Real stars meld with action toys and ardent fans of all things cultish at this weekend’s varied Canadian National Expo

The last time Adam Baldwin was in Toronto, he was working on a movie called Control Factor.

"It was a tinfoil hat deal. I had one of the most complicated lines. Something about `psychotropic brain entrenchment technology.’ We had to put these copper Brillo pads in our ball caps. It was rather cheesy." And there was no action figure.

Now it’s a different story.

This weekend when Baldwin (emphatically not a Baldwin brother) visits the Canadian National Expo (which emphatically has nothing to do with "The Ex"), he’s here for Joss Whedon’s space/western/action/sci-fi wet dream, Serenity, which has netted him two action figures.

"There’s one with cigar and one without cigar. I’m very excited to be immortalized in plastic," Baldwin says of the figurines of his character Jayne (emphatically not as girly as the name might lead you to believe).

Also a guest at the Expo, James Marsters, who will soon join the cast of Smallville as Brainiac ("I will not be green") is used to the oddity of seeing himself in doll form. Playing the vampire Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, he’s been through the plastic wringer.

"I’m glad that they’re around and it still makes me feel kinda cool," Marsters says. "But at the same time, the first day my first action figure came out, which was a smaller one, I went down to Blockbuster to get some videos and the guy said, `Dude, I saw your action figure.’ And I said, `Really? Already?’ and he, says, `Yeah. It sucks.’ And he went down the list of all the things that were wrong and he was absolutely right. He can’t stand up and he’s given 18 weapons and he can’t hold any one of them. Is that a black coat or a dress that he’s wearing?"

The Expo gives fans a chance to meet actors like Marsters and Baldwin, buy cool stuff, dress up for a masquerade and just, well, get their geek on. Last year 27,000 visitors came to the Metro Convention Centre for the horror, sci-fi, comic books, anime and gaming extravaganza. That makes the Toronto event the third-biggest convention in North-America after San Diego’s ComicCon and Chicago’s Wizard World.

Yeah, go us!

Erica Durance, who plays Lois Lane on Smallville, finds it funny that people will line up to meet her:

"You know, I don’t think I have really wrapped my head around it. You know, I come from Alberta, and I grew up on a turkey farm. So this whole idea is quite foreign to me ... I like to meet these people, too, it’s a reciprocal thing, meeting the people who watch. Some of the fans know so much more about this stuff than I do, so it’s nice to chat with them. They’ve all been very kind and encouraging considering what I’m endeavouring to do."

She knows how genre fans feel about meeting actors.

"I’m a fan of different sci-fi people as well. I had a moment in London. Leonard Nimoy was at the same convention. And it’s Leonard Nimoy. He’s a legend. And he came over and signed a photograph for me. It’s was just a surreal moment."

Marsters understands: "In my past I was a trekkie. I went to conventions. And I lined up for hours to see Leonard Nimoy. But then my best friend’s mom who drove us all the way to Oakland had to leave, so I’d waited for hours and then I had to go. I only met him backstage later when we were both celebrities and I approached him like a giddy fan in the green room. He had had enough interaction with fans and I think he was just trying to have a donut. Apologies to Leonard. I get it now!"

While Baldwin is stumping for Serenity, he’s also known for other sci-fi endeavours, notably X-Files, where he played super soldier Knowle Rohrer.

"I unfortunately don’t know as much about the show as the people who ask me about it. I wasn’t a student of the show, so I’m at a disadvantage when they’re questioning me about it and how to pronounce my character’s name. It’s a tongue twister ... It was a television phenomenon and to have been a part of that was an honour for me."

Baldwin has also been on Angel, which starred Marsters in the last season, and Stargate. Marsters has been on Millennium, which, like X-Files, was a Chris Carter show. Durance has guested on Stargate. Meanwhile, both Durance and Marsters have had spots on Andromeda, and will now be castmates on Smallville.

"If you’ve been on Andromeda, you might do well on Stargate because you have a handle on the sci-fi thing," Durance says.

Says Baldwin: "I think any time you are included into the science fiction world, for the most part my experience has been that the writing is so strong, that if you get actors that can deliver on the writers’ vision, the other writers in that genre see that and they all kinda watch each other’s work. It does become somewhat easier to gain access to the other creators’ work."

And that’s good news for the fans, who get to talk about different fave shows with the actors. But what can you really expect to get out of a brief meeting with an actor?

"However you cut it, I am the entertainment for the night, I am the dancing monkey, I am there to give them a little sincere moment with me, even if that lasts only one or three minutes," Marsters says. "I am very much concentrating on trying to meet people and trying to maintain sincerity in the face of meeting a thousand people. It is possible to do ... I feel like unless you’re giving people something real, go home. You can’t give people bullshit. You can’t give people crap. That offends me. On the other side of it, I’m always coming back to the hotel room so tired. But it feels good, my heart feels good."

When sci-fi fans really love a show, their affection knows no bounds. It’s in great measure due to affection and the approximately two gazillion DVD sets sold, that Serenity, which was based on the famously cancelled Firefly series, will be on the big screen Sept. 30.

"Well I think that what strikes me most, especially for this particular project, is that people genuinely love the show itself. It’s not so much that they’re coming to see me, they’re coming to meet a part of a bigger thing," Baldwin says. "I want Serenity to succeed because I want to play that part again and I want Joss’s storytelling to continue, and not necessarily in that order. He can kill me off at any moment and I’d still be a Serenity fan." Baldwin and his Serenity cast members have regularly posted on fan message boards, sharing the making of the movie and their hopes for its success, furthering the notion that this is indeed a fan/filmmaker co-production.

Hand in hand with the love of shows and characters, goes the fact that sometimes those of us who love a show or a character more than chocolate, sunshine and our own families, tend to get maybe a teeny wee little bit too attached to a character.

"You have to distance yourself a little bit from that," says Durance. "Sometimes you’re lumped in with your character. For example if people really love the character of Lana, all of a sudden they hate Erica (Lois). And I’m just going there and I do what’s written for me."

Marsters tries not to delve too much on being in the public domain. ("Maybe I don’t want to see that," he says when told of fanart that incorporates his (green) face into old Superman covers.)

"If I let my self contemplate the fact that all of these people are thinking about something that I helped to create, and a lot of what that is is actually me - well, a lot of it is not, but some of it is - that freaks me out."