JohnBillingsley.Net  

November, 2004

Magazine: Dreamwatch

Issue: #123

Dear Diary...

Ever wondered what it's really like behind the scenes of Star Trek: Enterprise? In a Dreamwatch world exclusive, Dr. Phlox actor John Billingsley writes about the making of the upcoming fourth season episode Cold Station 12, and offers a unique insight into his work on the series...

TUESDAY 26th AUGUST 2004

It's 10am, and its the first day of shooting on Cold Station 12, our fifth episode of the young season. We got the first shot off, bing-bang-bong - it was my standard issue "Blah, blah, DNA this, genetic anomaly that..." spiel. Lots of pointing at computer screens, furrowed brows all around. Now I'm in my trailer, desperately trying to caffeinate myself sufficiently before we get around to my next scene, due to be shot in approximately and hour and a half, in which I learn that Dr. Phlox's heretofore unseen compatriot, Dr. Lucas (his pen-pal, as referenced in multiple episodes), is in deep doo-doo and needs big time rescuing. Is there enough coffee on the set, on the lot, in LA or in the Western World to wake me up today? Nope.

I had a terrible night's sleep, marked by troubling and unpleasant dreams about a bearded Michelle Pfeiffer. In my dream Ms. Pfeiffer was manning a kissing booth at some kind of school fair, but she had one of those big, black, bushy Hasidic beards and it put a serious kibosh on any potential carnal value the dream might otherwise have had. For some reason I was obligated to keep kissing Michelle, even though I really didn't want to. I don't know why I knew it was Michelle Pfeiffer, she would have probably been somewhat unrecognizable in the beard, but in the way of dreams I had no lack of certainty that she was indeed who she claimed to be. It was gross. I suppose I'll take endless guff from my wife, Bonnie, when she reads this...

One of the tricky things about being on a TV show if you're used somewhat infrequently is the yo-yo it is of one's sleep schedule (some what similar to jet lag), which is brought on by the utter unpredictability of when they call you in to work. When I've had multiple days off I will revert to my night-owl schedule, reading 'til 2am, sleeping 'til 9:30am - but then, boom!, the second A.D. calls you and says you're working tomorrow, be there at 5am, and you're screwed, 'cuz there's no way you're going to get enough sleep that night. If you go to bed at 10pm, when you're WIDE AWAKE you're just going to lie there, mind racing, drumming your fingers against the mattress, for hours...And that's why I'm exhausted today.

Ah, the knock at the door. It's the rehearsal for my second (and last) scene of the day...

SOME TIME LATER

In this episode Brent Spiner, our guest villain (and what a kind, funny, intelligent and gracious man he is) is attacking a facility where thousands of genetically enhanced embryos that were cryogenically frozen after the Eugenics Wars are now being stored. I won't go into the whole song and dance - it's a somewhat complicated story arc - but I will say that, it's our best storyline of the season so far, and to my mind one of the most interesting and potentially exciting stories we've ever done. Dr. Lucas has apparently been transferred to the facility to serve as Chief Medical Officer and I'm perturbed about his well-being. It should be a straightforward scene, nothing too complicated.

Dr. Lucas is played by Richard Rielhe, whom I have known for over 20 years. He's a great guy. We've both been joking around about the homoerotic subtext of our characters' relationship. All I can say is that the Denobulan are known bisexuals, so no one should be too surprised!

Scott Bakula is riding high today - his beloved St. Louis Cardinals (baseball, for the uninitiated) have the best record in the National League and seem all but unstoppable this season. Scott's a St. Louie boy, and he's kept his connections to the old sod, good on him. My family moved around so much I never really got too attached to any one place, and I don't think of myself as having real hometown roots. I lived in Seattle, WA as an adult for almost 15 years, and I guess that will always feel like home, although after a decade in LA I've really come to feel pretty So-Cal-ish.

Scott crossed a line and started razzing the Dodgers and that got the whole crew going (well, those crewmembers who are Dodgers fans, at least). We've all turned on him. I am a Mariners' fan myself - they are mired in the cellar of the American League and threaten to be dreadful for many years to come. Sigh. Scott and several members of the crew, most particularly our line producer, seldom fail to point this out to me.

The work seems to be moving along a lot more briskly this year, in large part, because we now have two camera set-up for almost every shot ( where two cameras are positioned to shot the same scene from different angles). In previous years, as is true for most shows, we only had one camera working at any given time. I'm not sure why two-camera isn't the rule as opposed to the exception, because it does seem to expedite things. And what with budget concerns, every minute saved really does count for something.

