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From the Official Fan Club Newsletter August 2004
In the second part of our exclusive interview with Chris Carter, we turn to another Carter project making its way to DVD for the first time, Harsh Realm. The series has become a cult classic since its brief run on Fox, and fans have been eager to have the entire run of the show on DVD. The new set is due out at the end of August, and includes six episodes of the series never broadcast on network television.
In developing Harsh Realm, what was appealing to you about setting the series in a virtual reality?
You could do parallel worlds, reality and virtual reality, and characters had two different lives. The rules of one world were not the rules in the other, and the relationships in one were not the relationships in the other. It was interesting, because it was great for actors and great for writers. It's a terrific storytelling device, and yet it didn't make it, because not enough people came to see it originally. I still think it was underappreciated. Not a whole lot of people knew it was on.
Was the "blank slate" of the virtual reality ever a creative hindrance? Did you find ways to limit yourselves, as an aid to developing ideas?
Well, we worked off that blank slate every week, so we became very familiar with it, although it's always daunting. We had certain storytelling and series objectives about where the characters would go and how it would play out. We had certain things we knew we wanted to do. It took us all by surprise when we didn't get to do it beyond the eleven episodes we did do.
Where was the story going? What can you tell us about where things would have headed?
It was really "The Odyssey." It was a character who wanted to get home again and had to defeat someone in the process. All of a sudden, the things he was beset by and confronted with became very real, even though they were virtual. In order to get back to reality, he still had to deal with a lot of things that would prevent him from getting back to that reality. It's a great concept.
This show came out at a time when cable television wasn't seen as the refuge it is today for advanced storytelling, or shows with a more adult audience. Do you ever regret that a Showtime or an HBO wasn't there at the time to let you take your story and run with it?
The regrets are numerous. [laughs] It didn't have a life past the eleven episodes, and wherever that would have been. I'm philosophical about it. I understand why it didn't go. It was a show that required effort and commitment, and that doesn't seem to be something that a lot of TV shows require these days.
What does it mean to you as the creator of Harsh Realm to see the series finding a new life on DVD?
It's exciting. You were limited not so long ago to first-run and reruns of a show, and then you had to run down to the Museum of Television & Radio if you wanted to see anything. Now you've got an opportunity to go into your video store and purchase an entire year of something at a pretty cheap price. I just watched the first year of Six Feet Under again on DVD, and it was fantastic. I could watch it all over again. I think, in a weird way, it's not just an opportunity for TV creators like me, but it's a way to appreciate something in a serialized form that you don't have the luxury of being able to watch back-to-back.
Many thanks to Milady Flores for helping set up the interview, and to Chris Carter for spending some of his valuable time with us!
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