JohnBillingsley.Net
April 2005
Magazine: STARBURST
Issue: #322
THE DOCTOR'S LAST APPOINTMENT
Actor John Billingsley, who plays the Denobulan chief medical officer Dr Phlox in Star Trek: Enterprise, talks to Steven Eramo about life aboard the (soon to be decommissioned) Starship Enterprise.
It may be cold in deep space, but things aboard a certain Starfleet vessel are getting hot, really hot. Star Trek Enterprise’s John Billingsley, who plays the Enterprise NX-01’s Denobulan chief medical officer Dr. Phlox throughout its four-year run, can certainly attest to that. It’s just a shame his character can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
"This week [mid-January] we’ve started filming an episode called Bound, which is very much a tip of the hat to the original Star Trek series," says Billingsley. "In it, we pick up three beautiful Orion slave girls and they have a rather deleterious effect on the male members of the crew, all of whom are driven mad with lust, except for Phlox. These women make him sleepy, and I must admit I was a little cranky about that. I thought, ‘What’s up with that?’ My character has three wives and is presumably more potent than anybody else on the ship, and yet he’s the only guy whose reaction to these gals is, ‘I’d better take a nap.’ Having said that, I think it’s quite an amusing episode and the women we have guest-starring have all been very sweet and charming."
The Orions aren’t the only familiar faces to pop up during Enterprise's final season. The show’s producers have brought many other classic Trek alien races and story elements into the Enterprise NX-01 world. That’s been done in a number of multi-episode arcs, which have aired along with one-off stories. Billingsley feels both these moves have benefited the series as a whole.
"When this show was conceived, the argument was that they could create a Star Trek series that would appeal to a non-Star Trek audience," explains the actor. "As a result, it seemed as if the writers needed to stay away from stories that were excessively referential to the classic series. Well, they really didn’t find that larger audience and, in fact, began to lose some of their core audience. I think the attempt now is to regain those audience members from the core group of Star Trek fans. So they’ve had to go back and say, hey, this series is going to be a revelation to those people who want to learn how the Captain Kirk era came into being. One must leave it up to the fans to decide, but from all indications I’ve been receiving, people are really digging this season of Enterprise.
"Manny Coto [executive producer/head writer] has had a great deal to do with that," continues Billingsley. "And that is not meant to be a disservice to any of the other writers or to Rick Berman and Brannon Braga [executive producers]. It’s just that one of the things Manny has brought to Enterprise is a real interest in finding ways to link the era of our show up with the Kirk era. That began with the Augment episodes, which I thought were some of the stronger stories we’ve done. Also, the idea of the two and three-story arcs has allowed the writers and producers to have their cake and eat it too. They can still to do standalone episodes, but with the longer arcs they have the chance tell a more complicated and interesting story.
"Of course, there was a tradeoff with all this. Basically, a decision was made at the end of season two to go into the third year with more tightly-plotted stories at the sacrifice to a certain extent of character-driven episodes. So you gain something and you lose something. I would say that one of the things I don’t think has really been quite as strong this season is the idea that there’s been an added dimensionality to our individual characters. We haven’t learnt that much more about how they tick. I’m guessing, though, that The Powers That Be believe our show is going to be much more popular when it’s action-adventure oriented. For me as an actor, that’s never a source of frustration. This is a great gig and I like the people I work with. If I have more downtime, well, that’s fine by me."
Upping the action ante on Enterprise may have resulted in less on-air time for the NX-01’s physician, but that doesn’t mean Billingsley has found his role of Dr. Phlox any less enjoyable or challenging. "There is always a challenge when you approach individual scenes," he notes. "With an individual scene, you have the obligation of figuring out what your intent is, what the action is, where the scene shifts and turns, and deciding how to keep some sense of emotional life alive inside the scene even if it doesn’t seem to be very present. So no matter what the venue or how small a scene is, there’s never an absence of challenge.
"In terms of, as I alluded to earlier, a deepening of who Phlox is, it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I’ve had greater room this year for further exploration of my character. Again, let me stress that I say that without any kind of acrimony. I had no illusions about what my role would be on this show or what would be asked of me. I play a supporting character and supporting characters do not have many opportunities for fully fleshed out, emotional scenes in which they reveal themselves as three-dimensional beings. If the writers and producers tried to figure out ways to do that, they might be doing it at the cost of telling richer and more intricately-woven stories.
