Blake's 7

Blake's 7 (sometimes spelled Blakes 7, as this was the title shown at the beginning of the series) was a science fiction space opera sub-genre which was first broadcast on BBC 1 between 1978 and 1981. Its characters, setting was created by, and, for the first season, it was entirely written by Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks.

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 which they had acquired who 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 less often in the series than in Doctor Who and it seemed that other than the Human Terran Federation no major galactic powers existed.

Cast and Crew connections

Production personnel common to both series

Writers and Script Editors

• Terry Nation - Series creator and chief writer of the first three series
• Chris Boucher - Script editor and writer
• Robert Holmes - Writer

Directors and Producers

• David Maloney - Producer of first three series
• Michael E. Briant - Director
• Douglas Camfield - Director
• Pennant Roberts - Director
• Derek Martinus - Director
• Fiona Cumming - Director
• Mary Ridge - Director
• Gerald Blake - Director

Miscellanous crew

• Dudley Simpson - Composer of theme music.
• Matt Irvine - Special effects work.

In other media

• Barry Letts - Writer of two BBC Radio 4 plays set during the fourth series.
• Tony Attwood - Author of Afterlife, a sequel novel to Blake's 7 set after the last episode of the series.

Actors

Actors from Doctor Who in Blake's 7

Regulars

• Colin Baker - Bayban in City at the Edge of the World
• Richard Franklin - Federation Trooper in Aftermath
• John Leeson - Pasco in Mission to Destiny and Tolse in Gambit.

Others

• Peter Miles - Played the recurring role of Rontaine, much in the "coldly efficient" mold of his Doctor Who character Nyder.
• Richard Hurndall - Played Nebrox in Cancer, inspiring John Nathan-Turner to cast him as the replacement First Doctor (a character originally played by William Hartnell) in The FIve Doctors.

Blake's 7 Regular Cast with Doctor Who and Torchwood connections

• Gareth Thomas (Roj Blake) played Ed Morgan in the Torchwood episode Ghost Machine, Lord Tamworth (Storm Warning) and also had the regular role of Kalendorf, a recurring role in the Dalek Empire line of audio plays from Big Finish Productions.
• Paul Darrow (Kerr Avon) played Captain Hawkins (Doctor Who and the Silurians), Tekker (Timelash) and Iago in the Kaldor City series of audio plays.
• Michael Keating (Vila Restal]) played Goudry (The Sun Makers) and Major Koth (The Twilight Kingdom).
• Jaqueline Pearce (Servalan) played Chessene (The Two Doctors), Sherilyn Harper (The Fearmonger) and Admiral Mettna (Death Comes to Time).
• Jan Chappell (Cally) played Captain Lisa Deranne in Shakedown.
• Brian Croucher (the second of two actors to play Travis) played Borg (The Robots of Death) and Kurt (Shakedown).
• Peter Tuddenham the voices of the talking computers Orac, Zen and Slave also leant his voiceover talents to The Ark in Space, The Masque of Mandragora and Time and the Rani.

In-Universe Crossovers

Despite what a minority of fans believe, there is no evidence to suggest any Blake's 7 TV stories are set in the Doctor Who universe (or vice versa). However a few crossovers were proposed or have occurred in other media.

• Terry Nation wanted to feature the Daleks as the extra-galactic enemy threatening the Federation at the end of Blake's second series. Chris Boucher recalls the idea was strongly rejected by the producer and himself.
• Boucher himself was responsible for the first true crossover in his novel Corpse Marker - a sequel to The Robots of Death, it features the psychostrategist Carnell, a character first appearing in the Blake's 7 episode Weapon. Carnell's background was left vague in the novel, but the character appeared again in the Kaldor City series of audios.