Catacombs Credits Guide
Barry Morse

Barry Morse interviewed by John Porter in TV Zone

I remember an early production meeting, the first time we all sat down with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. They started to talk about the fact that Rudi Gernreich was going to do the costumes, as if this was the greatest thing surrounding the whole project. Martin and I had worked together before and we looked at each other and asked could we perhaps talk for a little while about who our characters are, what our relationships are, a few things like that? They looked quite baffled and then told us who was going to make the boots.

From that moment on, Martin and I realised that we were going up the down staircase, I can't tell you the number of times that Martin and Barbara would come back to my place or I'd go over to theirs after a day's shooting and we'd sit around with the upcoming script and ask ourselves how we could make it work. We used to send the scripts up terribly. On one occasion when we had a particularly preposterous scene to play, knowing Gerry and Sylvia's connection with puppets, Martin and I decided to play a wicked trick and on take one we acted like puppets.
Barry illustrates his point with an excellent impression of Brains from Thunderbirds: 'But-there-are-men-dy- ing-out-there-John'.

You have to be concerned about the people, not just the special effects. I was a kind of space uncle and I was forever being called upon to kind of stand by dreadful diagrams and maps and say "We are now pointing towards planet Pluto" or some such boring rubbish which would lead into special effects. I remember writing a memo one night that said, "Dear Gerry, Dear Sylvia, please remember that geography is about maps, but drama is about chaps."

I've always said to my wife that the best of all luxuries for an artist is freedom of choice. When they talked about doing a second series and the changes they were proposing to make, bringing in Freddie Freiberger as producer and so on, I went to Gerry and Sylvia and said, "Look, my dears, I've had a lovely time, but if it's all the same to you I think I'd like to go away and play with the grown-ups."