Ronald D. Moore helped create Klingon lore in Star Trek

Ronald D. Moore earned his Klingon-loving reputation on Star Trek.

Ronald D. Moore is often credited as being the “Klingon-guy” on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was largely instrumental in bringing most of their big episodes on the series to light and writing them to great effect. Moore became the go-to guy, so to speak, for all things Klingon. That’s pretty well known but Moore isn’t just known for his clever crafting of narratives involving Klingons, but he’s also the one who created much of their lore.

A lot of this came during the creation of the season four finale and season five premiere “Redemption: Part 1 &2”. The season-ender was going to serve as the bookmark for the end of season three but was bumped instead for “The Best of Both Worlds”, which saw The Borg capture, Jean-Luc Picard. That season finale had to be done due to the ongoing concerns that Picard actor Patric Stewart wouldn’t return to the series for season four.

A memo turned the Klingons from stock villains to storyboard gold.

When Ronald D. Moore started working with Star Trek in 1988, little was known about the Klingons, other than they were bad guys who didn’t have forehead ridges and then did have forehead ridges. Moore was the driving for of their backstory, and according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), Moore started building that backstory in season three’s “The Bonding”.

This directly led into the Redemption two-parter from season four to season five. It was a two-parter that series creator Gene Roddenberry was against. The idea of the Klingons was never anything he was too invested in and didn’t really want to see more of them. Hence the battle to get the series to do the two-parter.

It would be one of the last things that Roddenberry would oversee before his passing. While Roddenberry was the series creator it was Michael Piller who really wanted to see what Moore had to offer, and instructed Moore to create a memo that outlined who the Klingon were.

Piller gave Moore the ability to write about the Klingons and because of Moore’s work with the alien race, they’ve since risen to popularity among the fandom. It wouldn’t be out of bounds to claim that Worf and the Klingons may be more popular than Spock and the Vulcans.

That’s a testament to Moore’s work on the franchise.