Interview: Dean Marshall A sci-fi fan since his youth, Dean Marshall portrays Malcolm Bridges, the infiltration and covert-operations specialist aboard the Liandra. Marshall's career includes roles in SCI FI's First Wave and The Outer Limits, as well as in such other genre shows as Poltergeist: The Legacy and NightMan; he was also a recurring character in the popular Canadian series Da Vinci's Inquest. His stage work includes Laurence Fishburne's play Riff Raff at the Vancouver Little Theatre earlier this year, and Mercutio in a Shakespeare in Action production of Romeo and Juliet at Toronto's Ford Centre in 1996. His film work includes the 24-minute Save My Lost Nigga Soul (1993), winner of The National Film Board of Canada's prestigious John Spotton Award for best Canadian short. Q: How did you get involved with Babylon 5? A: I had two auditions, and for both of them I felt probably the most prepared I've ever been. I really felt like there was something in the back of my mind that said this part could be mine, just so long as I felt relaxed enough about it and felt confident enough about what I was doing and didn't take it too seriously. I wasn't desperate about it. Q: Tell us about your character. A: He's into espionage — anything that has to deal with gathering information about forces against or for us, and anything covert as well. Part of his costume is a holo-suit generator he has on his wrist. He just presses it, and he can become any form — pretty much transform into that person. So he can get out of a lot places that most people wouldn't be able to. That's a nifty little toy. I'm sure they'll find some way to stop him — some holo-suit detector. Q: Is there a lot of technobabble to contend with? A: Well, as far as the language goes, I'm pretty free of technical babble. But I have no fear of it; I have no fear of words. I'm Shakespearean-trained, so I learned to be meticulous about what I have to say. Of course, there's a lot of technical stuff involved, and I've scoured just about every Web site I can get my pointer to and have checked out every bit of information they have on Babylon 5 — the technical side to everything, the worlds, where everyone comes from. Q: Have you done much delving into your character's background? A: Yes. My line "Malcolm Bridges, from Beta Colony" helped me start my research. And it was a fan site that gave me the full information. Joe Straczynski came up to me and told me [the Beta Colony] is sort of an outside-of-the-norm kind of place — it's downtrodden, hard to get out of, not a lot of opportunity there. And then I was on this fan site, and it said the Beta Colony was a penal colony. That gave my character an added level of depth, because he could just as well have been a criminal, or he could have landed on this planet and suffered who-knows-what, and it automatically made me think this character has something to hide. And that's always fun to play as an actor, that there's a whole other world that nobody will know, or could know — and who knows, Joe might want to write something about it later. It's good for the character to have that kind of weight behind him. Q: What is it that you like about Bridges? A: There's a lot of strength in this character, and depth. He's a vital part of this crew, and so it's nice to be an integral part of the story. It's like an ideal job, playing the espionage guy. The character gets to do things I won't have a chance to do in my lifetime. That's the fun part of the joyride, I suppose. I would consider this, by far, my break. For the transcript of the SCIFI.COM chat with Dean Marshall, click here.