Starburst – Chris Barrie/Red Dwarf VI Interview (1994)

[Jawscvmcdia]

Here’s an interesting interview with Chris Barrie, made during the production of Series VI in 1994, which I’ve just transcribed:

As the American writer James Thurber once said, “Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity”. Tell that to actor Chris Barrie, who’s discussing his work on the long-running BBC2 series, Red Dwarf.

Having experienced the emotional chaos of the sixth and most recent series of the popular comedy/SF programme, Barrie is anything but tranquil. Unlike previous years, where his character Arnold Rimmer, this ship’s insufferable hologram, continued to grow and develop, this time around that development seems to have taken a downward turn. For Barrie, who is currently gearing up for his other well-established role, in BBC1’s The Brittas Empire, the sixth outing of Red Dwarf may well be his last. “Unlike the fifth series, when a few months deadened the pain, I haven’t got over it since doing the show [this year],” he explains. “I’ll really have to think long and hard if I do another series. That is mainly fuelled by the production problems, and everything that goes with them.

Mr Butt of the Jokes

“As far as the actual character of Rimmer, I agree with some other journalists who said that in the latest series, and to some extend the fifth series, the character stopped developing and Red Dwarf became a visual effects show, with gags that existed and had been created in the third, fourth and part of the fifth series. In Rimmer’s case, he has become the butt of the jokes, and I really don’t think there’s a place for as just being ‘Mr Butt of the Jokes’. “Okay,” continues Barrie, “in every series of Red Dwarf, you get a lot of funny lines to say and that’s wonderful, but I think the entire cast will agree that we can return occasionally to the days of series two and three, like Marooned, for example, where we had long, interesting and funny dialogue about our characters and how they came about. People might say, ‘Oh, that’s revisiting the past’, but I still think that clever writing could explore them more, and get some very humorous material from that”.

Scripting Quirks

One of the ways in which the series has changed, Barrie notices, is that occasionally a script will focus on the actor, rather than the character he plays in Red Dwarf. “I remember one instance that was probably in week two or three, where earlier in the week I had voiced my opinion that, somewhere along the line, we were lacking in a degree of professionalism. In the script, one of Rimmer’s lines in the Starbug cockpit was, ‘Can we have a bit of professionalism, gentlemen?’ That’s a classic case, and that in my opinion is rather a sly to the point of being nasty, unnecessary kind of thing to put in. It’s lazy writing at best. I remember that example, because we all looked at each other and thought, ‘Hey, we can’t say a bloody sentence here without it going into the script!’”

Barrie is quick to point out that as far as Red Dwarf is concerned, there is almost nothing he won’t do to make a script work. That includes wearing a red gingham dress and army boots in Quarantine. “As I’ve always tried to say, my gripe is not with that side of it. Once we get into character and get to doing Rimmer and the gang, I don’t mind. “Put it this way: I’d rather dress up in army boots and a gingham dress, and whatever discomforts that may have for me, than have to do an unimaginative, ‘Rimmer’s the butt of the jokes’ scene in the cockpit of Starbug. I’d rather go through physical discomfort to help a scene along than have to voice writing or repeat gags from series three that we’re doing now to fill in before another visual effect comes along.

Red Dwarf is the show in which I have to through the most hard-ships,” offers Barrie, “such as having a VW wind machine blasting at you – I think I nearly drowned in series four [in Dimension Jump], with Ace and Lister in a storm outside the ship. I really did take in quite a lot of that acidy water and was quite ill doing that.”

High Point

In Barrie’s opinion, the overall high point of Red Dwarf was the watershed third series, which marked the beginning of the programme’s new look. “That was when we, in the opinion of most, got it right. Red Dwarf to me has never been without its problems in one shape or form, but I think by series three I was still hungry to get it right and we were still doing things that surprised each other. That made it all very exciting.”

The actor divides the programme into two different stages of development: the first three seasons, and the latter three, which includes the current run. “The first three are what I call the ‘Dialogue’ shows, and the second three are the ‘Vis-FX’ shows. Series four was the first of the Vis-Fx shows, but still carried on some of the elements that had made Red Dwarf, such as the strong dialogue. That was also the first series in Shepperton, so we didn’t have the same resources that we had in Acton to rehearse properly. We were in that big, cold film studio and, steeped in history though it may be, it’s not the place most conducive to rehearsing a television show; particular in November and December.

“Having said all that, the ultimate high point for me was Dimension Jump, because I had to do all these scenes playing the same character for all intents and purposes, but one is a real winner, and the other is the Rimmer smeghead we know, love, hate and pity. In a sense, it was all worth doing for that, and at my most cynical, I would say it’s been downhill ever since.”

Loss of Direction

Barrie feels one of the key ingredients missing in the last two series of Red Dwarf is the presence of Ed Bye, the directorial glue that held the programme together for its first four seasons. “I think because Ed was there right at the very beginning, and is a very energetic television director, we badly missed him in the last two series, really badly missed him. No matter what people may say that they tried to replace him with another director, at the end of the day, you couldn’t replace Ed, because he had a rapport with the writers and a rapport that meant he could control the studio floor in a way it needed to give everyone that enthusiasm to do the show properly.

“Now unless you have someone who can control the studio floor, things really fall apart, because there’s so much to keep covered, and that’s what Red Dwarf has lacked over the last two years.”

