Electric Dreams: Impossible Planet
SCI-FI Channel 4 HD, 9pm/ Channel 4+1, 10pm
Geraldine Chaplin plays a 342-year-old space traveller with one last wish – to visit Earth.
GERALDINE CHAPLIN HAS seen a lot in her long career, which has spanned some five decades, but this week, the 73-year-old actress takes on the most unusual role she's ever played – that of a space-travelling deaf woman with a robot as her only friend. Chaplin appears in Impossible
Planet, the second episode in
Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, the anthology series based on the sci-fi author’s short stories. Written and directed by The
Night Manager’s David Farr, the drama follows disillusioned space tourism operators Brian Norton (Jack Reynor) and Ed Andrews (Benedict Wong), who see an opportunity to make a quick buck when the elderly Irma (Chaplin) requests a trip to Earth.
But because it has not existed for hundreds of years, the men come up with a plan to con Irma out of her cash and take her to a similar planet. So, with Irma’s trusty – and rather rusty – robot RB29 in tow, the tour group set off on an adventure to the Impossible Planet.
We caught up with Chaplin – daughter of silent film legend Charlie Chaplin and mother to Taboo star Oona Chaplin – to find out more…
WHY DID YOU WANT TO STAR IN THIS STORY?
I’d never been offered anything sci-fi before, but I read the story and loved it. I’m used to playing all kinds of grandmas – the nice grandma, the murdering grandma and even the cannibal grandma – and I’ve done a bunch of horror films. Perhaps this is the start of a whole new career in sci-fi for me.
AND NOW YOU’RE PLAYING A GRANNY
FROM THE FUTURE! Yes, she’s a very lonely, 345-year-old lady. All her children and great-grandchildren have disappeared to other planets and she lives with this robot, RB29, who is like a superbutler and her only friend. I suppose she would have married him if she could.
‘Perhaps this is
the start of a whole new career
in sci-fi for me’
Geraldine chaplin
RB29 DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A TYPICAL ROBOT… No, and he’s even older than Irma. He’s the last of his kind,
and he really is on his last legs. He’s so squeaky it’s incredible. He has a wooden face with no expression, and there are two actors portraying him – Malik Ibheis is a mime artist and Christopher Staines provides his voice. It’s quite a trick.
WHY DOES IRMA WANT TO VISIT
PLANET EARTH? She’s sick and wants to visit Earth before she dies. Her grandmother told her about her time on the planet with her grandfather, so it’s Irma’s dying wish to see it.
It’s very nostalgic and romantic.
HOW DOES SHE GET ON WITH NORTON
AND ANDREWS? She doesn’t like Andrews much but Norton appears to be the spitting image of Irma’s grandfather when he was younger, so there’s a bizarre love interest there.
DOES THE HI-TECH SET MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO IMAGINE
YOURSELF IN THAT WORLD? Yes, completely. Watching planets go by while you’re in a spaceship is mind-boggling. It’s like how we envisage the future, and when I’m in my blue space suit costume and beautiful white wig it really feels like another world. CAN YOU IDENTIFY WITH IRMA? Yes, I identify with the old bag a lot. It’s the hope and romance in the story, plus the loneliness of being old. I’m 73, but I feel I am a dying animal. I’ve felt as though I was 98 for about 20 years. But realising I’m just 73 is quite nice.