This is the first part in a series talking to "Battlestar Galactica" co-producer and writer David Weddle.

His introduction to television writing was unexpected. In fact, like many Hollywood success stories, David Weddle simply found himself in the right place at the right time.

Weddle had written a biography in 1994 on film director Sam Peckinpah called "If They Move ... Kill 'Em!" which actually was a favorite of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" co-executive producer Ira Steven Behr. In fact, Behr liked the biography so much, he invited Weddle to come visit him on the set of of "Deep Space Nine" at the Paramount lot in Hollywood.

"He invited me to lunch at Paramount, and took me for a tour of the sets," Weddle recently told Airlock Alpha's Michael Hinman. "Being a shameless opportunist, I asked if I could pitch story ideas to his show. Ira generously said yes."

And with that pitch started a career that would span the length of "Deep Space Nine," and then land him and writing partner Bradley Thompson on one of the decade's most talked about science-fiction series, "Battlestar Galactica" on SciFi Channel.

But making the break into not only science-fiction, but writing teleplays took a lot of work ... something Weddle said he didn't take lightly.

"At first, I didn't understand what the hell was going on," Weddle said about watching previous episodes of DS9. "But we studied the show for a couple of months, then went in to pitch ideas to Ira. He was extraordinarily patient and became a mentor to us. We sold a story idea in Season 4. (Then co-executive producer) Ron Moore ended up writing the teleplay based on our story. After he finished, we sent him a thank you note, and Ron sent us all the drafts of the script -- which was another tremendous educational experience. It gave us a window into the evolutionary process of TV writing."

The episode was "Rules of Engagement" where Worf (Michael Dorn) stood trial for destroying what was believed to be a civilian transport ship in the midst of a battle. Weddle and Thompson would go on to write 11 more episodes for DS9 before it went off the air in 1999. Following the end of the show, everyone went off in their own directions, including Weddle, who would write for programs like "Ghost Stories" and UPN's version of "The Twilight Zone" that aired with "Star Trek: Enterprise."

Ronald D. Moore, however, had a different path ... one that led him to a brief stint on "Star Trek: Voyager" in its sixth season, which Weddle said was "deeply mired in the 'Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln' school of dramaturgy."

"By that, I mean it seemed like a cast of automatons mouthing freeze-dried dialogue and slogging through pre-programmed melodrama," Weddle said. "Ron tried to paddle the show into darker waters and reinvigorate it by making it more complex and contemporary, but his arguments fell on deaf ears and he finally left."

Weddle said that he kind of lost track of Moore, until he was attending a Director's Guild screening of the "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries that first aired on SciFi Channel in 2003 ... something that Moore had taken a lot of heat for reimagining.

"As I sat down in the theater before the screening, I cringed because I was not a fan of the original 'Battlestar' and could not see how even a remarkably talented writer like Ron Moore could weave that straw into gold," Weddle said. "I should have known better. Ten minutes into the screening, I did know better. It blew me away!"

Weddle said that after the screening, he went up to Ron and exclaimed, "You did it! Everything you wanted to do with 'Voyager,' everything that you argued Star Trek needed to do to grow and survive as a franchise, you did in this show."

A couple weeks later, Weddle and Thompson were invited to lunch again ... not to get a tour of the sets and hang out with some producers, but to have Moore offer them both staff positions on the new "Battlestar Galactica." Moore made Weddle and Thompson co-producers as well as writers. The pair ended up penning the popular first-season episodes "Act of Contrition" and "Hand of God." So far in the second season, they've written the first two episodes, "Scattered" and "Valley of Darkness," with three more ready to go for the season. And that's not all. As co-producers, they have their hands in many aspects of every episode, helping to bring the entire series together.

"None of it would be possible without Ira Behr, who took a chance on us, taught us the craft of television writing, and showed all of us -- Ron included -- what could be accomplished when working with the epic canvas of a science-fiction series," Weddle said.

One of the things that "Galactica" has steered away from that was common in Star Trek series episodes are reset buttons. Weddle, however, says that's a trend not started or maintained solely by "Galactica," but one they are definitely taking part in.

"I think the reset button is a convention that is fading from episodic television," he said. "Do you see the reset button hit on 'The Sopranos,' 'Six Feet Under,' 'West Wing' or 'Lost'? No. This is because audiences are becoming more sophisticated and demanding more complex and developed narratives, demanding them by gravitating to them and making these shows popular."

A lot of that practice, Weddle said, had more to do with what producers and writers were given, rather than what they wanted to introduce to audiences.

"In the old days, when networks cranked out 39 (in the 1950s) episodes of a show each season, and later 26 -- there was an edict that every episode had to be self-contained so that the shows could be rerun in random order on other stations for years to come. This recreated the reset button so that all conflicts had ot be resolved in 30 to 60 minutes and characters remained static, never growing or developing.

"But now that most shows find their second life in DVD box sets, audiences are gravitating to those with continuing storylines. 'Deep Space Nine' was a transitional series. It was supposed to be composed of self-contained episodes, but Ira Behr slyly moved it into an ongoing narrative with continuing storylines. This is where Ron and Brad and I learned the craft of the new generation of TV shows, just as 'Sopranos' was hitting the air and transforming television."

"Galactica," by it's nature, is a very dark series. Billions of people were killed in a nuclear holocaust, and the 50,000 or so that survived are barely holding on as the Cylons continue to chase them down. But yet, the series has found light moments, including when the crew was able to defeat the Cylons at a tylium refinery in "Hand of God" and get enough fuel to last them a couple years.

"It is not hard to write light moments in the show," Weddle said. "One of the episodes we wrote this season (it has yet to air) is actually a very upbeat show. We don't go out of our way to make the show dark. We try to keep the show as real as we can, to proceed from the set of circumstances that our characters find themselves in and allow events to unfold much as they would in our world.

"This often means that for every good thing that happens, there is also something painful or traumatic. Don't you find that to be true in your life? For every achievement, there is a setback, for every gain there is also a loss. This is not dark or pessimistic, it's life. We all struggle to come to terms with that, some of us more successfully than others -- just like the characters of 'Battlestar.'"

This interview series with David Weddle continues the first week of August, and will talk about the genesis of episodes like "Act of Contrition" and "Hand of God," as well as other aspects of what brings "Battlestar Galactica" together.