JohnBillingsley.Net
March 2004
Magazine: Dreamwatch
Issue: #114
State of Phlox
With Captain Archer and crew taking on the Xindi in the action-packed third season of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, they're going to need their Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Phlox, more than ever. Actor JOHN BILLINGSLEY tells David Bassom and Kate Lloyd what lies ahead for the affable Denobulan physician.
As the ebullient Denobulan physician Doctor Phlox in Star Trek:Enterprise, John Billingsley has encountered more than his fair share of strange anomalies during his time on the show - including the first-ever male human pregnancy. But perhaps the strangest element of Billingsley's voyage into the final frontier so far has been Enterprise's failure to capture viewer's imaginations in the same way as previous Star Trek series.
While Billingsley readily admits to being surprised at the disappointing ratings and lacklustre response won by the show, he does have a theory about why Enterprise hasn't launched as smoothly as many expected.
"I think the show's makers have been trying to do something that's very difficult," he says. "When they premiered Enterprise, I think the hope was they would be able to reach an audience that had never watched Star Trek before. They somehow wanted to suggest to the broader audience, 'Look, don't pre-judge this. It's going to be radically different.' I don't know if that was possible to do. By attempting to do that, and by making some choices that may have alienated some of the hardcore fan base, I think they may have ended up falling between two stools: they didn't necessarily get that new audience and they may have pissed off some members of the old audience.
"So I think to a certain extent what we're seeing now is a response to that. The changes this year are still perhaps trying to pull in newcomers, but they're also trying to appease some hardcore followers of Star Trek and bring them back."
MIXED BLESSING
Star Trek:Enterprise's revamped third season sees Dr Phlox and the rest of the first Starship Enterprise's crew entering the mysterious Delphic Expanse, as part of an ongoing mission to stop the Xindi from launching a deadly attack on Earth. Billingsley feels that the show's bold new format has succeeded in making Enterprise "scarier, darker, and more urgent and fast-paced" this season, but admits that he personally has mixed feelings about the revamp.
"There are lots of different audiences for Enterprise and Star Trek generally, and you can't satisfy all of them at the same time," he explains. "Personally my interest is in having more character-driven and relationship-driven episodes, and episodes that deal with metaphors and some of the social issues we face today. I thought that was one of the strong suits of the original show.
"Having said that, I think [US broadcaster] UPN and [Star Trek studio] Paramount are trying to attract more young people, and that means they need to keep the show fast-paced and sexy and bring a lot of elements to the table that sometimes lead the show in another direction. I don't disagree with their evaluation of what's needed, even if it isn't to my own taste.
"Separating my own personal perspective from the fans' perspective, I think by and large what I'm hearing from viewers is that the third season is better. That's all that matters," he adds firmly. "They're not writing the show to please me!"
Billingsley is quick to dismiss critics of the show who feel its problems lie with tired writing, characterisation and visuals which clearly adhere to established Star Trek norms. Instead, he feels the show's main problem more likely lies with the fact that there's been so much Star Trek in recent years and audiences have simply had too much of a good thing.
"It's the nature of life. You can only go to the well so many times." he says "I'm not going to dig at anybody. I genuinely think everyone's doing the best job they can. But after umpteen seasons, umpteen stories and umpteen variations on a theme, I think it's difficult to come up with extraordinarily new and exciting stories to tell. I think for a Star Trek fan, probably every time you see an episode of Enterprise you're going, 'Well, I saw something similar on Next Gen' or 'That reminds me of an episode of Voyager' or 'Didn't they do that on the original show?' So I think that definitely is a factor."
Whatever the reasons for Enterprise's trails and tribulations, Billingsley is taking the show's changes very much in his stride. He also accepts that the series' new emphasis on action could mean less screen time for the largely Sickbay-bound Phlox.
"I'm a realist. I knew going into it that the show was always going to be geared predominantly towards a younger audience, which meant some of the younger actors and obviously the Captain, Trip and T'Pol would get most of the screen time. So it's not as if I'm tremendously disappointed by the change.
"As an actor, one always likes to work and sense that your character is developing and growing, but I don't know that I'm necessarily able to dig my teeth into much these days. But having said that, it's given me some freedom to explore some work outside the show and the producers have been pretty nice about letting me so some other TV shows and at least explore the possibility of doing other film work."
And, still looking on the bright side, Billingsley did recently get to take centre stage during the making of the upcoming Enterprise adventure, Doctor's Orders. The episode sees Phlox running the Starship Enterprise on his own while the rest of the crew are in stasis, which protects them from a region of the Expanse that is believed to be dangerous to humans. "Doctor's Orders was a very demanding episode for me. The Doc is kind of going mad throughout the episode, and there is always the fear that John is going too far!" he says with a chuckle. "I haven't seen any of it yet, so I have no idea how it's turned out. I fear too much scenery chewing on my part, but I think the episode will come off very well indeed."
Prior to Doctor's Orders, Billingsley had particularly enjoyed working on the earlier episodes Dear Doctor, A Night in Sickbay, The Breach and Stigma, all of which gave Phlox a significant role in proceedings. "Those episodes were great because they were opportunities to really explore the character and his back-story."
