Before Edward James Olmos took on the cult hero role of Battlestar Galactica's Commander William Adama, he was very nearly cast as another iconic starship trooper.

"I was offered the opportunity to play the commander of the Enterprise (a role that went to Patrick Stewart), but I didn't do it because I had something else I was working on at the time, and people thought I was crazy because it would have made me a household name ... But I said, listen, I really would love to be able to do everything, but I had to make a choice," said Olmos, a featured guest at Ottawa Comiccon, which runs from May 9 to 11.

But even when the role of Adama first crossed his desk in 2003, the 67-year-old actor had his reservations.

"With Battlestar, I thought, 'I've already done Blade Runner, I've already done science fiction.' I don't do everything that comes through the door. I only do things if it's a story that touches my passion and my understanding of myself, or of the humanity that we live in. And whenever those come in, I just say wow ... And that's what happened here.

"And I know now that I would have never gotten to do Battlestar Galactica if I had done Star Trek, so I think once I got into it, I thought is was probably one of the most prolific pieces of work I've ever been involved with."

Olmos made sure of that, insisting the series would deal with real human situations and emotions, while exploring the dichotomy between technology and morality.

"I committed to do it, as long as they didn't have any four-eyed monsters with, you know, two lips and four ears and whatever, like the creature from the Black Lagoon. I can't do that.

"So I said (to the producers), if you tell me one way and deliver another, I will faint on camera during a take, and you will have to write that Commander Adama died of a heart attack upon seeing the creature. It was written into my contract."

Thankfully, that episode was never conceived, and head writer Ronald Moore won over Olmos with his vision for the series reboot.

"Because this was just after 9/11 -- it was 13 months after -- we were definitely in a different psychological space as a humanity. Things had changed. So when I read the script, I read it with that frame of reference, and it was just amazing," said Olmos, who sees the series as a cautionary tale on the technological trappings of modern life -- much like Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi epic Blade Runner.

"We had an opportunity to touch humanity, like we did with Blade Runner. It was human technology that had grown to destroy humans, and that's coming. We're inches away from that," he warned.

"I thought that it made more sense for what we were doing, because we're coming to an understanding of what's happening with our humanity. The series builds, and it's got a tremendous arc, it becomes storytelling of the highest order."

aedan.helmer@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @OttSunHelmer