By IAN SPELLING
New York Times Special Features

Dark Angel isn't your usual genre show, and Original Cindy isn't your standard supporting character. Fellow bike messenger and best pal of mutant Max (Jessica Alba), Cindy is African-American, a lesbian and -- a well-developed character.

"She's somebody that you'd want to be friends with, and she's also somebody you wouldn't want to cross," Valarie Rae Miller said. She plays Cindy on the sci-fi show, a recent winner of a People's Choice Award as "Favorite New Drama Series."

"Most television characters are caricatures more than real people. You see different sides of Cindy. She could easily have been a stereotype, but she's not," Miller said.

"Typically, when you see characters that are gay, that becomes the prime focus of the show and the media coverage. That didn't really happen with Cindy.

"I also like that she says all the things you always wish you could say and that she's so sure of who she is, which is also unusual on television.

"All of that is interesting for me and a lot of fun," she said. "Cindy doesn't just cry and fall apart. She'll come at the tough stuff from a different place."

Cindy will deal with tough stuff in the episode "Rising," which Fox will air Feb. 13. That episode has threads that go back to the pilot and weaves new threads for future shows.

"The Reds come back and are chasing Max again," Miller said. "They find Cindy and chase her, hoping to lure Max in. The Reds basically use Cindy as bait.

"I've also wanted to see more of Max and Cindy together," she said. "A lot of the time on the show, you'll see them and they just have these quick little conversations, and you don't get to see how close they really are. You'll see some more bonding between them in `Rising.' "

Born in Lafayette, La., and raised in Fort Worth, Miller got her start acting in commercials and doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles. Other credits include roles in The Disappearance of Kevin Johnson and Hollywood Confidential.

Miller also hosts ABC's One Saturday Morning lineup of kid-oriented programs. So she's an icon of sorts to both children and the lesbian community.

"I think that's great," she said. "And I don't think there's any conflict in that, either. That's the only kind of weirdness or opposition that I've met with Dark Angel, people trying to read too much into everything.

"I was obsessed for a while with reading the bulletin boards on the show's Web sites," she said, "but I stopped. I had to stop -- people made so many ridiculous comments. The only thing that really bothered me was when people said they were offended that Cindy was a lesbian or that gay people are always trying to push their lifestyle onto others.

"When they'd figure out that I was the girl on Saturday Morning, they'd say, `It's really offensive that they'd let her do that,' " Miller said. "But those people, it's kind of miraculous that they're walking upright and their knuckles aren't scraping so that they can't type on the computer."