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Intergalactic Space Crusaders: Blake's 7

Moooksta

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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May 26, 2006
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Not sure if there are any fans of this show but it's back as a radio play, like an audio re-imagining ala Battlestar!

It's here.

Starring the voices of Daniella Nardini as Servalan and Colin Salmon as Avon!

mooks out

PS Pop Quiz! Name Blake's 7...without Goggling you cheaters!
 
Which Blake's Seven? All of them ever?

Well -
Roj Blake
Villa Restal
Kerr Avon
Olag Gan
Jenna Stannis
Cally
Zen
Orac
Del Tarrant
Dayna (oooo surname escapes me there!)
Soolin
Slave

My name is Ravenstone, and I'm a sad Blake's Seven fan :lol:

I've got a couple of radio recordings. The most amusing one was when two characters teleported down to the planet's surface, and one character said to the other, "It looks like a disused quarry!" :roll:

Why not Paul Darrow for Avon? Or is he too busy doing voice-overs for Bravo, Sci Fi, etc? Or advertising mobility scooters?
 
Oh my! I've just clicked on the link, and it's got Michael Praed in the first episode! Two of my biggest obsessions combined!

I think I need a lie-down in a darkened room.

edit - These are all re-doings of the original Series One, aren't they? London was the ship taking them to the penal colony; Blake was put on trial, falsely accused of crimes against children; Cygnus Alpha was the penal colony; the salvage team was after Liberator.....it all sounds remarkably familiar.
 
It does look pretty close to the original series, doesn't it?

A proper BSTG reboot would be better though (and they finally could do the rumoured at the time of the original series Doctor Who/Blakes 7 crossover).
 
I can't see a Who/B7 crossover myself. Different universes; different styles. Blake's Seven is a bit too dirty, gritty, nasty stuff. Blake was falsely accused of paedophilia, remember. Gan had his inhibitor fitted after he went beserk when some Federation guards raped his wife. Hardly the stuff of Doctor Who.

But I would dearly love to see Blake's Seven return. Even though I can't imagine anyone but Paul Darrow as Avon.
 
B7 has always been one of my favorites.

I dunno if I could keep straight all the conspiracies and backstabbing in a radio play version though.
 
You certainly wouldn't get the Look off Avon across on the radio.

The radio ones I've heard - Seventh Crown for one, can't remember the other - were okay, but certainly not as good as the TV. Mind you, I remember bombarding the BBC with letters when they took it off the air (hey - I was about 12 - it seemed like a good idea to a 12 year old), and the BBC made an announcement in the Blake's Seven fanzine to the effect that they would never, ever, never in a million years bring back Blake's Seven. In fact, it was cited as one of the reasons why they took so long to repeat it on UK TV Gold. They repeated Series 4, but vowed they'd never show it again on BBC.
 
I loved Blake's Seven! But then there was bugger all Sci-Fi on telly at the time. So anything was a God-send!

A mate of mine met Paul Darrow in a DIY shop in Liverpool and my mate gave him a 'knowing stare'.

"Yes, it's me!" said Darrow.

What a sh*tty egotistical tw*t! I wouldn't mind but he's a crap actor! A sh*tty Sh*tner! The same friend met 'Jeffrey' off of 'Rainbow' - I'd give a link but they all seem to point to the fowl-mouthed joke version, Ha ha! - and he was as nice as pie!
 
Ravenstone said:
I like Paul Darrow! :(

I do too! Sorry! That was a bit harsh! But I was only relating a friend's story! And I like Blake's 7! So whatever I say is just rubbish!
 
Rather than witter on and further derail the Dr Who thread, I thought I'd start a fresh one.


I'm just a casual viewer and have never bought any kind of merchandise, but I am tempted by this forthcoming publication:

Avon Calling! ‘Space Opera: Blake’s 7 – A Tragedy in Four Acts’
June 10, 2017 Cult News Books, News, Television 0

❉ Miwk Publishing announce a complete production diary of the cult series Blake’s 7.

Have you ever wanted to know how the oppressive future of the Federation’s Earth dome was brought to light in BBC TV Centre? How a lead actor breaking his foot almost meant Blake never visited space station XK-72? Or how Avon could see the Scorpio flight deck when he stood over Blake’s corpse on Gauda Prime? Space Opera: Blake’s 7 – A Tragedy in Four Acts will answer all of these questions and more.

