How big a TV star is Brian J. Smith? Get this: You can download him as a screensaver.

The former Dallas actor debuts this Friday (Oct. 2) as the star of the new SyFy cable series Stargate Universe, or as it’s already known on the fanblogs, SGU. Smith plays 1st Lt. Matthew Scott, a hotheaded young soldier stranded, along with various civilians, doctors, a scientist (played by Full Monty star Robert Carlyle) and even a politician (Christopher MacDonald), on an abandoned intergalactic vehicle hurtling away from Earth. Thrown through a wormhole in space, the characters use a “stargate” (a sort of portal that goes on and off unpredictably) to jump to other planets as they figure out how to get home.

It’s a big break for Smith, who started his professional acting career in Dallas earlier this decade as a Collin College drama student. He had roles at Pocket Sandwich Theatre (Vikings), WaterTower Theatre (The Laramie Project) and Dallas Theater Center (Big Love). Critics remember his breathtaking performance as Alex, the lead in Collin College’s enormous production of A Clockwork Orange, adapted for the stage by director Brad Baker.

In our Dallas Observer review of that one, we predicted big things for then-21-year-old Smith.

Proud to say, we also conducted young Mr. Smith’s first-ever interview, which you can read here. Even in that brief Q&A from 2002, you can see in his answers what a smart, focused kid he was. (He talks about how he was rejected by the acting program at SMU. Ahem.)

Smith stayed focused on his goal of becoming a professional actor. From Collin College, Smith, who grew up in Allen, Texas (north of Plano), went on to graduate from The Juilliard School. He landed a supporting role in the Broadway revival of Come Back, Little Sheba, starring S. Epatha Merkerson. And he had a terrific guest-starring role on NBC’s Law & Order, among other résumé-builders.

Earlier this year, he was announced as a co-star of Stargate Universe, the latest spinoff in the 15-year-long Stargate franchise of shows (it's the third). For the job, Smith relocated from Manhattan to Vancouver, B.C., where the one-hour series is filmed. He’s taken up the grueling workout regimen called “crossfit” to stay buff for his role as a military man, and he’s adopted a King Charles spaniel named Cassie. (You can keep up with him—we’d hesitate to call it virtual stalking—via Twitter, where he is “BrianJacobSmith.”)

SyFy sent us the two-hour series debut for review (it starts at 8 p.m. Central Time, Friday, and will repeat on SyFy), plus the second episode. You’ll see plenty of Brian J. Smith on both, but he emerges as the central character in that second installment, which finds Lt. Scott lost in a desert landscape (filmed on location in White Sands, N.M.) and close to missing his shot at jumping back through that portal before it closes. In flashbacks, you get a look at Matthew Scott's backstory, which is goooood.

The show’s good, too, with strong writing, splashy big-screen-style cinematography and a soundtrack of remarkable original music (by Joel Goldsmith). It's light years better than anything else we’ve seen in the sci-fi genre, on SyFy or anywhere else. With the broadcasters, namely NBC, abandoning their scripted one-hour dramas, a show like SGU fills a void for viewers looking for high-quality episodic television.

Smith is quickly becoming the darling of the sci-fi press, by the way, after a charming sit-down with journalists at this past summer’s ComicCon in San Diego. In this Q&A with a Chicago blogger, he talks a lot about his beginnings as an actor in Dallas. And in this one with a Canadian writer, he answers fans’ questions about himself and the show.

For a taste of SGU, check out this extended four-minute preview of the first two-hour episode. (Or click the play button on the screen above. You get the first good look at Smith when the counter gets to 1:53.)