Scott Adams

"Cartoonist Turned Actor on Babylon 5"

By Scott Adams Creator of Dilbert

The best way to improve a television show's ratings during sweeps month is to feature a huge disaster. That's why the producers of Babylon 5 (my favorite show of all time) invited me to be a guest star on the episode that airs during the week of May 19th. I only have three lines, but that was enough for the Screen Actors Guild to picket my house and demand an apology. I'm told that isn't standard procedure.

There is a rumor that the director for my episode -- Tony Dow -- was so disgusted with my performance that he tried to kill himself halfway through the filming of my scene. But that's an exaggeration, like most of what you hear about Hollywood. The truth is that there were no bullets in five of the six chambers, so the odds were very much in his favor.

They say the average human face has hundreds of muscles. That's just the average. I only have five, and I'm counting my eyebrows as two, even though they don't operate independently.

How stiff am I? If a wax museum ever makes a replica of me, I'll be forced to play "paper-rock-scissors" with the wax dummy to see which one of us has to stand behind the rope.

So to be a successful actor on Babylon 5, I knew that I would have to draw upon my entire emotional reserves. That was a problem because I only have two emotions: hungry and miffed. And technically, hungry isn't an emotion. But I did the best I could to mix them together into interesting combinations, such as the "hungry and miffed" look, and the "miffed yet still curiously hungry" look.

I got some acting tips from veteran Babylon 5 star Jerry Doyle, who plays Garibaldi on the show. He took me aside and gave me some advice that went like this:

Jerry: "If you get nervous, just imagine that I'm naked."

Me: "Will that make me less nervous?"

Jerry: "Why must everything be about YOU?"

If you've never heard of Babylon 5, that's because it's syndicated, so it runs at different times in different markets. This is similar to the strategy that NBC uses for its well-publicized Thursday night lineup except without any hope of attracting viewers. If you want to watch Babylon 5 you have to go looking for it. But it's worth it, except for my scene.

Unlike other syndicated shows, the creators of Babylon 5 do not stoop to showing nearly-naked women to boost ratings. But once in a while, when two of the bald aliens, such as the Minbari, stand close together, you can get a very similar effect. It just takes more imagination. I don't think the cast suspected anything when I kept asking the Minbari extras to hug each other and balance pennies on their heads while I took their pictures.

When the producers asked me to appear on the show I was very excited because it's one of the most visually interesting shows ever made. They have exotic alien creatures, hundreds of incredible sets, and amazing special effects created by state of the art computer graphics. So I couldn't wait to see what madness they had in store for me.

My costume was a brown shirt with a little gray vest and tan pants.

Apparently that's what cartoonists of the future wear when they visit space stations. I asked if I could keep the costume as a souvenir but they said no, because the clothes actually belonged to one of the interns, who was forced to spend the rest of the day hiding behind the doughnut table.

When it was time for my big scene I dug deep into my soul and focused all of my creative life force into one moment of total emotional clarity. I put it all out there. It left me drained and empty. But I knew I nailed it. I slumped back in the chair and heard the words that every actor dreams of hearing from the director, "That was perfect. This time we'll roll film."

I think we shot my scene seven or eight hundred times. The glamour started to wear thin after the first ninety takes. By the mid-four hundreds I started fantasizing about having a more interesting life as a bank auditor or a self-service gas station attendant. By the mid-six hundreds I understood why so many actors have substance abuse problems. If someone had handed me a kilo of heroin at that moment and said, "Chew on this -- it will make you feel better," I'm not sure I would have said no. [Note to children: Drugs are very bad. This is merely a humorous exaggeration.]

When it was all over, I went back to my little trailer behind the set and changed back into my street clothes, which happened to be a brown shirt and tan pants. I stuffed my Babylon 5 costume into my briefcase and headed back in to say good-bye to the cast. In one day of filming they had become like my family, except they were attractive and I was stealing from them. I took one last walk around the set, past the bright lights, past the alien extras, past Pat Tallman (who plays Lita the psychic) as she was talking to a naked intern and making creative albeit impractical doughnut-related clothing suggestions.

It had been a long day, but I had achieved my objective -- to gather research for my book, The Dilbert Future (now in fine bookstores everywhere). What I learned is that according to Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, management in the future won't be that much different than it is now. The top executive will still be the tallest guy with the best hair (Bruce Boxleitner). Diversity will still be a big issue. You'll have to kill someone to get anything done, just like today. And I'm pretty sure the people on the lower decks are working in cubicles, although that's never said.

It was a very educational experience.