When Andromeda hits the small screen later this year, Kevin Sorbo will be fighting alongside a former soap opera star turned "action television guy."
According to daily entertainment newspaper Variety, Tribune Entertainment has signed Keith Hamilton Cobb, best known as "Noah Keefer" on ABC's All My Children from 1994 to 1996, to a 4-year contract to appear in the upcoming SF series.
No details on the character he will play have been released.
Bringing talent to the table
Four years after Cobb, 28, left All My Children, soap fans still remember his work fondly, memorializing the character Noah in numerous webpage shrines.
He was nominated for an "outstanding supporting actor" Daytime Emmy award in 1995, and People magazine named him one of the "50 most beautiful people in the world" the next year.
Since leaving the soap, Cobb's most noteworthy work -- and first genre appearance -- was playing "Akile," a recurring role on the syndicated fantasy program Beastmaster.
Cobb is the first performer officially attached to Andromeda since Sorbo walked away from six seasons of headlining Hercules: The Legendary Journeys to play starship captain "Dylan Jericho."
Andromeda is set to start filming in Vancouver in "April or May." Given the stipulations of Canadian law, most supporting parts will likely be cast with Canadian actors.
What's it all about?
Tribune, a unit of the Tribune Broadcasting television empire, will create Andromeda in partnership with Fireworks Media (Highlander: The Raven), Sorbo and Majel Roddenberry.
The production house has already committed to 44 episodes -- 2 full seasons -- of the new space opera, which will air in syndication. The first episodes are set to premiere this fall.
Based on an idea by the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Andromeda centers around protagonist Jericho's crusade to save a galaxy-spanning Systems Commonwealth of worlds from civil war and a new dark age.
Developer Robert Hewitt Wolfe originally pitched the series to Paramount as a possible successor to Star Trek, but all connections to the Enterprise, Captain Kirk and the Federation of Planets have since been eliminated.
Roddenberry's son Eugene Jr. will serve as technical consultant, while widow Majel will serve as executive producer. Tribune is particularly proud of its ongoing relationship with Ms. Roddenberry, who has described Andromeda as "a departure ... fast, rapid, with everything going on at once."
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