Interview: Alex Zahara Zahara portrays Dulann, a Minbari warrior-monk who also serves as first officer on the Liandra. Despite his full-on Minbari makeup, there's something about Zahara's posture, his walk, his presence, that reminds you of the young Harrison Ford's Han Solo in the original Star Wars. Zahara's no stranger to science fiction: He's made the rounds of the usual Vancouver-based suspects, including Dark Angel, Andromeda, Stargate SG-1 and The Outer Limits. Zahara's association with Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski will continue beyond Rangers: He plays the recurring character Ezekiel in Stracyznski's upcoming series, Jeremiah. We spoke with Alex one afternoon on the Vancouver set of B5: The Legend of the Rangers, during his lunch break. Q: How much of Alex Zahara is in Dulann? A: Whenever you see Dulann walk, you'll see he's more restrained than I am, for sure. But he's also got that Han Solo-like side underneath, wanting to break out. He keeps that in, though, because he is Minbari. Q: Tell me about the scene you're shooting. A: We just filmed an inspection of the ship. The Liandra was found adrift, missing its crew, so now that we've been assigned to it, we're going through and looking at all of the repairs that have to be made. We have a tête-à-tête and a little bit of a sparring match between the humans and Minbari [regarding the Minbari] sense of design and style in terms of the warships. The Minbari are much like the Japanese in a sense — [production designer] Steve Gaeghan was saying to me how the Japanese aircraft carriers had blue wallpaper with butterflies on the bridge. They've incorporated that [philosophical aesthetic]. Q: How else does Dulann factor into the story? A: Our ship is attacked, and I get injured quite badly. That leads to a subplot where I'm on that edge of death between life and wherever. Q: Did you ever watch Babylon 5 before you became part of it? A: Yes. I see it a couple of times a week, because it's on the Space Channel here [in Canada]. Then I got this call about the audition, and I was like, "Geez, it's kind of cool that I've been watching the show." Q: What strikes you as being different or special about it? A: Right from the get-go, I could see that Joe, Doug [Netter, executive producer] and Mike [Vejar, director] have a lot of guts. They're out there doing something with a little heart behind it. Some shows you work on just don't feel like they have heart — it's like, "Oh, well, let's just do this and get out of here." Whereas with these guys and the crew, right from the first day of the read-through, everybody just jelled. That doesn't happen very often. That only happened to me once before, in theater, where everybody just clicked, and that time we got nominated for five or six awards. Joe is the glue pulling all of these guys together tighter and tighter. It feels like a family, it really does. Just sitting across from Dylan [Neal] and Myriam Sirois at [everyone else] at the read-through, we just had an instant affinity for each other, and it's coming across onscreen. For the transcript of the SCIFI.COM chat with Alex Zahara, click here.