Blake's 7
Blake's 7 was a human television show of which the First Doctor was not fond. (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)
In a parallel universe, actors from Blake's 7 were hypnotised by Beep the Meep. (COMIC: TV Action!)
Blake's 7 was the favourite television series of Gavin Oliver Scott. In 2600, Bernice Summerfield obtained two episodes of the series for him on VHS. She 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) She 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 was a dystopian science fiction series produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation at BBC Television Centre from 1978 to 1981. Since it was produced essentially "next door" to Doctor Who, the shows shared many cast and crew members. Perhaps the most notable connection is that Blake's 7 was created and often written by Terry Nation, a frequent Doctor Who writer who invented the Daleks. Paul Darrow, Michael Keating, Jacqueline Pearce, Peter Tuddenham and Brian Croucher, who all had starring roles in Blake's 7, have appeared as guest stars on Doctor Who, while Sally Knyvette, David Jackson, Jan Chappell, Stephen Greif, Steven Pacey and Josette Simon have appeared in Doctor Who Big Finish audio stories. Notable guest stars on Blake's 7 included Robert Beatty, Leslie Schofield, Brian Blessed, Pamela Salem, Deep Roy, Peter Miles, Peter Craze, John Leeson, David Bailie, Julian Glover, John Bennett, Brian Miller, Jane Sherwin, Morris Barry, John Abineri, Kevin Stoney, Tom Chadbon, Aubrey Woods, Denis Carey, Bruce Purchase, Richard Franklin, Michael Sheard, Michael Gough, Colin Baker, Valentine Dyall, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Stewart Bevan, Lynda Bellingham, Richard Hurndall and David Collings.
Michael E. Briant, Pennant Roberts, Douglas Camfield, George Spenton-Foster, Derek Martinus, Gerald Blake, Andrew Morgan, Fiona Cumming, Mary Ridge and Viktors Ritelis were among the directors, and Chris Boucher was the script editor. Robert Holmes also contributed four scripts to the series.
David Maloney produced the first three series and Dudley Simpson exclusively scored it. Most of the other departments also had significant connections to Doctor Who, as well. Ken Ledsham and Roger Murray-Leach were amongst its production designers. Its costume designers included Barbara Kidd and June Hudson. Sheelagh Wells was a make-up designer, while Peter Chapman was a major force in the camera department, and Brian Clemett was the main person providing studio lighting.
Crossovers
The cumulative effect of the substantial behind-the-scenes crossover between Blake's 7 and late 1970s Doctor Who is that the shows look and feel very similar, almost to the extent that one could believe the two series are set in different parts of the same universe. At least twice during the televised run, writers and actors of Blake's 7 adopted this perspective themselves: Terry Nation briefly advocated for the Daleks to appear as the major extra-galactic invading force at the end of Season B, and Tom Baker and Gareth Thomas, who played Roj Blake, thought it would be amusing for their characters to meet for a few seconds in a hallway on either show. However, both times the proposed connections were overruled by the producer and script editor.
It was only after Blake's 7 and Doctor Who each went off-air that crossovers between the series began to appear in non-televised DWU fiction. The Terran Federation was mentioned in the Doctor Who Magazine comic Pureblood and John Peel's 1993 novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks, and Bernice Summerfield referenced the terrorist group Blake's 7 in the 1996 New Adventures novel Death and Diplomacy. Additionally, in Steven Moffat's 2000 short story The Least Important Man, the eponymous Blake was mentioned as a real person in the Doctor's universe.
The most substantial crossover began in 1999 when BBC Books released the Fourth Doctor novel Corpse Marker. It was written by Chris Boucher, author of three serials in Doctor Who season 14 and 15 and script editor of Blake's 7, as a sequel to his television serial The Robots of Death; however, it also featured the psychostrategist Carnell, who had first appeared in his Blake's 7 episode Weapon. The novel indicated that the character settled in Kaldor City two years after he first went on the run from the Federation, which would have followed his failure in Weapon.
Carnell's story continued in Magic Bullet Productions' Kaldor City series of audio stories, which featured many further references to Blake's 7 including the Butcher of Zircaster and Herculaneum alloy. Most notably, the series character Kaston Iago was played by Paul Darrow and repeatedly hinted to be Darrow's character from Blake's 7, Kerr Avon, going under an assumed name to escape the authorities. This identification has never been made explicit by Magic Bullet Productions; however, in the story Metafiction, Iago's description of his life before arriving on Kaldor mirrored the events of the Blake's 7 television series point for point, including lines designed to address discrepancies or plot holes in the original episodes. Most notably, it explains how he escaped Avon's apparent death in the show's finale on Gauda Prime, a planet which would also be referenced in the Tenth Doctor novel Prisoner of the Daleks.
External links
- Official Blake's 7 page at bigfinish.com
- Blake's 7 at the Blake's 7 Wiki
