Blake's 7

Blake's 7

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Blake's 7 was a human TV show, one which the First Doctor was not fond of. (PROSE: A Big Hand for the Doctor)

Tegan Jovanka mentioned the series once, saying that she understood the concept of transmats (or in Blake's 7 terms, teleportation), having seen it on the show. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Bernice Summerfield obtained two episodes of Blake's 7 on VHS. Bernice Summerfield noted that Roj Blake seemed to exist both as a fictional character and as a real person, "which can't be right". (PROSE: The Least Important Man) Benny also had mentioned knowing someone who was in Blake's 7, which she quickly qualified with "the terrorist group, not the TV show". (PROSE: Death and Diplomacy)

Behind the Scenes

Blake's 7 (alternately styled as Blakes 7 or Blake's Seven) was a science fiction adventure drama television series in the space opera sub-genre which had a considerable cross-over between its crew and that of Doctor Who, which was airing at the same time. Some Doctor Who universe stories have featured crossovers between elements of Blake's 7 and Doctor Who. It was created by Dalek creator Terry Nation.

Overview

Premise and tone

The series was set an unspecified time in the future. The first two seasons concerned the adventures of the experienced but still idealistic rebel Roj Blake and the crew of the Liberator, an alien starship they had acquired. They fought the despotic Terran Federation, represented by Servalan, aided by Travis.

In the third season, Blake vanished and was replaced by his second in command, the vengeful genius Kerr Avon. The Liberator was destroyed at the end of the season and in the next replaced by another starship, the Scorpio.

Blake's 7 was a less fundamentally optimistic series than Doctor Who. The majority of the protagonists met violent deaths during the course of the series and the dystopian setting remaining basically unchanged or even, perhaps, got worse as a result of the actions of the rebels.

Aliens and "monsters" appeared, though rarely, with the arguable exception of Cally, a telepathic crew member who either came from a telepathic non-human species or from a race of biologically modified humans. The human Terran Federation was, apparently, the only major power structure throughout the sector of space visited by the crew.

Production history

Blake's 7 was first broadcast on BBC 1 between 1978 and 1981. Its characters, setting was created by, and, for the first season, was entirely written by Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks. Prolific Doctor Who director David Maloney produced the first three seasons of the series (sometimes referred to as Season A, Season B and Season C) and Chris Boucher, the writer of several Doctor Who serials, acted as script editor on all four seasons and wrote several episodes of the last three. Former Doctor Who script editor Robert Holmes, on declining the job of script editor of Blake's 7, had suggested Boucher as a substitute.

A revival or a reboot has been mooted since 2000, but has not managed to get anywhere.

On 4 July 2011, Big Finish Productions announced they had acquired the licence to produce new audiobooks and novels based on Blake's 7. The new stories premieree in 2012. [1]

Production Materials

• Many generic science-fiction props appeared in both series. For instance, ray guns carried by Bayban's men in City at the Edge of the World were also used by the Fosters in The Keeper of Traken.
• Model footage (of explosions and so on) was also occasionally recycled (for instance, the same footage is used to show the destruction of a DSV in Redemption and Mawdryn's ship in Mawdryn Undead).
• More specifically, Federation trooper uniforms were reused as Orderly uniforms in Frontios.
• Sea Devil costumes were cosmetically altered and used to represent Phibians in Orac and Dorian's former associate in Rescue.

In-Universe Crossovers

Chris Boucher's novel PROSE: Corpse Marker, a sequel to TV: The Robots of Death, features the psychostrategist Carnell, a character who had first appeared in the Blake's 7 episode Weapon. The novel indicates that he settled on Kaldor two years after he first went on the run from the Federation, which would have followed his failure in Weapon. The character appeared again in the Kaldor City series of audio stories. Many fans of the series have postulated that Iago, as played by Paul Darrow, the main protagonist in the series, is in fact Kerr Avon going for his own reasons under an assumed name. Magic Bullet Productions have neither confirmed nor denied this. Most significantly, in AUDIO: Metafiction, Iago describes his life before he arrived on Kaldor, in doing so he makes many references to plot elements that mirror those experienced by Avon as featured in Blake’s 7. If taken a face value, these references could be taken as positive confirmation that Iago is in fact Avon. However the nature of the play, as suggested by its title, implies that all may not be what it seems.

The First Doctor was not fond of the series, as per PROSE: A Big Hand for the Doctor. The fact that the First Doctor is said to not like Blake's 7 is ironic, as Richard Hurndall, the man who played the First Doctor in The Five Doctors, was first noted by the Doctor Who crew for his appearance on Blake's 7.

Proposed crossovers

A crossover between the two series was proposed at least twice.

The last episode of Season B of Blake's 7 featured an invasion of the galaxy by aliens, called Andromedans, from outside the Galaxy. The aliens were so powerful that the crew of the Liberator pitched in with the Federation to fight them off. Terry Nation had wanted to feature the Daleks as the invading force. However, as Chris Boucher recalls, the idea was strongly rejected by the producer and Boucher himself.

Tom Baker and Gareth Thomas, who played Blake, thought it would be amusing for the Doctor and Blake to meet for a few seconds in a corridor on either Doctor Who or Blake's 7, but this idea was, again, over-ruled.

External links

• Blake's 7 at Big Finish Productions
• Blake's 7 at the Blake's 7 Wiki