{"id":9965,"date":"2010-08-17T14:34:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T21:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=9965"},"modified":"2010-08-17T14:34:18","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T21:34:18","slug":"billingsley-star-trek-enterprise-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2010\/08\/billingsley-star-trek-enterprise-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Billingsley: Star Trek: Enterprise Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>John Billingsley<\/strong> recently answered fan questions regarding his time on <em>Star Trek: Enterprise<\/em>, including what he considered to be the best and worst episodes of the series, his attempt to provide story material for Phlox and more.<\/p>\n<p>Playing the cheerful and amiable Dr. Phlox was a nice change from the actor&#8217;s usual roles and reflected more of Billingsley himself. &#8220;Because I&#8217;d played so many psychopaths and sociopaths and serial killers and tormented souls and drug addicts and lunatics,&#8221; said Billingsley, &#8220;Dr. Phlox is perhaps my favorite part if only because it was a chance to be giddy and delightful for four years. I rarely have the opportunity to be that kind of guy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Phlox081710.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9966\" title=\"Phlox081710\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Phlox081710.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"116\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Billingsley had a favorite and a least favorite episode of <em>Enterprise<\/em>. His favorite episode was one that featured Trip, <em>Similitude<\/em>. &#8220;I thought that was the best episode for a lot of reasons,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Everyone in the cast was involved and everyone had an emotional through-line. Some episodes, of any show, actors are used to convey information or they\u2019re shunted aside. That episode, I thought it was the best of our ensemble pieces and it did what <em>Star Trek<\/em> does best, which is to deal with a topical question that has some sociological significance in a way that brings humanist values into play. And I got to handle a baby.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The worst episode, in his opinion, was <em>Precious Cargo<\/em>. &#8220;[<strong>Padma Lakshmi<\/strong> as an alien princess] and Trip were on the run from whoever was pursuing her,&#8221; Billingsley explained. &#8220;I don\u2019t remember all the details. I thought that was an unfortunate episode all around. It just didn\u2019t work. Again, no fault of the actors. It just didn\u2019t come together. And it was at a touchy point in our second season. We were holding on to not-great, but adequate audience numbers and after that episode our numbers just plummeted and we never got the audience back again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unlike <strong>Bob Picardo <\/strong>(EMH) on <em>Star Trek: Voyager<\/em>, Billingsley didn&#8217;t really get the chance to have his story ideas incorporated into <em>Enterprise<\/em>, but had he been able to do that, he had definite ideas on what he would have liked to have seen for his character. &#8220;Bob Picardo, I think, did a wonderful job on <em>Voyager<\/em> of asking them for stories and suggesting plot ideas,&#8221; said Billingsley. &#8220;I did a little of that in the first couple of years, but didn\u2019t make any headway, so I let that go. But for me it would\u2019ve had to do with the Denobulan culture. I would have been interested in finding out more about Phlox\u2019s species and his people and what their belief systems were. Any time I got a little information about Denobula, that was wonderful. It helped me flesh the guy out. Any story that moved in that world would have been great.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Billingsley recently answered fan questions regarding his time on Star Trek: Enterprise, including what&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2437],"tags":[2623],"class_list":["post-9965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-ent","tag-billingsley"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/star-trek-ent\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: ENT<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: ENT","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9967,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9965\/revisions\/9967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}