"Kia Ora," says Ming Na, one of the stars of Stargate Universe, the new iteration of the long-running franchise.
Nice touch that, the American actress has taken the trouble to sort out a culturally appropriate greeting for our phone interview.
"Are there any couches burning there today," she says down the phone line from Los Angeles.
What? Yes, Ms Na, best known here as a regular on small screen epic ER is asking whether there are any couches burning in Dunedin.
She researched Dunedin and that's what she came up with.
She has probably been chatting with the other stars of Stargate Universe (SGU), the likes of Robert Carlyle and Lou Diamond Phillips, telling them that she's about to call Dunedin, New Zealand.
"They burn couches there," she might have have been telling them.
Still, perhaps she's also been talking to the script writers.
They could work us in.
For the uninitiated, Stargate, the sci-fi geekfest now into it's fourth glorious guise, revolves around a set of ancient portals through which travel is possible across the vast distance of space in an instant.
So they could, conceivably, travel to Castle St and film an episode about what happens to a civilisation when there are no adults.
Witness the scorched apocalypse.
SGU starts screening in New Zealand on Thursday on Prime and has a new cast, castaway on an alien ship charging headlong through space.
Fans of SG-1 will be pleased to learn Richard Dean Anderson (RDA to his friends - yes, MacGyver) makes an appearance, but the new series packs some new star power too.
Carlyle, of Trainspotting and The Full Monty fame, joins the team, along with La Bamba man Diamond Phillips.
And, of course, Ms Na.
When we talked, the cast was filming season two.
"It's lovely. It is like getting back together with your family, going back to the first day of school after your summer vacation," Ms Na says.
As well as ER, Ms Na, who plays gay human resources manager Camille Wray in SGU, has a long list of small and big screen credits, some of which proved useful in the new high-tech venture.
"I had just done a movie, Push, in which there was quite a bit of green screen and that prepared me," she says.
It made it easier when confronted with scenes in which her SGU alien co-stars would be added later.
"Our aliens are CGI images rather than men in rubber suits."
ER was a bit different, she says.
"We were right there in the trenches ... with the blood spurting".
That said, she's quite a fan of the show's green-screen extraterrestrials, regarding them as altogether preferable to the rubber-suited alternative.
"I think I would have laughed more."
Ms Na is no sci-fi novice: "I have done a few science fiction things."
"I did a voice-over for this great animation, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," she offers by way of example.
Indeed, she says she's a sci-fi fan, though adds her approach as an actor is the same "whether doing comedy or theatre".
"The only thing different in sci-fi is that there is definitely a lot more imagination involved as far as dealing with green screens and special effects and action sequences.
"This project is almost like a theatre job in that you have to use your imagination rather than being on a specific location."
So a Castle St episode is probably an unlikely starter.
Another thing Ms Na likes about SGU is that "the stories are so character-driven, as opposed to plot-driven".
Without wanting to be disrespectful to shows using the CSI template, "they are extraordinarily successful", but "the majority of the time the main actors become the background to the plotlines", she says.
"I just love the fact that sci-fi lends itself so much to storytelling."
Science fiction has been having something of a purple patch.
The excellent Battlestar Gallactica (BSG), recently finished up after setting a new benchmark in a series that also turned on the star power - casting such well-known actors as Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell in lead roles.
The genre then struck overdrive with the success, 3-D and otherwise, of Avatar.
Besides employing name actors, the recent sci-fi offerings have also included the genre standard of beautiful women.
Stargate Universe does not depart, its female cast gorgeous all, beside the usual motley assortment of men.
Ms Na is aware of the stereotype but says that within any genre there are shows where the women are just eye candy.
In defence of sci-fi she says there are also plenty of examples of strong female characters, giving as an example Sigourney Weaver, star of both the Alien movies and Avatar.
"Even Princess Leia is supposed to be a girl in distress, a damsel in distress but in reality she had a very strong backbone and was a leader," she says.
SGU has, in fact, upped the stroppy women quota from earlier instalment SG-1, where Major Samantha Carter (played by Amanda Tapping) was alone in a boys' club.
"In our show there are three or four really strong female characters.
"I love it that the writers are writing those types of roles."
