Mark A. Sheppard

Whoaaah. I just, unexpectedly, met Mark Sheppard, who played one of the cooler characters on Battlestar Galactica.

Here’s the story: This morning I had a meeting with videogame company High Voltage, which is set to release a Wii "shooter" game set in Washington, DC next month. I was mainly interested to see the game because I always get a kick out of seeing Washington depicted in videogames (Fallout 3 by Rockville’s Bethesda Softworks is going to be the high mark in this area for a long while to come, I expect).

When the group showed up at the Post this morning, I went down to the lobby and shook hands with the guy I expected must be the game’s producer. Nope, not the producer. It was actually Sheppard, who does voice acting in the game. You might also know him as the somewhat twisted, cat-toting attorney from Battlestar Galactica.

Sheppard plays the protagonist in the game, a government agent trying to get at the root of a conspiracy that’s causing both aliens *and* terrorists to attack our fair city (seems like most games just give you one or the other....). The game’s maker’s say the game’s recognizable settings include Reagan National Airport, the Jefferson Memorial and the White House. For the demo I got, the action mostly took place in a familiar-looking version of the DC metro, a locale also used extensively in Fallout 3.

Forgive me for not recognizing Galactica’s President Romo Lampkin right away. You see, the actor "talent" doesn’t usually show up on these field trips to show off a new videogame. For most actors, I believe, a videogame gig is a quickie paycheck, but it seems that Sheppard is lending a hand to the company to try and generate buzz for this title. Heck, he talked about how great he thinks the game is at least as much as High Voltage’s chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger, who also came to show off the game.

Of course, as soon as it dawned on me that I was actually talking to one of the cooler characters from Battlestar Galactica, I hit the pause button and dragged Sheppard around the newsroom to introduce him to some of the show’s fans around here.

Sheppard, for his part, got a picture of himself posing next to Woodward’s office. He also swiped a notepad with the Washington Post logo on it. (Kind of reminds me of his BSG character’s penchant for kleptomania. Hmm....)