Chris Barrie leaving Red Dwarf was quite a blow, but then again Series VII was pretty dire regardless of whether Rimmer was still in it. It was just added salt in the wound with him gone..
I think that was more to do with the dearture of Rob Grant than just Chris Barrie leaving.
Absolutely. The show was nowhere near as good once Grant left.
I think it's a mistake to focus on cast changes as the grounds for catastrophe. Changes behind the scenes, in the writing staff, are usually far more catastrophic. Fred Freiberger replacing Gene Roddenberry on
Star Trek. Bob Engels replacing Robert Hewitt Wolfe on
Andromeda. Brannon Braga replacing Jeri Taylor on
Voyager. Tracy Torme leaving
Sliders. Aaron Sorkin leaving
The West Wing. Michael Piller's waning involvement in
The Dead Zone. All these led to fundamental downgrades in the quality of the shows, sometimes even their transformation into virtually an entirely different and vastly inferior show.
Losing cast members while the staff remains is survivable. As long as it's the same staff, they can come up with new characters who are worthwhile and fit smoothly into the ensemble and the world that the staff has developed. But losing core staffers while keeping the same cast can be disastrous, because the characters or the whole world may end up being changed into something they were never supposed to be. For instance, changing from Dick York to Dick Sargent had little impact on the world of
Bewitched; it was still the same old goofy, formulaic, gimmick-of-the-week show. But when series developer Danny Arnold left
Bewitched after its first season, it led to a monumental change, as what had originally been a smart, sophisticated comedy using Sam's witchcraft judiciously as an allegory for exploring gender, class, and race issues was reduced to the shallow, gimmicky, "What can Endora turn Derwood into this week?" show it became.
no other show could pull that off.
