Former Star Trek: Voyager writer Michael Taylor will join Ron Moore, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle on the writing staff of Moore's Battlestar Galactica, which is gearing up for its third season.

"The Watcher" blog at The Chicago Tribune reported that Taylor, who also wrote for Michael Piller's The Dead Zone, is joining the staff of the revival series, which will broadcast its third season in October. Thompson and Weddle revealed to the column that the first eight episodes of next season have already been mapped out in preparation for Battlestar's return to production in April.

"We still have to see how they play together," wrote Thompson, "and whether we’ll have the money to pull them off."

Thompson said that Moore was writing the first two episodes himself. Moore also spoke about the March 10th season finale of Battlestar Galactica with Sci Fi Wire, which caught him at the Museum of Television and Radio's William S. Paley Television Festival in Los Angeles.

"We had talked about the possibility of finding a habitable planet pretty early on in the first season, and...it's just one of those ideas that comes up," Moore explained. The third season will "pick up...with life under the occupation of the Cylons...it's very complicated and very difficult."

The executive producer conceded that there are clear parallels with what is happening in Iraq right now but felt that the new storyline allowed them to shift perceptions.

"A lot of people look at the show and say, 'Well, are the Cylons Al-Qaeda and the Colonials are...us?' And I've always said that's not really true, and the politics of the show kind of shift back and forth," he explained. "It's about trying to upset expectations and about trying to make you think about issues and ideas from a different perspective."

The full interview with Moore, which contains more spoilers, is here.

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