ENTERPRISE's Dr. Phlox is wise, kind, and - as an alien previously unknown to STAR TREK - something of a mystery. We talk to John Billingsley about playing the Denobulan doc.

It took a while before we began to learn a little about the background of Enterprise's onboard physician, but John Billingsley already had a few ideas. "I have a backstory for him, but in all honesty, every little tidbit that I get requires me to adjust that backstory! I've stopped talking about my own sense of who he is in relationship to his species, because I feel as if whatever I say is almost immediately contradicted by what they give me to do. But I will say that I think there's a certain gravitas, although I don't want to suggest in the midst of this crew, and I think there's a real particularity and individuality about this guy that marks him as unique, and there's got to be a certain weight to that.

"What I work from is that his species has, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into, rejected the idea of having much interaction with the rest of the universe. We hear about no other Denobulans, but I think he really believes in and values the idea of communicating with others, so I wonder whether he's more of a pariah on his planet than he is a hero, and a certain loneliness comes from that. I think that his sense of mission is greater and more complex, and has more relevance to his home planet and the issues there, than we know right now. I hope that's explored, but it might not be. Every episode that's made reference to the planet has forced me to change something, so I cling to it now like the tatters of a raft!"

Despite John's interest in formulating the life history of his character, the cast of Enterprise are in the liberating position of not having to fit into the existing Star Trek tapestry. "The nice thing about this show is that they said to us, 'Please don't worry about not knowing the backstory; the point is, you are the backstory!" But although he didn't need to research the other series, John tried to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. "I was somewhat familiar with Star Trek, of course; I'd watched the original series as a kid - I would have been six or seven when it premiered, and I loved it - and I saw it again in syndication when I was a teenager. I watched The Next Generation too, but when Deep Space Nine premiered I found it was such a complicated backstory that if you weren't watching from week to week the episodes had you scratching your head. So I sort of fell off the wagon and never really picked it up again, but fortunately Paramount has a tape library! I'm now conversant with the entire mythology. It took me a few months of concentrated watching to catch up, but I think I know all the characters now."

We have mostly seen Dr. Phlox in a cheerful mood, and, although John welcomes his optimism and the occasional touch of humor, he's keen that the doctor should not turn into a figure of fun. He was also aware that some people had foreseen a resemblance between his character and that of Neelix in STAR TREK: VOYAGER. "I had, in a very vague way, heard people talk about this Neelix character and I didn't know what that meant, but now, having seen the show, I began to understand that they were wondering whether my character would be essentially used for comic relief. I think Ethan Phillips did a lovely job with that character and I don't mean to say that I think comedy was exclusively what Neelix was used for, but it did seem to me that they sometimes fell into the trap of relying on him for that, and I didn't want that to happen with me.

"I like Phlox's sense of humor to come more from his intelligence and his curiosity than from a bumbling naiveté. One of the tricky things when you've got a character that's the fish-out-of-water guy is that there's always a certain amount of humor to be derived just from that, but to me this guy is not in the least bit a bumbler; he's a genius. The humor would come from the fact that he's witty and that he's got a wonderful mind.

"I also think that he's a happy and buoyant person, and has sort of an Eastern outlook on life - we're all part of the universe, be we dust mites or human beings - and my concern is that, dramatically, that doesn't leave a lot of room for conflict or three-dimensionality. As the show has progressed I think I've taken any opportunity I could find to try to back off a bit from that, and I think the writers and producers have come to step back a bit from that sense of him too. Not to say that he's not an optimist and doesn't go about his business with high spirits, but I also want to give him a greater weightiness than that. He's a genius and an anthropologist, and I think he's got a tremendous curiosity about people and about species, but he's also the sole representative of a species we know very little about and not somebody who is just doing pirouettes around the ship. I don't know that they've quite found a way to deepen that characterization for me yet, and in all honesty, with the exception of one episode, they haven't had that much of an opportunity to explore it yet."

John recognizes that other cast members have their comedy moments too, and says that the first season of Enterprise has seen a return to the sort of lighthearted outlook that was a popular aspect of the original series. "I think they've done quite well in giving everybody a pretty interesting and specific sense of humor. But that's one of the hardest things on television to sustain, because you have different writers coming in whose own senses of humor will vary wildly, and sustaining an individual character's unique humor is one of the hardest things for a writing staff. Someone comes up with a funny gag and they say 'Let's put it in so-and-so's mouth,' and it becomes very false to honest characterization. You've got to figure out a character's unique and interesting way of looking at the world, and then write that. But, overall, the show has reintroduced a sense of humor into the whole concept of exploration; there is as much putting the right show on the left foot as there is about always making the right decision and knowing exactly how to handle the situations.