CARRY ON DOCTOR?
Having played Phlox since Enterprise's launch in 2001, Billingsley's fondness for the character is obvious. Yet despite the show's recent revamp, he reveals that his approach to playing the good doctor isn't all that different from when he first stepped on set two and a half years ago.
"There's only one thing that's sort of changed and evolved, and it was more in the first season," he recalls. "When I was initially cast and when the character was conceived, he was considered to be an extremely ebullient and almost overly enthusiastic character. I thought that was going to be extremely difficult to sustain and would risk becoming very one-note, so I decided to take any opportunity I had after the first few episodes of the first season to make a choice that would allow him to be more reflective or more sombre on occasions. I wanted to keep the concept of him having a Zen-like outlook and being unflappable, but make him less ' bounding around on his toes'. He still has that innate optimism and curiosity, but it just isn't so much in your face now."
A veteran actor whose career has spanned numerous stage and screen roles, Billingsley was a viewer of the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but knew little of the franchise's most modern incarnations when he was cast as Dr Phlox in Enterprise. Reviewing his time with the show, he admits joining the franchise hasn't taken him as much by surprise as one might have thought.
"You know, I wish I could say, 'Oh my God, I never saw this and that coming.' It would probably be more interesting for your readers. But the reality is that it's been pretty much what I expected. Obviously you don't go into something like this totally blind, and I had a lot of friends - like Robert O'Reilly [ Gowron] and John Hertzler [Martok] - who had been recurring characters on Deep Space Nine, so they were able to clue me in on what the reality of conventions is and things like that. I certainly knew that Enterprise was going to run for at least a few years, because of the nature of the franchise.
Whether it goes seven, well, I guess the jury is still out.
"It was pretty clear what my life was going to be like as soon as I got the show. You know you're going to have steady work, which is both good and bad - it's great to have steady pay and it's great to have a sense of family with folks you work with, but on the other hand, one of the things that always appealed to me about being an actor is going out and playing different characters. So you get impatient about not playing different characters."
Despite his eagerness to branch out and explore new frontiers as an actor, Billingsley is the first to admit that a seven-year run on Enterprise wouldn't be so bad. "It's always fun to go to work on the show because everybody is very sweet. I do not have one negative thing to say about anyone in the cast, any of the crew or the producers.I have been treated with nothing but kindness by everybody. So there's a little part of me that says, 'Seven years of having a great time with great folks and getting a pay cheque wouldn't be bad.' "
All things considered, John Billingsley feels the plus points of working on Star Trek: Enterprise far outweigh the minuses. And he has no complaints about how his career or life in general are treating him either.
"I couldn't be happier," he declares. "I'm incredibly blessed in many ways. For one thing, I adore my wife, Bonita [Friedericy, who guest-starred in Enterprise's second season episode Regeneration]. We couldn't be happier together. I had tremendously supportive parents, who encouraged me to find something I wanted to do with my life and I did. And my health is good. I'm a lucky son of a bitch!"
Submitted by Jo Healy
March 2004
Magazine: TV Zone
The State of Phlox
In his role as Star Trek: Enterprise’s chief medical officer, John Billingsley tries to be the voice of moral reason. Steven Eramo makes an appointment for a chat…
When it comes to TV doctors, Star Trek: Enterprise’s Dr. Phlox is the exception to the rule. The show’s original character breakdown describes him as "an alien who speaks with a slight accent and has an eccentric sense of humour that no one quite understands. He finds humans fascinating. Phlox has filled his sickbay with all types of bizarre medical instruments, alien plants and spores as well as stasis chambers containing small, living creatures. He practices a brand of ‘intergalactic medicine’ the likes of which we’ve never seen."
John Billingsley, who plays Phlox, has incorporated these traits into his performance. He has also brought his own personality and perspectives to the character in an effort to further flesh it out. "When I first took the role all I had to go on were basically two or three scenes from the Enterprise pilot," recalls the actor. "Of course, back then, the show’s writers and producers didn’t necessarily know where they were going with him. So I focused on what seemed to be the most salient characteristics, which were a certain buoyancy and joyfulness.
"You may remember that in the first two episodes of the series Phlox was almost giddy. Well, I’m a great believer that as an actor you more or less honour what’s on the page. If you have a suggestion you make it and if The Powers That Be act on it that’s great. I’m being paid to act, not to write or direct. I’ll offer my opinion and then shut up and do my job. I sensed that they wanted Phlox to have a real enthusiasm. However, my hope was that it would be tempered because I didn’t think you could sustain something like that for too long. After having a brief conversation with the producers I was relieved to see that over the course of the third, fourth and fifth episodes they had toned down some of his effervescence and made Phlox far more Zen-like, which is how I see him."
Enterprise’s second year ended with Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) and his crew being ordered into the Delphic Expanse to find the Xindi, an alien race intent on destroying Earth. Their life-and-death mission continues this (third) season, and as a result the series has become more action-adventure oriented. Because his character is not a soldier or a member of Starfleet, Billingsley has had slightly less to do. However, at the time of this interview (early December), the actor was busy filming Doctor’s Orders, an episode featuring his Denobulan alter ego.
