Blakes 7 - an appreciation - and finally a blu-ray restoration

I fell in love with Blakes 7 when it was first shown towards the end of my primary school years. Even then I knew it was something entirely different, a darkly cynical, witty vision of a future with absolutely top drawer stage actors orating brilliant lines on wobbly sets. I found it amusing that they would beam down to a planet to attack some major base belonging to the evil federation which would turn out to be a gasworks outside Southampton or something equally ridiculous. It was just a joy!

I made the jump to my Northern public school at 11 and found a small circle of friends who also appreciated the nuance and eccentricity of this unique sci-fi show. All of us deeply loved the Liberator spacecraft - the most powerful ship in the galaxy with its superbly voiced computer Zen. All of us wanted to be the wry, cool and dangerous Avon who seemed to get all the best lines and had a voice of such booming magnificence that he surely would have made the greatest Bond villain of all time. We were all trapped studying subjects we couldn’t stand (like compulsory latin, medieval history and chemistry) I still recall being burdened by 2 hours homework a night translating dreadful old Latin texts or struggling through quadratic equations because this school was a powerhouse of academia. We were of course also forced to play rugby twice a week and compelled to run around in shorts on a freezing windswept hail driven sports field before being thrown into unheated communal cold showers to hose off the deeply ingrained mud. Harsh experiences weren’t just confined to the rugby pitch though and over the years I recall being hit with rulers, dragged down the corridor by my ear lobe (for running in the corridor), and on one memorable occasion being hit in the chest so hard by a biology teacher for talking in class that I was seriously winded and was wheezing and unable to talk for a few minutes, it certainly made life feel pretty grim and I longed to escape. The one thing that kept us all going and which we looked forward to was our weekly dose of Blakes 7 on Monday nights and we would rush home to get the homework out of the way before it broadcast at 7.15pm.

I think even back then in my early teens I related to the over-arching series concept. A brutal manipulative dictatorship ruled the galaxy just as it seemed to rule school! It was “them” and “us” trying to get by in a system that felt hostile, judgemental, bleak and competitive.

It wasn’t all bad though - the English dept at school was absolutely magnificent. Stuffed with fabulous inspiring thespian types they opened the doors to the kingdom of the english language and inspired us with poetry, plays, Jerome K Jerome, William Blake, Shakespeare, William Gray. I owe my passion for the written word entirely to them and I treasure their memory. They were like us - seeking to understand the world through the greatest writers, poets and dramatists in history. 40+ years on I’ve come to realise that you need to find your tribe to be happy in life and I know now that my tribe are people who love the arts and value eccentricity and intellect.

Blakes 7 was a sci-fi show like no other - it went way beyond a tussle between good and evil, it had a political dimension, it explored greed, indoctrination, media manipulation, oppression, artificial intelligence and whether obsessively following a noble cause is indeed a flaw. These themes in an era of Musk, media moguls, emerging AI and increasing domination of our lives by machines resonate even more strongly today than they did in 1978. The actors were simply exceptional and the wit and repartee kept what could have been a rather dark show engaging and amusing.

Over the years I have gone back to Blakes 7 especially in times of challenge in my life to re-watch my DVD collection of the series - it got me through studying for my airline transport pilot exams in 2003 for example and it’s become an old and comforting friend to me. I can sit down and re-watch it endlessly and still see new things in it which I hadn’t noticed before.

It was with great excitement then that I learned that the BBC had commissioned an extensive remastering of the series for Blu-ray release which included entirely new model work (reputedly not CGI) and special effects plus a raft of documentaries and interviews with those who made the series. I began watching the Series 1 blu-ray last night and I have to say I am blown away by the sound restoration and the documentaries which are a glorious tribute and insight to this magnificent show. I haven’t started on the episodes yet but I value the fact that you get a choice of whether to watch with the original effects or the new ones. That’s going to be interesting. The main theme though sounded stunning in DTS HD Master Audio last night and the subwoofer was certainly getting a pummelling!

For a couple of hours last night I was 12 years of age again, but without the fear of not having completed latin homework!!! Sheer bliss…

JonathanG

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I used to watch this after school on a Monday evening. One of the greatest TV theme tunes and I just loved the series. Time for a big budget remake?

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Would surely ruin it?

The joy as I remember it was the acting as well as the plot and themes. I wouldn’t be confident a remake would improve these, and although SFX have moved on it didn’t spoil things as I recall.

Bruce

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Quite possibly, but it might prompt the BBC to put all of the episodes onto the IPlayer.