I assume, by the way, that everyone knows the story surrounding our return this season: Paramount is, in effect, footing the bill for half of what it costs to shoot each episode. UPN refused to bring us back for a fourth season at what it had been costing them: approximately $1.6 million per episode. They agreed to pay half that amount per ep, and so, in effect, the studio has seen its profit margin on Enterprise seriously eroded. Of course the message from the suits is TRIM TRIM TRIM.

To their credit, I haven't had the sense that these trims have affected the quality of what's showing up on screen. We still have high production values - it doesn't look as if we're going the cheeseball route, or cutting the special effects, or only doing so-called 'ship-shows', where we never shoot anything that can't be shot on pre-existing sets. But, having said that, I think everybody's radar is very, very alert for signs of cutbacks.

It does make one wonder whether the show will come back for seasons five, six and seven. There are so many rumours being bandied about on the set. This fourth season will bring us up to (approximately) 100 episodes, and that's usually the number required to move a show into syndication. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the general consensus is that this is the last year of the show unless we see some real growth in the ratings and Paramount can go back to UPN next year and say, "Well, we carried you a bit last year but now you have to pony up..." I'm not sure Paramount is going to be willing to do 'deficit financing' on Enterprise indefinitely, and I don't see any other station (like Sci Fi) paying $1.6 million per episode, frankly.

I hope I'm wrong about all of this, I really do. Not just because this is such a sweet group of folks to work with, or because I know the fans would be disappointed. No, on a personal level, there's just a big gulp at the prospect of losing a steady and lucrative gig at a time when the business is in such turmoil. It's a very difficult time to be an actor in Hollywood. There are twice as many reality shows on TV now as there were last year, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. They're infinitely cheaper to produce and they are geared to the sleazy, salacious and voyeuristic, a sad commentary on our culture and a constant rebuke, I must say, to America and American values. When Donald Trump - the great exemplar of the elevation of the material over the spiritual - becomes TV's biggest star, I think we have now officially bottomed out.

Anyway, in a climate like this, with fewer and fewer jobs for actors, a secure gig is something one counts one's lucky stars to have. We'll see, as my sainted mother used to say. (And as a side note I have to say when I talk to actors who actually watch reality shows I just go ballistic - it's like holding the sack for the guy who's burglarizing your house!)

FRIDAY 27th AUGUST, 2004

Writing now a few days later, same episode, and I just finished shooting a scene with Scott B. I can't say enough good things about that guy. It's frustrating actually, when I try to talk about him, 'cuz I can't help feeling that it's going to be read as the kind of empty puffery that all actors habitually engage in (yes,you were mahhvellous dahling ). But in fact, I couldn't be more sincere. I think Scott is the most gracious, warm-hearted and generous person I have ever met in this business. I am constantly reminded of this when we work together, and I bring it up now because we just had a scene together that was a touch difficult for both of us and he was, as always, seemingly more concerned about my welfare (as the other actor) than he was his own.

This scene was a late-night mess hall scene, one of the scenes which I tend to think of as 'Uh-oh scenes'. 'Uh-oh scenes' are occasionally forced upon us at the last minute because everybody realizes 'Uh-oh, this episode's going to be short by about a minute and a half.' These scenes, hastily written and shoehorned uncomfortably into a pre-existing script, frequently feel gratuitous and are occasionally embarrassing. Not only do we, as actors, have a slippery grasp of our lines (these scenes are often delivered to us without much advance warning; it's nobody's fault, I'm not pointing fingers in any way, shape, manner or form - it's simply the nature of the business we're in) but because they are shot after the bulk of the episode has been finished, one is frequently thinking, 'Shit, this scene makes some of the choices I made in scenes we've already shot feel wrong now.'

It's hard to explain without resorting to a lengthier commentary, so let me give you an example from another TV show I did years ago. I was playing - or at least, I thought I was playing - a naive and credulous teacher who was supposed to be astonished to hear that one of his students could have been complicit in a crime. We shot that scene, the work felt fine, but they ran short and an additional scene was written and added to the same episode showing me, prior to the scene I'd already shot, dissing several of my students in the faculty lunchroom and behaving generally, in a fashion that suggested I was much more savvy and hip than I had considered my character to be when the previous scene had been filmed. Now maybe the writers hadn't been picking up on what my character's defining behavioural traits (cluelessness), but to me a central contradiction in the way my character feels and behaves has just been projected onto the screen and I'm going to look like an idiot (as an actor). The two scenes, in sequence, won't link up and form a seamless behavioural whole, and even if an audience isn't quite hip to disconnect, when I see the finished product I'm going to flinch and cringe.