"Oddly enough, that was true of the original show. The first Star Trek really did not have a lot in the way of character development, especially for the subsidiary characters. The storytelling drove the show. People liked the stories and thought they were interesting. I’m guessing that the producers of our show and the network have decided, ‘If Enterprise goes on and becomes even more popular, it’s because the stories themselves are more elaborate and surprising.’ So I move blithely along, you know? I think they like what I do and I try to keep my sense of humour. Probably the main thing for me that drives Dr. Phlox is that he has, not a bemused attachment, but sort of rueful admiration for the nature of existence. Even in the darkest moments he’s like, ‘What a universe.’"
Aside from his sickbay duties, the actor recently guest-starred on the CBS series Cold Case. "I play a man who works in the records section of the police department, and who once a year would abduct a woman, take her into the woods, hunt her down and then kill her." This character is being brought back, as UPN finally brought the curtain down on Enterprise shortly after Starburst chatted to him. We went back to the actor for some final thoughts.
"It’s truly a shame, especially in that this year has I think been our best one yet." he mused. "However, the franchise has been around for a long time, and I feel our cancellation has much more to do with the fact that you can’t go to the same well as often as Paramount has done with Trek and expect to keep viewers interested. I mean, between the films and TV series there’s been a lot of Trek over the past 15 or so years.
"The challenge is now going to be how to bring the franchise back – and I’m guessing they will after some time has elapsed – and create a buzz that will generate a new audience without alienating the core audience. The Powers That Be felt this could be done with Enterprise, but despite all its strengths I don’t think our show was sufficiently different from previous Trek incarnations to attract that young new audience they were looking for."
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Longtime fans of Billingsley will recall the actor’s work as Professor Miles Ballard in the short-lived TV supernatural drama The Others. The series focused on a group of unique individuals with paranormal abilities. Their leader was noted medium Elmer Greentree, played by Bill Cobbs. He and Billingsley were recently reunited when Cobbs guest-starred in the Enterprise episode Daedelus.
"Bill is such a wonderful man," says Billingsley. "He had a tough episode to do. I thought the story itself was a very good one. Bill plays the man who basically invented the transporter. He comes onboard the Enterprise with a plan to rescue his son, who was lost in a transporter accident. Bill had to speak more gibberish than anybody has had to speak on the series in years. I mean, things like ‘Accelerate the particle matter matriculator.’ That stuff is hard slogging for any of us regulars. However, for someone who comes on the show as a guest and has to handle that stuff at full tilt, well, it’s not easy. My heart went out to Bill. He did a fine job, though, and it was nice to have a chance to catch up with him."
EXTREME MAKEOVER: KLINGON EDITION
Prior to starting work on Bound, the Enterprise cast and crew filmed the two-part story Affliction and Divergence, in which the Klingons enlist an unwilling Dr. Phlox to help them out of a serious dilemma. "The Klingons find remnants of Augment DNA from the beings created by Dr, Soong [Brent Spiner] and attempt to use it to create Klingon Augments," says Billingsley. "However, things go badly awry and they end up poisoning themselves. Phlox is kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to fix things for them. The subplot of the story has Lieutenant Reed [Dominic Keating] actively interfering with Captain Archer’s [Scott Bakula] efforts to find my character. This story has a certain tongue and cheek quality to it as it tries to explain why the Kirk-era Klingons did not have ridges on their foreheads.
"From a production standpoint, this was a difficult shoot for everyone involved. Being a two-parter, the filming of it was spread out over four weeks, which included the Christmas break. That meant you had to maintain the story’s sense of tension over a longer period of time. In that regard it was like working on a film. When you’re shooting over months you have to make sure to remain true to your character from scene to scene. That’s not easy if, let’s say, a month-and-a-half separates the filming of two scenes that end up back-to-back when the movie is shown. It’s a technical problem, and you have to make certain not to stray from workday to workday in terms of where your character is at emotionally. That was probably the biggest challenge with these two episodes.
"As far as guest-stars, John Schuck [Klingon ambassador in the Star Trek feature films IV and VI] played one of the Klingon physicians [Antaak] and he was a pleasure to work with, as was Dave Barrett, who directed Divergence. He’s new to Enterprise and he brought a fresh kind of visual energy to the work. So Dave’s episode is going to look unlike your standard Star Trek story. That’s not at all a slight on Michael Grossman, who directed Affliction. He’s a terrific fellow and it’s always a joy to be directed by him."
Submitted by Jo Healy