Space Opera: Blake’s 7 – A Tragedy in Four Acts is a complete production diary of the BBC Television series Blake’s 7. Working from scripts, studio plans, production paperwork and a wealth of interviews, the plan is to put the reader firmly in the centre of the action. From the original scripting stage through to studio and location production and post-production. There are moments when more than four episodes are simultaneously in production in a single week.

The entire story is told in chronological order, day-by-day whether it’s in the production office or the canteen, the make-up department or the studio itself, each day’s activities are covered in full.

‘We’ve been working on this for a little over seven months now’ says Matt West, ‘we’ve got a while still to go which involves conducting he interviews we’ve already set up. The bulk of the factual detail is covered, but the interviews will add more colour and first person perspectives. We’ve tried to interview as many people as possible who haven’t previously discussed their work on the show, not just guest actors but riggers, cameramen, scene-shifters… anyone we could track down really!’

Continued Here:
http://wearecult.rocks/avon-calling-space-opera-blakes-7-a-tragedy-in-four-acts

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I'm enough of a B7 fan to have the entire series on DVD. This looks interesting. Thanks for the tip, Yith!
 
I'm enough of a B7 fan to have the entire series on DVD. This looks interesting. Thanks for the tip, Yith!

Now there's a thing.

There seem to be multiple versions available and some from overseas. You wouldn't happen to know which is the 'best' version would you?

It's frustrating because I just want to rip them as digital copies anyway, but there doesn't seem to be a legitimate source online and the pirated copies are of inferior quality.
 
I never got to see Blake's 7 (didn't have a telly at the time). Ho hum.
 
i can sort of remember it, there was a cool spaceship and the baddie woman was one of my first loves
 
Now there's a thing.

There seem to be multiple versions available and some from overseas. You wouldn't happen to know which is the 'best' version would you?

It's frustrating because I just want to rip them as digital copies anyway, but there doesn't seem to be a legitimate source online and the pirated copies are of inferior quality.
I wasn't aware different versions existed! I wonder what the differences are.
 
I was just the right age for B7 as a kid, it's a bit like UFO, sci-fi intended for adults (Blake is falsely accused of child abuse in the first episode, that's why he was arrested), but obsessed over by kids. I watched it again when I had UK Gold in the late 90s, and could see why its cheapness was not for everyone, but it contained a grit, an integrity, that carried it through advances since - or was it the nostalgia talking?

Didn't like it when they ditched the Liberator, though, what a cool ship, what do you mean, "Maximum power!", Servalan, can't you see the place is breaking up?! I managed to miss the last episode and didn't catch up with it for years, that's still a grievance but it was my own fault.

"Why don't you ask... Orac?" *Avon reveals fish tank stuffed with fairy lights in a drawer*
 
Well I watched a fair chunk of `The Way Back` as provided above - and I have to admit that, in terms of acting, scripting and general production values it far excelled my expectations or memories (and no, the ropey FX thing doesn't bother me either).

And yet as an early teen I watched on its first TV screening and my attitude towards it was one of an obligatory feeling that I should like it - because it's S.F - but without affection or with it really capturing my attention.

This may have been because (judging from what I just saw) it is really quite an adult show -more so than most TV Science fiction. But there's more to it than that: I think it's just that what we have here is a political thriller tacked on to a space background: `1984` done as a space opera.

What's lacking are the classic SFnal themes that give the genre its sense of wonder: humanities interaction with new technologies, humanities interaction with alien civilisations, humanities interaction with new mysteries in space and time....

I read Asmov's `Foundation and Empire`recently and felt pretty much the same about that. I had to drag myself through the novel, even though I admired some of the writing. I also was struck by how much a lot of present writers and shows owe to it. It seems many people are just re-writing `Foundation` in various ways.

It is really the prevalence of the Space Opera subgenre that ruined my enthusiasm for the S.F. genre. I think we're long overdue for a return to the Wells/Whyndam/Lovecraft/Kneale brand of `domestic` science fiction.
 
I think we're long overdue for a return to the Wells/Whyndam/Lovecraft/Kneale brand of `domestic` science fiction.

