sharing several stories from his career with Star Trek. Perhaps chief among them is Moore’s tale of how his Star Trek: The Next Generation script, “The Bonding”, helped change the way televised Star Trek would be written for over a decade.

It was the late 1980s and Moore had left college to pursue a writing career in Los Angeles. When Moore’s then girlfriend found out he was a fan of Star Trek, she used her connections to get him into the studio for a tour of the Star Trek: The Next Generation sets. “They used to have a regular set tour,” Moore said. “Once a week they would take people on the Star Trek sets, because so many people wanted to do it.”

With six weeks until his scheduled tour, Moore wrote a script and brought it in, where he convinced his tour guide to read it. After formal submission and months of sitting in what is known as the “slush pile”, producer Michael Piller purchased Moore’s script. It wasn’t long before Moore would join the writing staff of TNG. “It was a very lucky, amazing break that I got. I was very young,” he said. He was just 25 at the time.

The talent that Moore brought to Star Trek gave Piller an idea. Moore explained to Collider that Piller wanted to “open the gates up to the fan community and people that want to write for the show.” 

Star Trek now had an open script submission policy. Now, anyone could write a spec script and sign a release form to Paramount Pictures for the chance to have it produced on screen. According to Moore, the new policy led to nearly 3,000 script submissions each year. “We had at least five full time script readers who did nothing but read Next Generation scripts and then wrote up coverage on every script,” Moore told Collider. Bryan Fuller, Jane Espenson and Rene Echevarria are just a few of the talented writers who found their place in the Star Trek universe through this process. Sadly, the open submission policy for Star Trek scripts was discontinued in 2001.

Throughout his career with the franchise, Ronald D. Moore has written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact. Stream the full interview now at Collider.com.