Turning his attention to the currents series, Barrie feels the stories may have levelled off a bit, as compared to previous efforts. “I remember in one of the initial read-throughs, where we initially read the scripts, I didn’t say ‘Wow!’ as much as I did in all the other series, apart from maybe Gunmen of the Apocalypse. Gunmen, as most people seem to declare, is maybe head and shoulders above the rest of the episodes in Series Six. Some of the earliest images you see on television are westerns, with John Wayne, Gary Cooper and people like that, so just to be able to don all those outfits was a great experience. We were kids again.”

Ace Opportunity

One episode which proved a bit of a disappointment for the actor is Emohawk: Polymorph II, which featured the long-awaited return of Ace Rimmer, the heroic, alternate universe incarnation of his character, first introduced in the fourth series’ Dimension Jump. ‘I don’t think Ace fully came back,” says Barrie, with more than a hint of disappointment. “He came back in voice and spirit, but I don’t think it was as clever a use of Ace as it could have been. I was disappointed that we didn’t have the same wig, which was apparently stolen, or the same outfit. In Dimension Jump, the wig and outfit were so right and so wonderful. It was that physicality of the character that made him so right.”

Another episode that could have been better was Rimmerworld, where the hapless hologram finds himself trapped on an uninhabited planet, and quickly sets about populating it with Rimmer clones. “That one seemed to remind me of previous stories,” ventures Barrie. “It could almost have been Terrorform. That was another visit to Rimmer’s psyche, but Terrorform did make me say ‘Wow!’ You had the two sides of Rimmer, the good and the bad, and I thought that one was really nice.

“With Rimmerworld, it all seemed a bit plot-y. To be fair, I’ve got to wait until I see the finished episode to make a final decision, but I just thought Rimmerworld smacked of Terrorform and that sort of thing, where you’re on a planet with lots of dry ice, and there’s lots of Rimmers around. I don’t know, maybe that was all country that was visited before in a better way.”

One plot development Barrie was happy with was Rimmer’s new hard light mode, introduced in Legion. Originally intended as a one-off idea, the hard light drive gave Barrie’s hologram character the ability of touch, and was used at various points in later episodes. “That was a relief,” says the actor, “because Rimmer never touched. When I do Brittas, he’s normally touching things all the time, and when I did the fourth series of Red Dwarf after doing Brittas, I thought ‘Oh no, I can’t touch anything anymore: I’ve got to stop touching things!’ Those last two series were a bit frustrating, but now we’ve got this hard light drive, and it’s good to be able to lean on things without fans writing in and saying ‘Oh, Rimmer touched this, that and the other!’”

Formula Audience

The recent success of Red Dwarf has proved to be a double-edged sword as far as its scripts were concerned. While Barrie admits it’s nice to record the series in front of an audience who know the characters, he believes that familiarity can sometimes lead to complacency. “After a while, it becomes not as challenging, not as exciting,” he elaborates. “In series two or three, the audience knew the characters just enough to appreciate a funny line in reference to them. That meant if not a big laugh, then certainly a fresh laugh, and it made the actors grow more confident, because they knew the characters, and the chemistry was beginning to work, and they’re always pumping. In the later series, when the laughter goes to bed, the actors sometimes turn away, and their expression says, ‘There’s another one!’ It becomes too easy, too formularised.”

Running Gags

That formularisation has led to a number of running gags in Red Dwarf VI, which Barrie thinks may be a mistake. “In many ways, I was surprised they kept those running gags going backwards and forwards,” he confesses. “I thought Rob and Doug wouldn’t have done that. I really thought they’d treat the Cat sayings and Space Corps Directives like gold; they would put them out sparingly, whereas when you get three or four a series, that’s not sparing as far as I’m concerned.

“When you get into running gags, that’s the sign in the kindest description of it, that a series is really working. An unkind description is that you’re really running low on new, original gags.”

With the sixth series of Red Dwarf behind him, Barrie has turned to other projects, and has been working on a new comedy series.

With so many irons in his fire, Chris Barrie isn’t quite sure how Red Dwarf fits into his future plans. “This new project is only in the first stages of development, so whether it will be a series or a pilot, we don’t know yet.

“Obviously, Red Dwarf is the veteran of the fleet. It’s done six, and although it’s probably the most imaginative show that I’ll probably ever do, one has to remember that it’s been on for six years now. If one’s got to go, I must look to fresh fields and pastures new.”

Topic

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Other than the last two minutes of Timeslides, III is perfect.

I do agree that it’s got a very strange, nightmarish atmosphere/aesthetic though. It’s like the whole series has the flu.

[Phobos And Deimos]

There’s big, what-if concepts on the go, realised through grindhouse-esque, black humoured scripts and shot on very cluttered yet cosy sets via cameras and equipment that was for the knackers yard soon after but give an immediate life to it all. So you end up with a third series of Red Dwarf which is wholly unique visually, sets the tone for the three series after it and most importantly is very, very funny and for many, a great introduction to the show as a whole.

I’ve always maintained that a proper restoration of Series III would look remarkable and very fitting in the modern era. You’ve got that one-time, almost accidental combination of scripts, sets and cameras that all gel seamlessly.

[Author]

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