My fondness for Blake's 7 aside, it's fairly obvious that the advent of the Space Age and then Hollywood inertia has dragged science fiction excessively towards space, spaceships and aliens. The effect has been compounded, moreover, by the fact that computer generated graphics now mean that almost anything can be depicted on screen. Yet perversely this seems to have led to more conservative approaches to subject matter--if we can show the weird, wonderful and other-worldly (it is believed by fools), then such things ought to be the focus of the genre. Too often this comes at the expense of ideas--and ideas are what the genre was established on, not aliens.

HG Wells, incidentally, has been quite well served by radio adaptations over the past few decades, and, like the great MR James, the spoken word may be the medium that serves the material best: the special effects in your head are better than any on screen.
 
My fondness for Blake's 7 aside, it's fairly obvious that the advent of the Space Age and then Hollywood inertia has dragged science fiction excessively towards space, spaceships and aliens. The effect has been compounded, moreover, by the fact that computer generated graphics now mean that almost anything can be depicted on screen. Yet perversely this seems to have led to more conservative approaches to subject matter--if we can show the weird, wonderful and other worldly, it is believed by fools, then such things ought to be the focus of the genre. Too often this comes at the expense of ideas--and ideas are what the genre was established on, not aliens.

HG Wells, incidentally, has been quite well served by radio adaptations over the past few decades, and, like the great MR James, the spoken word may be the medium that serves the material best: the special effects in your head are better than any on screen.

Well I didn't mean Wells et al themselves, but whatever their contemporary equivalents are.

It seems to me that almost all science fiction now, whether of the novel variety or TV variety (big screen, interestingly, is rather different) is more or less of the space opera type, to a greater or lesser degree. That is to say, both interstellar travel and contact with aliens are posited and then taken for granted, and the plots of the stories use these but don't hinge on them. Thus in a show like `B-7` a spaceship voyage from one star system to another is presented in terms of a National Express trip from London to Birmingham. Thus the sense of wonder that these ideas should evoke are lost and our palates become jaded by excessive fantasising.

I suggest that Science fiction should go back to basics and present extraterrestial visitation, and scientific developments, and so on, as something wonderful - and scary - once again. Michael Crichton did that. `The X-Files` did too. `Earth Final Conflict` sort of did. But, for the most part, I'd say that what is now packaged as medical thriller, or eco-thriller or even horror, is often more science fictional than overt `science fiction` is - the latter being mere extravagant science fantasy adventure, at it's core.
 
Quite agree. Too much current 'sci-fi' material comes explained--worse than that: pre-explained.

I'd add 2001 (book/film) to your list of worthies.
 
With apologies. It's stuck in my head, so you can have it, too.


:dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana::dbana:
 
My fondness for Blake's 7 aside, it's fairly obvious that the advent of the Space Age and then Hollywood inertia has dragged science fiction excessively towards space, spaceships and aliens. The effect has been compounded, moreover, by the fact that computer generated graphics now mean that almost anything can be depicted on screen. Yet perversely this seems to have led to more conservative approaches to subject matter--if we can show the weird, wonderful and other-worldly (it is believed by fools), then such things ought to be the focus of the genre. Too often this comes at the expense of ideas--and ideas are what the genre was established on, not aliens.

HG Wells, incidentally, has been quite well served by radio adaptations over the past few decades, and, like the great MR James, the spoken word may be the medium that serves the material best: the special effects in your head are better than any on screen.

I must step forward as a Blake's 7 fan. Apart from The Liberator being one of the coolest ships to grace a TV screen, I jusr fell into the plot, forgiving the wobbly sets, ordinary factory locations and even the sticky-back plastic teleport bracelets.

Today we see CG that can produce anything the imagination can dream up, but the software used means these effects are pretty universally used straight out of the box as they are so good and meet the deadline demands. This results in all movies looking the same these days. A bit like all games using the Unreal engine.
 
Blake's Seven was a "must watch" show for us sci-fi fans back in the 70's, and most episodes were on youtube the last time I looked around 2017..:)
Avon was my favourite character, a cold ruthless selfish schemer, but we always sensed he had a soft streak underneath.
 
Anyone see Paul Darrow on Pointless Celebrities tonight? Looks like he's really been in the wars, in a wheelchair, that wonderful voice has lost its lustre, I thought he was an amputee but I think he was just sitting with his legs crossed. Sad to see, but his mind was as sharp as ever. Has he had a stroke, maybe?

I won't spoil how he and Michael Keating (Vila) did in case you want to catch it on iPlayer, but he has nothing to be ashamed of!
 
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