"In this story, the Enterprise is set to pass through another of these anomalies in the Expanse where the human mind can be altered," explains Billingsley. "Phlox figures out that as a Denobulan he’s immune to this, so the plan is for him put the rest of the crew into stasis and he’ll pilot the ship on his own. Of course, crisis soon ensues. I heard Brannon Braga [series co-creator/ co-executive producer] tell the writers that he wanted this episode to be cost-efficient, scary and all about Phlox. I took that as a compliment," he chuckles. "Acting-wise this has been an interesting challenge for me in that the script is a layered one where the progression of my character’s turmoil has to be carefully gradated. I’ve had a great time working with director Roxann Dawson [B’Elanna Torres of Star Trek: Voyager]. She’s very supportive and is on top of her shots. Roxann knows what she wants and is totally amenable to my input. It makes for a real collaboration."
Like most TV series regulars, Billingsley would like to learn as much as possible about his character. In his mind, though, such a wish is like a double-edged sword. "I have certain allusions of my own about the Denobulans and I’d hate for them to be shattered by what our writers might come up with," says the actor. "For instance, I was a little surprised to find that Phlox was in the Denobulan infantry. I never thought of his people as having an army, navy, etc. There was a part of me that was also a bit nonplussed when they did the episode [The Breach] alluding to the Denobulan’s sort of Nazi-fied past.
"I think the writers sometimes have a hard time trying to figure out what to do with Phlox," continues Billingsley. "When you create a character with Zen-like powers of detachment it doesn’t leave much room for any inner struggle. Funnily enough, the doctor’s personality is probably closer to mine than that of any other character I’ve played and that’s why I like the guy. However, that’s also what makes him difficult to dramatize.
"It would be neat if Phlox could be more of a true social conscience on the series. On occasion, he’ll pipe up and say something like, ‘Captain, do you really think we need to blow up…oh, all right, I suppose we haven’t a choice.’ I just feel that given the nature of our series, any dissent on my character’s part is going to be rather lame. In the end he’ll roll over and concede. I truly believe that there is the potential to have a scene where the doctor says, ‘Look, this isn’t what I signed up for. I’m not willing to put aside my morals in pursuit of our goal. Where do we draw the line in our efforts to stop the enemy?’ We’ve alluded to this in the action/adventure context of our show. However, it’s yet to be fully explored as an actual set of issues, values and questions that drive the way people interact with each other.
"Having said all this, I feel the writers have turned out several very good action/adventure based scripts this year. On that level they’ve taken a giant step forward from last season. The foundation is certainly being laid for us to take the programme to the next level."
If Billingsley could change one thing about Enterprise and, in fact, TV in general, what would it be? "If I ruled the world I would pass legislation that for one season no TV show could resolve a problem with a gun," he says. "Instead, make people talk and rediscover the drama that’s inherent in that."
Lonely Among Us
Billingsley is especially pleased that Doctor’s Orders explores the issue of Phlox being so far away from home and the only Denobulan aboard Enterprise. "I think my character is a lonely guy," he notes. "It’s not the same loneliness as that of the Vulcans, who choose to put up [emotional] walls between themselves and others. It’s my belief that the Denobulans are generally a sociable and cultured race as well as true humanists. They’re also very curious and emotionally engaged about all that life has to offer. The doctor is, too, but he’s taken a very lonely path, much like that of an anthropologist. He has removed himself from a culture that feeds that sense of who he is, and I think for the first time Doctor’s Orders looks at what this sacrifice has meant for Phlox. There are hallucinations that bring all this out, and I don’t want to make it sound like this is some big, heavy philosophical episode because it isn’t. It’s more of an outer space chiller. At the same time what makes it interesting is that when, for various reasons, Phlox starts to go around the bend, some of his neuroses are rooted in his sense of being alone."
On The Write Track
Along with Doctor’s Orders, two of Billingsley’s other favourite third season episodes are Similitude and Chosen Realm, both of which were written by Manny Coto, the newest writer to join the Enterprise staff.
"Similitude is what Star Trek is all about," says Billingsley. "It’s our best episode so far this season and, frankly, it might be the best one we’ve ever done. It’s a compelling story that deals with a subject [cloning] of topical interest. It also brings to the forefront the human issues that arise from this dilemma as well as serves the needs of our show’s on-going story line. Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer [Commander "Trip" Tucker] are terrific in the episode and it opens a new avenue in the Phlox/Trip relationship.
"Chosen Realm is another neat story about one faction in a religious war. This is a topical riff on the Palestine/Israeli situation. A group of aliens armed with internal bombs hijack the Enterprise. Anytime they want they can blow themselves up and take us with them. They intend on using our ship’s superior firepower to destroy the other faction they’re at war with. It’s a brilliant idea and, again, one of the best this year. I think Manny Coto has raised the bar when it comes to storytelling on our show."
By Steven Eramo
Submitted by Jo Healy