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I'll see you all in three weeks.






If you don't know Blake's Seven was a BBC science fiction series about a group of freedom fighters against an oppressive future state. When I was a wee one it was on my local PBS, just after the Prisoner. It's low budget as you'd expect, like sub-Star Trek TOS level but I remember it as being well written and with the courage to kill their darlings. I saw it out of order and kept tuning in each week hoping to find out why there were only 5 of them and none were named Blake.

Hoping it will hold up...

I have it on (bootleg) DVD. Don't look at me like that. It was never released in the US; bootleg is my only option.

I consider this show to be one of, if not the best, sci-fi series ever on TV. It was influential as all heck, but only 30 years after the fact. Firefly, Babylon 5, the BSG reboot and the last few seasons of DS9 owe everything they are to this show. It had complicated, layered characters who didn't fall neatly into "good" or "bad" (mostly... season 1 Blake was capital G good, but season 2 started to show... moral flexibilities) it had a season-long story arc (season 2's search for Federation Central Control) before everyone was doing that, it frequently killed off major characters at a time when killing anyone but the bad guys and this week's special guest star was unthinkable, it turned deadpan snark into an art form, and it had an intelligent, sexy, and above all *competent* female villain back when nobody outside of film noir throwbacks were making female villains. This show is amazeballs.

It's also visually dated as hell. It was obsolete from an f/x standpoint when it aired (let's do a sci-fi space opera and only give it a contemporary police drama budget!) so I understand modern audiences can have a hard time watching it. I get twinges when I see some of the effects, and I love this like bacon loves a cheeseburger. But for people willing to look past the shoddy effects, the wobbly sets that come apart in the actors' hands, and the occasional bright red BBC toolbox left on the set during filming, it can feel as modern as any "gritty" contemporary sci-fi show around.

I've always wanted to watch this show (for free). I hope I can find the time after the holiday rush but before YouTube yanks it.

Bear in mind whilst its well written and performed it does suffer from a budget of about 38p and some tin foil

Oddly, never seen any Blake's 7.

That shall have to change. Spesh as I can get Youtube on my tellybox.

There are also constant rumblings of a remake, as there seems to be with everything these days. Consensus so far as I can tell is akin to 'better effects would be nice, but you can't tinker with the story to the point it would be ultimately pointless'.

Rewatched this a couple of years ago after finding a cheap boxset, and honestly it was not the awesome series I remembered.

The first season and part of the second are still great, but the rest was kinda meh apart from the occasionally bright spot.

Such a shame really.

The first episode was certainly gangbusters, great stuff. Great introduction of the characters and setting, subtlety in how things were explained and demonstrated and definitely roped me in.

And two major characters introduced, developed, and killed out of hand.

I also really like how the hippy resistance fighters' plan was to disrupt food supplies to cause riots. What?! Are you saying rebels are not unambiguous good guys?

I know at some point this will become formula, but for now I'm in.

Almost made me forget how the starship was furnished at Office Depot.

Almost.

Blake's Seven was made with the spare change left over from Doctor Who.

Also, the evil Federation's logo is that of Star Trek's Star Fleet, reversed. Two fingers up to Trek?

squidhills wrote:
I consider this show to be one of, if not the best, sci-fi series ever on TV. It was influential as all heck, but only 30 years after the fact. Firefly, Babylon 5, the BSG reboot and the last few seasons of DS9 owe everything they are to this show. It had complicated, layered characters who didn't fall neatly into "good" or "bad" (mostly... season 1 Blake was capital G good, but season 2 started to show... moral flexibilities) it had a season-long story arc (season 2's search for Federation Central Control) before everyone was doing that, it frequently killed off major characters at a time when killing anyone but the bad guys and this week's special guest star was unthinkable, it turned deadpan snark into an art form, and it had an intelligent, sexy, and above all *competent* female villain back when nobody outside of film noir throwbacks were making female villains. This show is amazeballs.

Excellent summary, I'd also add that both the 'good guys' and 'bad guys' had levels of interpersonal conflict - most notably Blake and Avon (well, anybody and Avon). The Liberator crew were thrown together by circumstance and didn't even pretend to be friends, nor was the show particularly interested in portraying them "overcoming differences to become a team" etc like you'd get in most shows. And Servalan/Travis weren't exactly best buds usually either!

I just park this link here for no real reason.

https://www.beastinthebroch.com/shop

I've had the ending of this show etched into my brain since I saw it as a child.

That's the way that you do it - not like BSG, where the ending had me thinking "what the what?!"

The first episode is curious in that it’s nothing like the rest of the series. It lays down the themes and sets up the background, but it’s as atypical an episode as you can imagine, and many of the main cast are as yet absent.

Also it’s astonishingly adult for something with a family audience. Blake is discredited by being framed as a child molester!

Episode 2 move things a bit closer to formula territory, we meet our mismatched heroes and they miraculously find a cool space ship that's bigger and better than anything in the sky.

Still it's handled as well as can be, with a fake out in the plot and of course the introduction of Avon, the Fonzi of the show who'd go on to overshadow the guy whose name is in the title.

We're currently at Blake's Three, four if we count the computer, two if we don't count Blake (doesn't Blake's Seven imply Blake+seven?). Ah well.

Bring on Avon's Five!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

We're currently at Blake's Three, four if we count the computer, two if we don't count Blake (doesn't Blake's Seven imply Blake+seven?). Ah well.

Bring on Avon's Five!

You'll meet the rest of the Seven soon, Kid!

Episode 4, yeah things are getting a bit formula and we're now up to seven counting the computer and Blake (still think grammatically it should not count Blake in the 7).

Even worse than sets and FX is the really bad stage fighting, I mean that's not a budget issue, that's just competance.

I may skip ahead to the Avon's Five era.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

I may skip ahead to the Avon's Five era.

Don't. You'll miss out on the dynamic that develops between Blake and Avon as season 1 progresses. You'll miss out on their (pretty good) homage to a classic Star Trek episode, and you'll miss out on Supreme Commander Servalan and Travis #1. And most of season 2 is pretty good, with at least half being solid gold.

Also, according to Word of God, "Blake's Seven" is supposed to refer to the seven resources at his disposal: Avon, Vila, Gan, Cally, Jenna, Zen, the Liberator itself (which people often overlook or fold in with Zen) and later on, ORAC (also a reason to not skip out on season 1, you'll miss his introduction). Most people think the 'seven' refers to seven people, but the ship was supposed to count in that tally.

Of course, originally there were supposed to be seven human beings, but Terry Nation found it too hard to write for that many recurring characters and wrote two of them out. The two prisoners (other than Vila and Gan) who join Blake in the escape attempt in episode 3 were supposed to be the other two crew members... but we all know what happened to them.

If you like blake's 7 you might want to look for a video game called "Hostile waters Antaeus rising".

Asides from being a great RTS/3PS game despite some older graphics, it features the voice of Paul Darrow as a main character and the woman who played Sulin as his partner.

It also had tom baker as the narrator.

I wouldnt recommend it on a GAMING board unless it was a good game IMO, and i can double recommend it to B7 and DW fans.

I’ve always wanted to see this series. My dad speaks very fondly of it.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
If you like blake's 7 you might want to look for a video game called "Hostile waters Antaeus rising".

Seconded (it was also written by Warren Ellis).

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
If you like blake's 7 you might want to look for a video game called "Hostile waters Antaeus rising".

It's about 60p on Steam currently in the winter sale too!