Moore on Dragonriders Series

August, 1999 – some of you may recall this was around the time Alliance Entertainment and Zyntopo Teo began developing a 1-hour tv series based on the popular 'Dragonriders of Pern' series of novels by Anne McCaffrey. Unfortunately for fans of the books, the proposed series, a mix of live action and computer generated imagery, never got off the ground despite a commitment to begin shooting in February of 2000 - Alliance apparently let its option to develop the series drop last March. Now, in 2001, however, someone new has stepped up to bat for the idea, and guess what - it's Ronald D. Moore, late of 'Star Trek' and current co-producer of teen alien drama series, 'Roswell'.

Yesterday, Sci Fi Wire posted an article based on an interview they held with Moore, where the producer reveals that he's pitched an idea based on the 'Dragonriders' concept to Warner Brothers. Already in development with Fox Regency, the series is just waiting for the green light from the studio for a fall or mid-season premiere next year – dependant, of course, on the expected upcoming WAG and SAG strikes. Moore has, in fact, already written a script for the show, which he says was "very well received" by Warner Bros.

Moore is apparently a long-time far of the 'Dragonriders' novels, harkening back to his college days. "It's a series that I had read back when I was in college," he told SciFi Wire, "and it always stuck in my mind as an interesting world, a different slice of sci-fi that hadn't been explored." If the series gets the go-ahead, like the previous incarnation proposed by Alliance and Zyntopo Teo, the series will be live action but, as Moore adds, "it's unlikely he'll make use of any of the ideas developed for that series" –for example, none of the elaborate computer models designed for the last series will be used. Again, like the previous series, McCaffrey will not be formally involved in production, though she will have a say in things and Moore does suggest that she'll be working with them to some extent on the project behind the scenes – after all, as their creator, the gracefully aging author understandably has a "big proprietary concern about her dragons."

To date, there are almost 20 books in the 'Dragonriders' series, spanning over three decades, with the first book, 'Dragonflight', published in 1968, with the short story it was based upon, 'Weyr Search', published about a year before. The next novel in the series, 'The Skies of Pern', is due out on April 3 this year and is highly anticipated by the large fan community.

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