Alan Tudyk

Ageing thumb-wielder and sometime Russ Meyer collaborator Roger Ebert once opined, when meditating on those titans of supporting actordom Harry Dean Stanton and M. Emmet Walsh, that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad."

However, there is a problem with the so-called Stanton-Walsh Rule. M. Emmet is currently 75 years of age whilst Harry Dean is nearly ten years older still. These folks are both, to put it plainly, a couple of honorary Oscars away from jumping on that Cocoon spaceship and setting the controls for the heart of the sun.

In short, we need heroes. But who will comprise the next Stanton-Walsh rule? Who, that is, apart from William H Macy, of course; he’s a shoo-in. So, here’s a name out of left-field: Alan Tudyk. Okay, he’s not got a tri-partite name, and sure, at 38 years old, he’s practically half an M. Emmet, but aside from that, Tudyk has got the goods. For the Great Unwashed, he’s a classic know-the-face-but-can’t-quite-place-him. So, he’s That Guy, the slimy network exec in Knocked Up, and Wat’s-His-Name, Heath Ledger’s squire in A Knight’s Tale. To the Sci-fi initiate, however, Tudyk is, was and always will be Hoban “Wash” Washburne, wacky pilot of the titular spacecraft in both Joss Whedon’s lamentably short-lived TV show Firefly, and its cinematic spin-off, Serenity.

“Wacky Pilot”, of course, is reductive. For although Wash might appear to be another clone of Whedon’s sarcastic-geek-in-a-hideous-shirt archetypes (cf. also Buffy’s Xander and Dollhouse’s Topher), he is able - much like these two characters - during the course of the series to display a variety and nuance that some TV shows are not able to summon over years of storyline, let alone the paltry single season allotted to Firefly. And much of this is down to Tudyk, whose performance manages to be subtle while never knowingly underselling any of the scripts’ Whedonian zingers. In Wash’s finest hour, the episode “War Stories”, the actor is able to steer his character across the whole gamut, from acerbic to comically pathetic, beaten down by hours of torture by a brutal criminal kingpin – interspersed naturally by some pithy banter – before transforming into all-action hero for the climatic takedown of said kingpin. In fact, you could make an argument that Wash stands as the most fully realised of the Whedonverse’s zany sidekicks, again no mean feat considering Tudyk had just 14 episodes and a motion picture in which to achieve it.

And JW wasn’t done with him yet, drawing Tudyk back into his sphere for the existential thrill-ride Dollhouse, aka The One Where Joss Invites You to Question the Nature of Identity and Free Will While Ogling Young Women in Skimpy Vest Tops. From his first appearance in “Briar Rose”, Tudyk threatens to run away with the whole series as phobia-riddled dope fiend Stephen Kepler, striking up a mismatched buddy cop duo with Tahmoh Penikett’s former FBI man Paul Ballard that just screams out for a spin-off. That would be too straightforward for Whedon, though, as he makes clear in a typically self-reflexive line from Kepler: “This is like one of those buddy cop movies where you’re the hard-nosed FBI agent and I’m the guy who hates buddy cop movies!”

And so it transpires. For, fun as he is in the role, Tudyk has been brought in for more than just amusing diversion, which is made clear when he undergoes a virtually physiological transformation from the cringing, effete Kepler to reveal his true identity as damaged former “doll” and season antagonist, Alpha. As the genius, criminally insane multiphreniac Alpha, Tudyk gives free reign to his manic charisma, rendering the dapper villain strangely likeable, and making his resurfacing in the second series cause for celebration.

Which is the key really to the actor’s place in the Macy-Tudyk Rule (I like it; it sounds weirdly regal): Alan Tudyk is a reason to be cheerful, a reason to tune into something you might not otherwise be checking out. He was the best thing about the Isaac Asimov mish-mash adaptation I, Robot, in which, Andy Serkis/Doug Jones style, he gave himself a mo-cap makeover to play robotic Sunny, and is next showing up as a guest star in the forthcoming V remake, surely a good omen for another promising sci-fi series. Well, I think I’ve made my point. And I didn’t even mention the fact that he was Steve the freakin Pirate in Dodgeball. V starts on 13th April at 10pm on SCI FI.