Anyway, that's a long, long build-up - basically, what I was trying to say was that Scott, such a gentleman, is always keenly sympathetic to the other actor's needs, so when we get to the mess hall scene this morning he intuits that I have concerns of the nature I just expressed about Phlox's behavioural credibility and he immediately approaches me about them. Now, I'd already dealt with them by talking to the writers and requesting a few tweaks in the scene, but the point is - YOU CAN COUNT ON THE FINGERS OF ONE HAND the number of times an actor will take the time to think about the scene he's doing from the point of view of another actor in the scene, much less approach the other actor to say, "Hey, I'll go in and pitch with you if you want to fight for changes." As I've said, I'd already spoken to the writers, who were (and are) very gracious in their own right, and so his intercession wasn't necessary. But as an example of classy behaviour in this business, I just have to say - that it is a rare, rare thing, but everyday behaviour from Scott. This is a man who knows everybody's name, remembers birthdays, wives' names, etc., and is never less than good - humoured and fun to be around, even after 16-hour days.

Now Dominic, on the other hand...

Oh, I'm only kidding. I just like to tease him so much. In part 'cuz, he's very quick-witted and gives as good, or better, than he gets, and in part 'cuz, well it's like poking a hornet's nest - you just can't help yourself. He's been ailing for a while, was mis-diagnosed as having pneumonia, but is much better, and back to his old teasable self again. Connor, however, seems to now have what Dom had. Poor guy, he's the one who has to speak in this upcoming scene and say something about containment fields and warp signatures...

SOME TIME LATER

We've moved on to the next scene I have today (We're beaming down, it's a very, very quick pop of us on the beam-down pad, or whatever the hell it is - I've never actually been beamed anywhere before...oh yeah, I just remembered, transporter pad, that's what it's called!)
Dom has one line, I have none, so doubtless we'll both be annoyingly smart-alecky. Basically, the less one has to do in a scene the more inclined one is to horse around. When all of us are in a scene together but no-one really has to say anything, or do any heavy emoting, it drives the crew crazy 'cuz we can't be serious and the day gets looonngger and looonnnngger.

Anyway, I get to go to the planet's surface, for once. Phlox sure as hell ain't like McCoy, who was always beaming down, beaming up, hanging around the bridge and generally butting his nose into everybody's business. I, on the other hand, seem to be persona non grata on the bridge. Thank God! Bridge scenes take forever, plus I have no chair on the bridge so whenever I'm up there I have to stand all day. If the producers are reading this - thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for not sending me on away missions, making me wear the spacesuit, having me appear on the bridge for no good reason or generally using me in ways that would be tiresome. I like counseling neurotic crewmembers and diagnosing strange medical conditions. (I wouldn't mind more love scenes, but don't tell my wife I said this.)

EVEN LATER

The end. last scene of the day, done. I think I've reached my word allotment. I'm not sure I have conveyed as much of the flavour of the set as perhaps I could have - but for more, watch this space. And in closing, I also feel a touch guilty that I have not ended things on a more dramatic and (consequently) literarily defensible note. Hmmmm...

Perhaps I could interest you in a teaser about an upcoming episode, which takes place on a planet of scantily-clad lesbians, where T'Pol and Hoshi are taken hostages by the evil queen, played by Marina Sirtis, who forces them to engage in shocking and heretofore unimagined acts of congress that entail lots of very wet kissing?

Nah, only kidding...

WRITER'S COMMENTARY

John Billingsley discuses how his Enterprise diary reflects his normal working experience on the show...

" I'd say this diary is fairly typical of my work on Enterprise. As the show has evolved into a more action/adventure driven series, my role has increasingly consisted of being there to offer support to the team. So I come in a few days a week and do my bit. In that respect, these entries are very reflective of what my experience on the show is now.

"I'm grateful for this opportunity to communicate so directly with everyone and I hope I've given a 'stream of consciousness' experience of what goes through one's mind on the set every day. I look forward to doing it again, so expect some further scurrilous revelations to follow!"

Submitted by Jo Healy