You know you've 'made it' as an actor when, among other things, people line up to get your autograph. Of course, you never know what they might hand you to sign. Just ask Andromeda's Gordon Michael Woolvett. "I was at the Comic Con in San Diego last year and I autographed a pair of ladies underwear," laughs the actor. "Let me quickly add that that's not an invitation for me to sign more. It was a one-time thing and, no, she wasn't wearing them at the time. They were brand new.

"The con was quite an event. I spent four-and-a-half hours meeting the fans and signing autographs. I've discovered that people either like or hate my character of Harper. He seems to have a really strong effect on audiences so I must be doing something right," he smiles. A recipient of a Gemini award for the Hottest Star of 2002, there's no doubt that the affable Woolvett has endeared himself to Andromeda fans. For almost four years, his character of Seamus Zelazny Harper has served as chief engineer aboard the Andromeda Ascendant. Like most TV Sci-Fi techo-wizards, Harper has a knack for pulling off mechanical miracles that have on more than one occasion saved the ship and its crew. At the same time, he's not above making a mistake. Walking a fine line between genius and goofball has allowed Woolvett to turn Harper into something other than a small screen stereotype. "My character has, I think, grown and matured, and this [fourth] season he's getting to interact with women a lot more.

It's not always in what you'd call a positive way," he jokes, "but at least there's interaction. From the beginning, there's been an unspoken relationship between Harper and Trance [Laura Bertram]. Nothing has ever come to fruition, but it's still alluded to by the writers every now and then. As for Harper's feelings for Rommie [Lexa Doig], they've been on the back burner for a while. We sort of resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing is going to happen between those two. Nonetheless, when I'm at conventions, fans will inevitably ask me, 'Are Harper and Rommie ever going to get together?' Who knows? I'd love to eventually resolve that on the show one way or the other. "One of the things I'm extremely pleased about is that this year we're getting back to basics. Last season, we went off in different directions in order to explore what was out there story-wise. In doing so, we began to lose sight of who our characters really were. In Harper's case, he's this brilliant engineer who can accomplish amazing things but also gets himself into trouble with his mouth or mind. This season, we're seeing more of that 'old' Harper, the one who's innovative and comes up with lots of cool gadgets as well as unique solutions to problems. He's more like he was back in our second year, which I feel to be Andromeda's high point. This show is about a team of great heroes, each of whom with his or her own role to play. At times the group can be a dysfunctional one and they have to work through that to get the job done."

It's no secret that Harper is not the bravest member of the Andromeda crew. Despite this, he always seems to come through when the chips are down. In the fourth season story Harper/Delete, our reluctant hero unwittingly puts his life on the line to disarm a deadly weapon. "The jeopardy in this episode hinges on the fact that Harper doesn't know he's in danger, and it's up to the rest of the crew to keep him in the dark," explains Woolvett. "My character is isolated from the others and under a great deal of stress. He's doing lots of tecnical stuff in a number of neat scenes that are full of energy. The real fun, though, comes when Harper finds out what's going and what he does about it.

"Harper/Delete was directed by Richard Flower, who also did Harper 2.0. The producers always seem to give him the Harper heavy stories, and that's OK with me because I really enjoy working with Richard. He challenges me and gets me to try things as Harper that I might not think of. I've since been able to add those choices to my [acting] arsenal and I'm grateful to Richard for that."

At the end of Andromeda's third season, Captain Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo) bid farewell to the ship's resident Nietzschean crewmember Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb), who abandoned ship to pursue his own personal agenda. Tyr and the crew cross paths again during the show's fourth year in the two-part story Soon The Nearing Vortex and The World Turns All Around Her. "There's a scene where Harper meets up with Tyr for the first time since he left Andromeda," says Woolvett. "They sit down together at a table and it's not long before the insults start flying between them. Keith and I threw in some ad libs and every shot ended with both of us cracking up. It was great to have him back on the show. Oddly enough, I got to work with Keith before this on an episode of The Twilight Zone. He'd cut his hair and I was the first one from Andromeda to see his 'new look'. I told Keith, 'You look much better,' and he said [jokingly], 'What's that's supposed to mean?' I said, 'You've got a nice face and now people can actually see it'. He was OK with that," laughs the actor.

Around the same time he shot The Twilight Zone, Woolvett also worked on the British/Canadian mini-series Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion. "It's the true story of two ships that collided in Halifax Harbour," he explains. "Three thousand people lost their lives and the explosion was the biggest ever since Hiroshima. I play a bad-attitude, whisky-drinking womanizer who ends up saving a group of children. It was quite a departure from Harper and a wonderful acting opportunity." Like all his roles, Woolvett is a perfect fit as Andromeda's Harper. Even so. he almost passed up the part. "I'd played similar characters and was looking for a change," says the actor. "I really liked Harper, though, so I took the job and I'm glad I did. It's been a fun ride so far and it's not over yet."

The Write Direction

Like his Andromeda character, Woolvett has a tremendous amount of energy. Last year, he channelled some of it into writing a script for the series. The experience was an eye-opening one. "In TV, it's hard for a free-lance writer because you alone don't get to execute your [story] idea from beginning to end. Once your idea is approved, you write an outline of all the scenes and where the story is headed. The head writer and his staff then take a look at that outline, make their suggestions, hand it back to you and you write the teleplay. "With my script last year [for the episode Vault of the Heavens] I did some rewrites and then Bob Engels [Andromeda executive producer/head writer] took over and polished it off. My story started out one way and during its development a number of other ideas were melded into it. As a result, some of my original elements ended up getting lost. That happens all the time in TV and I understand that. After all, you only have 48 pages to fit everything in. That said, I thought the actual execution of the story was great and was pleased with how it turned out. "I'm writing another story this season," he enthuses. "The working title is Super Harper and it should be a fun one."