"Also I think it's finding a way to reach people who were perhaps not as enthusiastic about watching Star Trek because they felt that they would have to come in and know 35 years of Star Trek history. And they recognize that the original series had kind of a triangular relationship at the heart of the show, between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and they're trying to replicate that with the captain, T'Pol, and Trip, and doing it pretty successfully."

Despite the focus on this 'threesome,' Phlox and the other characters are also coming into their own; 'Dear Doctor' was a welcome boost for John and brought insights into the Denobulan world, with the revelation that Phlox himself has three wives and hints that Denobulan courting and mating is an extraordinary procedure. "It was great to have that episode. It's the only one that's really featured me at all, and for the most part, although I'm having a great time and the people are terrific, the other episodes have not really dealt much with my character. But in this show the doctor was given more depth and I was very happy that they were moving in that direction. There's just no way they can sustain an interest in this character if he's only presented as a guy who capers about having a good time.

"I felt that getting to put on the clothes, and speak, and talk, and walk, and think like him for seven concentrated days was very helpful. Since then, I've really not had a chance to do very much, and it's not as if I don't feel a connection to him, but for the most part the scenes I've had to do so far have been very short and not terribly meaty, so it's hard to say that there's anything happening right now that's giving me the opportunity to explore him further. But I want to temper that by saying I understand that that is the nature of the beast, and the show is definitely driven by the three lead characters."

Not much was revealed to John about the character before he embarked on the role. "The only thing I knew about Phlox was that he was supposed to have a slight alien accent, which is sort of a headscratcher. What the hell is that?! It seemed apparent from the sides I was given - they don't give you the whole script; just the scenes you're going to audition with - that he was a fairly buoyant and upbeat guy, so that was what I tried to key into. Then, in grappling with the alien accent, I assumed that he was a genius and would be able to pick up languages very easily, and that he probably would have listened to dialect tapes that would have used a very proper, mid-atlantic pronunciation. So I made it somewhat plummy - and my voice can be that, so it wasn't too much of a stretch - and then periodically I'd punctuate the lines with a squawk, thinking that perhaps on his own homeworld he sounded like a bird!"

John looks back on his audition process as one of the easiest he's ever had. "[Casting director] Junie Lowry Johnson's office also casts 'NYPD Blue' and some other shows that I've worked on, so they knew me. I went in, auditioned, and got a call that afternoon that essentially said 'You're our choice and we want you to meet the network next week.' So I went in, and normally after you meet the network it's going to be a week or sometimes much longer before they decide, but as I was leaving the office the producers kind of suggested that I was going to get it, so as these things go it was as painless a process as any I've gone through!"

The security of a long-running TV show was a tempting prospect for John, even though it meant he wouldn't be able to do much else for the next few years. "It was a bit of a concern, but I was a theater actor for a long time, and although you can make a living it's a perilous one. When I moved down here it was very much predicated on the idea that I wanted to get out from under any financial insecurity. I like the show, and I love the people and I think it's a great part, but, even if it hadn't been, the prospect of being in a position where seven years down the road I would be set for life and could do whatever the hell I wanted, based on my desires instead of my needs, is something you can't turn down."

As Phlox hasn't been featured a great deal, John has often had time on his hands. "I did worry about the workload - I'd done one other show called 'The Others,' which was short-lived, and although they didn't use me a ton it was still a demanding schedule, and I anticipated that this show would be more demanding still! It's ironic that it's proved to be the opposite problem of what to do with all the freedom. I didn’t anticipate that.

"Everybody on the set envies me. I breeze in and I do my little bit and I go home, so it's hardly been onerous. I'm doing a couple of episodes of 'NYPD Blue' right now - they were kind enough to work the schedule around mine - but generally speaking it's really tricky to do anything else when you're tied to a show. I'm trying to write, and I'm trying to figure out what a hobby is!"

Even the makeup isn't proving too onerous. "I do have to be in two hours earlier than everybody else - my makeup time is two hours before a scene is actually rehearsed - and when I'm working every day it makes for long days, but the makeup itself is not a problem at all. I don't have any skin irritations and I'm a contact lens wearer myself, so the lenses don't present any trouble. And it doesn't cover my nose or my mouth, and it's not a full headpiece so I can breathe through the pores in the back of my head. There's a very slight little hairpiece that accentuates my own hair, so it's about as easy an application as it can be." John saw some fellow actors in rather more extensive prosthetics during 'Acquisition,' when four Ferengi took over the ship. "I was lying passed out on the floor! But I don't envy them. That was quite an appliance they had to deal with."

