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June 13, 2004

Billingsley Looks Back At Season 3

It's been somewhat of a long hard road for Star Trek of late, and the future has been very uncertain for the cast and crew of Star Treks 5th incarnation Enterprise. To address the drop in ratings producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga took a chance by making the whole of season three a story arc. However with the emphasis of 'The Xindi' arc being mostly on action, it left very little time for character development. Which left Enterprise's resident character actor John Billingsley with very little to do. In the new issue of Star Trek Magazine the actor talked frankly about his views on the third season and although only one episode focused solely on his character, the actor had nothing but praise for the creative team behind the 3rd season.

In terms potential Billingsley felt that Enterprise's third year raised the bar somewhat and actually brought the show much closer to fulfilling its potential, and to Billingsley's mind it was the addition of a new Co - Executive producer that paved the way for Enterprise and contributed to the slight raise of the shows ratings.

"I think a gentleman named Manny Coto, who came onboard this season [as co - executive producer], had raised the bar for the entire writing staff. I think the actors are being asked to go to more dangerous and interesting places in their work."

Season Three was mostly action orientated so did not really allow for much in the way of traditional character driven stories, which is something that Star Trek has always excelled at. However the 3rd season did have one opportunity for Billingsley to showcase his character of Dr Phlox with the episode 'Doctors Orders' which puts Phlox in the unenviable position of taking responsibility for the day to day running of the NX -01. This episode sees Phlox become increasingly disturbed and agitated due to the loneliness brought on by not having any human contact for an extended period of time due to human physiology not been able to stand up to the astral phenomena that the ship encounters in this particular part of the Expanse. The episode proved to be an extreme acting challenge for Billingsley due to the fact that most of the scenes were shot out of sequence, and the actor had to give audiences the impression that phlox was slowly but surely going mad.

"I think for the most part actors have to have a pretty good muscle memory for where they were emotionally in every scene. You have to be able to know in your body somehow, you have to remember exactly where you were 10 days before. You can always go look at the scene again - they'll have it on tape for you - but generally, you have to trust that you've got it organically inside of you."

Doctors Orders is also the only stand alone episode in the entire third season. The episode also allowed Billingsley a rare chance to explore some more of the emotional complexities that make up his character. "I think it's a very self - contained episode," notes Billingsley. "It was interesting for me to have chance to actually get to explore some of his emotionalism. He's not an unemotional person. I think he's actually an interesting wedding of a guy, who has sort of an Eastern sensibility and a Buddhist - like dispassionate quality - at the same time, he has a tremendous joie de vivre that allows him to genuinely experience in a delightful way whatever he's going through. He's able to immediately process what he's feeling. As soon as he feels, he's immediately able to go, 'Okay, and now… next'"

Season 3 seen a slight raise in Star Trek Enterprise's ratings; however it still did not rate as highly as UPN had hoped. But Billingsley is hopeful for the fourth season. "I think they have gotton a lot of the die hard Star Trek fans back this season, which is a testament to the show's value, that there is still an audience that will watch it after 30 years."

You can read much more of what John Billingsley said in the new issue of Star Trek Magazine which is out now in all good book stores throughout the UK.