Still Waters

Gordon Michael Woolvett: Reb's a common sense guy, a problem solver. He ultimately becomes the captain of the ship by default. He struggles with trying to balance the conflicts that arise amongst the crew. His crew members are all around the same age. We are all clones.

The show starts around AD 2700. The back story is: in 2500 a virus starts running rapid throughout the human race, who now also live on colonised Mars, because Mars is the last colony to be hit, and develop a programme called Deepwater Black. ULtimately the programme is called Mission Genesis. They place six generic samples frozen in cryogenics on board a ship called Deepwater Black, as well as a gene bank, which has DNA samples from all life that they can get a hold of.

Six are sent as part of the crew with a bank of probably a billion or two samples of human life. They are frozen for five hundred years, at which point the scientists predict the virus will have wiped itself out. Then we'll be awakened or thawed out and grown as clones into six adults, to pilot the ship back.

That process gets interrupted because an alien ship attacks us and we get awoken earlyer, but we are not quite developed. Our memory implants are not finished or our skills and abilities. Our bodies aren't fully grown. We are young adults. We have to fend off this alien ship and find our way back to Earth to re-populate it. We stumble right through it. Reb balances the conflict that arises from the crew with six young people who aren't quite sure why they should be there or who they are.

Since you awake first, is the rest of the crew supposed to be younger?
Their age is hard to pinpoint, because we don't know how long it takes to actually take a sample and grow it into a clone. We are just a little piece of DNA. They put it frozen on board the ship.

The ship is a freight ship, that they just over real quick as a last ditch effort before the virus reaches Mars and sent it out. For five hundred years it hums through the Universe silently, until the computerised timer clicks and we begin growing and being developed. When the alien ship attacks us, the computer represented by a hologram named Gen, awakens us earlyer, because she needs a human crew to defend the ship.

So although we are young adults, our bodies could be anywhere from one year to a few years old. That could be how long it takes or it could take the actual time period of eighteen to twenty years, which is around what our age would be.

Mentally, because our implants would be done in terms of importance, our skills and abilities, we have the minds of people much older than us - people who would be experienced and old enough to be an officer or a captain, because my character represents a fully trained engineer. Those would have been done first. Our social development would be sort of the last thing.

Basically we wake up having no clue how to deal with each other, how to deal with our feelings as young people, and that's what we struggle with the most. This causes conflicts with our jobs as crew members and ultimately heightens the conflict. We face, let's, an alien ship and we don't know whether ro fight or flee. Reb will have to decide which one we go with, deal with the discontent and stress that will come from that decision and balance everyone out... as well as save the day! [laughs]

Is the freight quipped with weapons?
It has two laser cannons and an array of phasers. I don't know the weapons too well because I'm not the weapon security officer. I'm engineering. That's why I became the captain, because I know how to distribute power. I basically govern what works. Our ship is unlike the ship in Star Trek - we do not have an unlimited source of power. We are always struggling with the fact that we cannot jump into hyperspace and put our shields up and fire. We have to decide.

In Voyager they learned to use other things to make fuel for the warp drive.
Our ship had scoops, because it is a freighter ship designed to travel long distances. IT can gather energy, fly through it and transform it into power for our generators, but because it's a freight ship it's not economical with its energy expenditures. We are always struggling because we are not able to do everything we want to do.

What kind of aliens to do you encounter?
In the beginning of the series we only encounter a few aliens. As we go along we find that, because we've colonised the asteroids and Mars, the capability to span outwards was already there. Five hundred years has gone by since we've been asleep and we do begin to come across humans that got away from Earth and in their own way, with their technology, found a way to beat the virus. But that technology, and each one is a little bit different, has mutated them or extended their longevity, because they were using different types of radiation. So we meet offshoots of the human race as well as aliens.

Do they live on different planets because the Earth has been totally wiped out?
Some do. In one episode we meet another Deepwater ship exactly like ours. I actually got to play myself. That was cool.

We had found out there mayb be more ships like ours, but we know there is at least one. They were sent ten years before ours and on that ship there were all the same genetic samples, but that ship met a terrible fate. When we meet their Reb, who is ten to twenty years older, he is alone on his ship which is completely disabled in orbit around a planet. The rest of the crew is dead. He begins to appear as a bit of a bad guy. He steals our ship and abandons us on his ship. We end up overcoming that, but you'll have to watch to see how!

It gave me a chance to really take Reb and imagine where he would be if he was someone else. My Reb is very profesional and headstrong and loves his job as the saviour of the human race, but is also burdened with this struggle of dealing with everyone and trying to keep everyone together. I have to try to keep control under all pressures. To take this character and play him as though he has completely lost it and become a completely broken man was a lot of fun.

The cool thing about it is, it makes sense on our show. Because we are clones, they would've sent more than one ship. It makes sense; it's not just a cheesy excuse to have Reb meet himself. They did it on Star Trek: Kirk met himself. Because we are already clones it makes perfect sense within the context of the show that would probably happen. We would be on the same route to Earth, so if the first ship had gotten into trouble we would actually run across it.

How did you get this role?
I auditioned for it. I think they like the hair and I just came with it. [laughs]

I did a lot of research, because we are clones. If you wake up as a clone your posture will be perfect, just like a babty. If you watch a baby sit, its back is perfectly straight, because it hasn't learned bad habits yet. I did a lot of research trying to find ways to act as though my body were brand new. I sat down with Barry Pearson, one of our producers, during the audition process, and talked to him about what he wanted.

The other thing I did: I just went 'off book.' I know a lot of producers and writers don't like that, but I really like to make a script my own and make sure that I get the point and the intent across. To put it into words that have a little bit more clarity or more natural, or just learn the beats and meaning behind the script as opposed to the lines. I did that... I think it was a risk that panned out.