Next year, John is looking forward to finding out more about Phlox and having him interact a little more with the other characters. "I would love it if we could have a deeper understanding of how Phlox is affected by his separation from his species and what the storyline is there. That might give people a greater sense of his three-dimensionality and allow for some deepening of the relationships. Right now, I think I'm sort of a quasi-mentor figure to certain characters, but that has been touched on without really being explored, and only in a couple of instances - Hoshi and T'Pol, I think. And I would love to see some more of the issues between the captain and myself that were suggested in 'Dear Doctor': not tensions, but a hint that our individual sense of mission might differ in certain instances. Maybe the relationship there could be a little more complicated.

"Also, I sometimes feel as if there is a certain kind of 'ain't he cute' feeling that the other characters are apt to have for me, and to a certain extent the only way to break through that is to have a greater sense of what this guy's real struggle is, so that has to be in relation to my own backstory. I think it's a little tougher to jump off and talk about the alien character's backstory because it seems to necessitate a more elaborate architecture, but ultimately until they do that I'm such a cipher that it's hard to figure out how to allow me to have relationships with people.

"On one level he seems very physical and very sensual; he loves to eat and he talks about what people smell like, and he wants to see everything, and in 'Dear Doctor' it's referenced that there are bars where people go at each other in some peculiar and almost violent way, I think it would be interesting to explore whether there may be a more carnal and primitive side of the Doctor that he and his species has learned to keep in check and that maybe some of those impulses are explored a bit more, but I've no idea whether or not that's something they would ever go for!"

As Hoshi has told him, it would also be good if Phlox gets out of sickbay now and again. John agrees. "It would be great to know that he could go down to the planet surface, I think he has a lot more to offer in terms of 'Hey, you're meeting another species for the first time; you might consider this as a means of beginning to make contact.' I think he's a greater resource than they're giving him credit for."

He's also keen for the Crewman Cutler relationship to develop further. "I would be happy if that continued, if Kellie [Waymire] is around and is willing to do it; I think she's a terrific actress and she's a lot of fun to work with, but I want to have my wife, Bonita, play all three of my Denobulan wives. All the women on Denobula should look just like Bonnie; then she could play the entire female version of the species!"

John has been eager to share his thoughts on the character with executive producer Brannon Braga. "It may be that in the first season it's best to just sit back and see what develops, but I asked Brannon recently if I could come in and maybe pitch some ideas. I'm of two minds, though. I'm an actor - that's what I'm hired to do; I'm not hired to write or have brainstorms - and I've worked on other shows where I hear somebody else saying 'I'm going to go in and I'm going to pitch this and I'm going to pitch that', and I kind of roll my eyes and think, 'Oh, I'm sure they hired you for that!' I think a little of it goes a long way, and I'm not inclined to overstep those bounds. I don't know that what I'm presenting is going to be particularly attractive to them, or take them in a direction that they want to go, but I do think that I might be able to bring a perspective and point of view to the table, so I'm certainly going to offer that up.

"If they say, 'No, thanks; we're doing just fine,' that's absolutely OK by me. As an actor I'd love to have more to do, but if it doesn't work out that way, I'm still living the dream. I'm getting the chance to make money doing something I dig, and I've got a wonderful private life. Whatever I'm given to play, I will play it with great high cheer, because I have too many years behind me of doing 99-seat theater, where everybody shares a dressing room with a broken toilet, to be disgruntled about anything!"

John Billingsley was born in Media, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, and to Alabama and Louisiana before they returned to New York and then settled in Weston, Connecticut.

John performed in school plays and studied theater at Bennington College in Vermont, later moving to Seattle, where he lived for about 15 years; he appeared in regional theater and joined a company called 'Theatre X,' which toured in the U.S. and Europe. He also founded 'Bookit,' a company for which he directed and performed for five years, and helped start an acting studio named 'Freehold.'

Moving to Los Angeles in 1996, John continued to appear on stage, adding 'The Country Wife', 'Great Expectations,' 'Twelfth Night,' and 'A Winter's Tale,' among others, to his credits. His TV and movie career also took off; on film, he has been seen most recently in 'Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles' and 'The Glass House,' and also starred in the award-winning independent film 'Breathing Hard.' On TV, he appeared in the Emmy award-winning 'Tuesdays with Morrie' with the late Jack Lemmon, and was a series regular in 'The Others.' And he's guested in a huge range of hit shows: 'Northern Exposure,' 'NYPD Blue,' 'L.A. Doctors,' 'Felicity,' 'Profiler,' 'The X-Files,' 'G vs E,' 'Judging Amy,' 'Family Law,' 'Touched by an Angel,' 'The West Wing,' 'The Lot,' and 'Six Feet Under.' He has also guested on 'Roswell,' playing himself in an episode alongside Jonathan Frakes.

John lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Bonita Friedericy, and their two cats.