By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the things that made Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot so successful is that it was basically everything that Star Trek wasn’t. While Gene Roddenberry’s classic show was all about the hopeful exploration of the cosmos, Moore’s series focused on humanity’s frantic fight for survival after a genocidal attack by the Cylons. Despite the differences between the franchises, though, Battlestar Galactica was actually inspired by Star Trek to create Cloud 9, a civilian fleet vessel whose inside looks like a lush, outdoors planet.
How Star Trek Created The Cloud 9
The Battlestar Galactica reboot introduced Cloud 9 in the episode “Colonial Day,” a very political episode that called for a slight change in setting. Showrunner Moore wanted to introduce some outdoor environments to the show to keep it from feeling too claustrophobic, but he also wanted to avoid having the Galactica visit a new planet each week a la Star Trek. The solution was to introduce Cloud 9, a civilian ship whose interior conveniently looks like the exterior of a planet.
At this point, you might be asking yourself why the Battlestar Galactica showrunner and other producers thought the series needed Coud 9 in the first place. The short answer is that if the show never brings its characters to new locations, viewers will eventually start going as stir-crazy as their favorite characters. This is one of the big reasons that Galactica, a show about characters who live in space 24/7, still found so many opportunities to visit Caprica and other planets.
Much of that exploration came later on as Ronald Moore became more comfortable with having these characters explore strange new worlds. However, the Battlestar Galactica showrunner wanted to create Cloud 9 in Season 1 so that the writers didn’t necessarily have to take the main ship and its heroes to a new planet every week like in Star Trek: The Original Series or The Next Generation. Thanks to Cloud 9 (a vessel whose interior looks like that of a planet), the show could provide a visual change of pace as needed without forcing the title vessel to make any detours.
If the showrunner had been anyone else, we likely wouldn’t have gotten a new ship. Our heroes would simply visit a new planet each week, which is the formula made popular by Kirk and Spock. However, Ronald Moore got his start in show business by writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he got that job in large part due to his great passion for The Original Series (he even became TNG’s Klingon expert because of his love of TOS). Once he began running his own show, Moore seemingly wanted to do something different, so Battlestar Galactica introduced Cloud 9 so he wouldn’t have to bite Trek’s style.
As hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans know, Cloud 9 didn’t make it to the end of the series. Instead, this unusual ship was destroyed with a nuclear device by a version of Six (Gina Inviere) whose breakup with Dr. Baltar led to some very literal fallout for our heroes. But we would never have had this ship in the show at all if not for Star Trek and its “planet of the week” trope that Ron Moore desperately wanted to avoid. He was ultimately successful (so say we all!) in creating a standalone sci-fi series that boldly went where no Trek had gone before.