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I enjoyed B7 but to me it was so hammy that it was totally unbelievable (maybe my view would have been different if I had been 10 or 15 years younger, but I was in my mid 20s at the time). However I did enjoy it, but my enjoyment came mainly from that very hamminess, and I simply loved the Avon character – whether that was the writing or the actor didn’t matter. And I seem to recall there was a very pretty young lady in the crew whose name I don’t recall (not Servalan!). Whk provided “eye candy”. Nearly 50 years on and it would be interesting to see again.

That would be Jenna!

Interesting @JonathanG mentions looking at it in stressful times, I broke my ankle last year and

.sjb

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It reminds me Cosmos 99
IMG_3343

Star Trek of course, but was not a fan when child. Much more Cosmos 99.
Don’t think Blake 7 was diffused in France.

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This was called Space:1999 here in the Uk.

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Innocent,

It was indeed hammy, or rather I prefer the term ‘camp’, but I think at least some of that comes from the fact that the cast were mostly stage actors who tended to over-act by TV standards and the ropey special effects and location shots which were hampered by a very constrained budget.

Like you I positively worshipped the Avon character and feel that Paul Darrow deserved to become a major movie star (along with Jacqueline Pearce who was simply sublime as Servalan). The two were great friends in real life and their chemistry on screen was simply electric. Darrow relates a lovely story in his autobiography “You’re him aren’t you?” when Jacqueline came over one night for dinner and he popped out to the local shop to pick up some more wine. A young boy in the shop recognised him and came over and said “I know who you are, but don’t worry I won’t tell” and Darrow leant in close to him and said “Thanks, I am meeting Servalan tonight in secret, but don’t tell anybody”. The boy was wide eyed and astonished, but I bet he kept the secret!

Somebody a while back put together some of Avon’s best lines on youtube and it really is a glorious tribute to one of Britain’s finest actors of the 20th century delivering some of the very best lines ever written for a TV show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uW7HJv3guw

I suspect the girl who provided eye candy was in fact Glynis Barber as Soolin in series 4, I recall my mates and I being utterly besotted with her back in the day and looking at promo pics today I can see why - we had excellent taste!!

It really was a very special show on so many levels. It had a glorious story arc, not least because Blake the lead character left at the end of series 2 and Avon who had previously behaved as if he despised Blake and wanted him gone then proceeded to spend much of the next two series trying to find him! It had a cast of actors of such excellence that they remain unmatched to this day in any sci-fi series made anywhere in the world and it was created by Terry Nation, a writer who not only created the Daleks but also created “Survivors” which is widely hailed as perhaps the greatest British TV series ever made.

My biggest regret is that I never attended any of the Blakes 7 conventions over the years where by all accounts the actors spent many nights late in the bar sitting and talking to their fans. Now sadly many of them have passed on - but it’s been great to see Jan Chappel (Cally) and Sally Knyvette (Jenna) keeping the flame alive in the recent documentary included in the boxed set. I must say that this was an incredibly touching and moving tribute to the show created with great love by the BBC and I could have watched the pair of them reminiscing for days!

It’s good to see that so many here remember the show and evidently enjoyed it as much as I did. I can assure you that if you fall into this camp the Series 1 bluray box set is an essential purchase.

French Rooster - aaah, Space 1999 - one of my other passions!

JonathanG

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Shame the YT clips didn’t have my favourite line from the show: “Now would be a good time Villa!”.

I was nine when the series started in 1978, and I watched every episode of the 4 series. Back then, you didn’t get second chances to watch shows. I believe the first three series were never initially repeated, but I do recall the fourth series being repeated. I haven’t watched it since, apart from rewatching the first two episodes and the last episode. I find it hard to commit to watching a TV series on my own, and my wife has no interest in watching it.

Like the original Star Wars trilogy, it’s about companionship, the developing relationships between characters, and having entertaining villains that you love to hate. This is where Star Wars fell apart—it became more focused on being a fully-fledged Jedi, who are ultimately boring characters.

Unlike the convenient ending of Return of the Jedi, Blake’s Seven had the ultimate ending, which left me in shock as a twelve-year-old only the ending of Ring of Bright Water where the affection for the Otter throughout the film is abruptly halted by a person bludgeoning it to death with a spade left me with a wtf just happened moment. It’s no coincidence that one of my favourite films is The Wild Bunch, which must have influenced the ending of Blake’s Seven.

I recall watching the show many years ago and being somewhat taken by the unusual traits of the on-board computer.

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Never a fan of B7, except of Servalan for all the wrong reasons, but your thanks to your English teachers has an echo here. Wesker’s Chips with everything and Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar opend my eyes to the magic of the English language and the magic of theatre. It led me on to reading and then watching performances of plays from my teenage years to present. I owe a huge debt to our English teacher Mrs Fairbourne.
Anthonys speech shortly after Ceasars death still moves me with its power to turn a crowd against ‘honourable men’