SFX Issue 138

Christmas 2005

Regular feature:

Look Who’s Stalking: Aaron Douglas

The SFX Stalker asks the questions that really make the stars go… “FREAK!”

The 34 year-old Canadian actor plays Chief Tyrol in the excellent Battlestar Galactica TV series, and we cornered him at the Memorabilia event to uncover the truth about his secret history in Canadian logging and illegal egg-throwing.

“That I got caught for? I threw an egg when I was in my teens. Well, a couple of eggs. One after the other, in rapid succession. And they seemed to find their way to an officer of the law. I got in a lot of trouble for that, deservedly so.”

What makes you angry day-to-day?

“Rude people. Bad refereeing. Slow drivers. My putter. My three-iron. My four-iron. My five-iron. Sometimes my nine-iron – actually I broke my nine-iron so it’s dead to me now.”

If you were invisible for a day what would you do?

“I would go sit in on meetings held in and around the White House and see just what is really going on there, and just who really is running that place.”

And if you could have another superpower too?

“I’d want the ability to change into anything. And change other things into anything. Like a shape-shifter. But also able to turn a chair into a rock or something.”

What sort of thing do you get sent by fans?

“There’s a woman, probably my biggest fan – she’s absolutely delightful. She posts all over the web, talks about me incessantly. She sent me this massive, massive scrapbook that must have taken her literally months to make. It’s clippings and pictures and poems and it’s absolutely fantastic, and I’m stunned by the effort that went into this thing.”

What’s the dumbest job you ever had to do?

“Everything I did before this was dumb! Nothing I’d want to go back to. There was a braindead job, working for a guy who built docks, you know, for boats. I had to go and pick up the logs for the wood.”

You were a lumberjack!

“Basically I was a log mover.”

What’s the most difficult line you’ve had to say on TV?

“Probably the lines where it’s written in the script that Tyrol turns and sees his man slipping away and has to yell, ‘Nooooooooooooooo!’ Those lines are the worst, I hate that stuff.”

What are you most hoping will happen to your character?

“That he’ll have an affair with every girl on the show! And I want Tyrol to save the universe and have his own spin-off show. Yeah, Adama gets killed and Tyrol now runs the Battlestar. He turns it into a giant floating bar! They call it The Tyrol Show.”

Where do you hide your pornography?

“I don’t hide it!”

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.