Blakes 7
Yes the sets wobbled with tedious regularity (but they did on Doctor
Who as well and that's one of the most popular shows in the
world). The consoles also wobbled. So did the shelves, the scenery
and the spaceships. And sometimes bits fell off as well.
The cast often fluffed their lines or came in too early or
couldn't get the props to work (and in one episode - Trial
- a BBC workers toolbox was visible on the set during a scene) and
in the exterior location scenes you could often see camera dolly
tracks in the dirt!
So what made Blakes 7 so special then? Well, Soolin for
a start !!! (corr!) And Servalan nurtured me through
puberty.
Making its television debut on BBC 1 on 2nd January 1978 - the
night that Star Wars blazed across the cinema screens of
London for the first time - Blake's 7 was the BBC's attempt
to present to the viewing public a serious home grown science
fiction adventure series.
Set in the 'third century of the second calendar', the series
presented the grimly depressing central premise of an Earth under
the yoke of a near omnipotent, brutally totalitarian government,
known as The Federation.
Ruthlessly crushing all attempts at individual freedom and
creative endeavour, The Federation controlled its populace by
means of air and water administered tranquillising drugs, and the
immediate elimination of any and all dissidents by means of murder
or sentencing them to exile to an off world penal colony for
crimes of which they are innocent.
Utilising just such a fabricated charge (in this instance child
molestation - a daring move at the time) The Federation dispose of
Roj Blake, (Gareth Thomas), former hero and leader of the
underground resistance movement.
Blake manages to start a revolt whilst on the prison ship
carrying him and a fresh group of criminals to their life of
servitude, ultimately escaping along with a small group of fellow
prisoners aboard a technologically advanced, abandoned alien
spaceship, which they dub the Liberator.
From this point, writer Terry Nation (co-creator of Doctor
Who's most notorious monsters, the Daleks and the sombre,
serious post apocalyptic drama series Survivors), began the
slow development of the character and his band of mismatched
fellow escapee's into a reworked, futuristic version of Robin Hood
and his band of Merry Men, with the Federation cast in the role of
King John's tyrannical forces.
The series' original seven were Blake, the coldly deadly and
self-serving computer genius Kerr Avon, full time thief and
accomplished coward Vila Restal, the gentle giant 'Little John'
character Olag Gan, beautiful smuggler and space pilot Jenna
Stannis, Auron telepath Cally, and Zen - the ship's near sentient
computer.
Over the course of its run, the core cast underwent a number of
changes. The character of Blake himself departed when Gareth
Thomas opted to pursue other career avenues, to be replaced by the
far less charismatic standard hero character of Mercenary Del
Tarrent.
 The Giant Gan and telepath Cally were both killed off and
Jenna left the Liberator, their places were taken by two new
female characters, weapons expert Dayna Mellanby and blonde
gunslinger Soolin (pictured at right).
Rounding out the new team were the non human forms of the
smugly superior mini supercomputer, Orac, and (following the
destruction of the Liberator at the climax of season three)
the introduction of the far less imaginatively designed
replacement ship Scorpio's obsequious onboard computer,
Slave.
With Blake no longer at the head of the outlawed band, Darrow's
Avon character emerged as the natural successor to Blake's vacated
leadership.
Now, with a cynical anti-hero in control, the war
against The Federation took on a much darker, less noble
aspect.
This change of direction and character dynamics led to a much
more intimate small-scale style of warfare between the two
opposing forces, the chief highlight of which were the complex and
ambiguous love/hate relationship between Avon and the physical
embodiment of the Federation,
Servalan (an almost high camp performance from Jacqueline
Pearce, which nevertheless demonstrated the character's
cold-blooded insanity to sometimes chilling effect).
Although Terry Nation also departed the series, a number of
later episodes were still well written, with the final story of
the series, entitled simply Blake, arguably one of its strongest,
finest and certainly most controversial.
In that final episode, more than ten million viewers watched in
disbelief as the heroes they had followed faithfully over the
course of four years were cut down in a hail of Federation
gunfire, whilst the returning Blake was himself killed by
Avon.
It was an audacious end to a series, which ultimately failed to
live up to its early potential.
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