David Telford

Colonel David Telford was supposed to be the commander of the Icarus expedition. Fate decides otherwise: during the attack, he stays on Earth while the crew is thrown aboard Destiny. He then becomes their main contact with home, thanks to the communication stones.

Telford is a hardline soldier, ambitious, not always easy to get along with. His relationship with Young is tense, and his role as the link with Earth puts him in a delicate position.

But the character hides a far more serious secret: infiltrated and manipulated by the Lucian Alliance, he becomes for a time a threat from within, a double agent almost in spite of himself. This betrayal, for which he is not entirely responsible, makes him one of the most ambiguous characters in the series.

Once freed from that hold, Telford seeks to redeem himself, and ends up playing a key role in the crew's survival. A path of redemption for a man who long remained hard to pin down.

Telford is played by Lou Diamond Phillips, an American actor who broke through in the 1980s with cult films such as La Bamba, in which he played singer Ritchie Valens, and Young Guns.

A familiar face in film and television, he brings all his intensity and ambiguity to Colonel Telford. A name that, on its own, spoke to how serious the casting of Stargate Universe was.