Often derided for its cheap visual effects and clunky videotaped studio production, BBC TV’s sci-fi adventure Blake’s 7 nevertheless developed a devoted following across its four-season run. But, in fact, the omens couldn’t have been worse for the series as it debuted on British television just weeks after Star Wars arrived on cinema screens and changed the acceptable face of science fiction forever. Now, over four decades since it first appeared, the series gets a new lease of life in what fans hope will be the first of four Doctor Who-style Collection boxsets, which offer updated special effects and a slew of fascinating documentary features.
In its first season, the show remains a curious, slightly schizophrenic beast. Created by Terry Nation, the series initially presents as a gritty dystopian drama, not unlike Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 several decades earlier in its depiction of Mankind in the future living under the oppressive control of a fascistic, militaristic regime in a grey and colourless world. We quickly meet up with Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas), a dissident whose past life as an insurrectionist has been written out of history and his own memories erased so that he has become a docile, unquestioning drone. But when he is approached by a new wave of rebels who remember him as a passionate, determined revolutionary, Blake finds himself framed for child abuse (heady stuff for an audience watching on BBC1 at 6pm early in 1978) and shipped off to a remote prison planet before he can foment further unrest against the Federation. Aboard the transport ship taking him to his new and permanent home, Blake makes the acquaintance of some fellow trouble-makers (who will become his often-reluctant allies) and stages a bid to take control of the ship. Before they can be beaten back by the prison ship’s ruthless crew, a huge, three-pronged – and clearly abandoned – spaceship arrives on the scene, and Blake and his motley crew requisition the extraordinary vessel and begin their guerrilla-style fight against the forces of the Federation. The first two episodes of the series are gritty and uncompromising and surprisingly adult in tone; the arrival of the Liberator changes everything in almost an instant and within an episode or two – particularly once the truly terrible third episode Cygnus Alpha is in the rearview mirror – Blake’s 7 has become a pulpy, if likeable, pure sci-fi adventure full of weird planets with silly names, quirky little aliens, and a classic hissable bad guy double act in the form of the vivacious Supreme Commander Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce) and her leather-clad eye-patched intergalactic hitman Travis (Stephen Greif), whose dialogue rarely amounts to much more than “I’ll get you, Blake, there’s no escape from me!!”
It’s all great fun, though, and wonderfully entertaining, especially as it reminds us of TV from a bygone age when the BBC would dare to mount a lavish thirteen-week science-fiction series on the budget of a recently cancelled Police drama series. That budget is sometimes painfully stretched, too, as the cast clumps around on wooden sets, brandish cheap fibre-glass prop guns, and unashamedly ‘70s sci-fi gizmos. Terry Nation’s thin scripts have clearly been buffed up by script editor Chris Boucher, who quickly realised that the show’s strength lay in its character dynamics – particularly the acidic relationship between the chunky, no-nonsense Blake and the snarky, wily Avon (Paul Darrow) supported by the slightly weaselly Vila (Michael Keating). Apart from Servalan, female characters are largely window dressing – Sally Knyvette’s Jenna and Jan Chappell’s hawkish Cally rarely have much more to do than look worried and operative teleport controls while the boys go off and do the heroic stuff. But despite a couple of dreary episodes, Season One stands up pretty well; it looks remarkably good on Blu-ray, and the series delivers an irresistible cliffhanger that surely left fans counting down the days for the second season months later.
Underserved on its initial BBC DVD release, the show now gets the attention it deserves thanks to a raft of terrific new special features on this first series set, comprehensive despite the fact that many of the show’s core cast and crew are no longer with us. Dr Matthew Sweet (a mainstay of the Doctor Who Collection) talks to Sally Knyvette, a shrewd and erudite interviewee whose real life has been far more exotic and startling than that of her Blake’s 7 character, and a new feature-length documentary chronicles the origins of the series in forensic detail. Also included are a new tribute to Travis actor Stephen Greif, who passed away only last year, convention footage and an archival ‘making of’ documentary never previously available for licensing reasons (featuring interview material with most of the original cast), and content brought over from the previous DVD sets. This release’s real USP is the availability of all-new special effects for each of the 13 episodes, many of them in the form of new physical model shots that augment the better contemporary FX shots and replace those that were of a poorer quality. The new FX are generally pretty sympathetic to the originals, and fans of the show as broadcast will be relieved to find that they can toggle away from the new visuals and watch the show in all its 1978 glory. Fingers crossed that this initial set is well-supported by its fans (and who knows, it might even find a few new curious admirers?) and that the BBC quickly gives the go-ahead for similar treatment for the show’s remaining three series. This is undoubtedly a standard by-ten release.
BLAKE’S 7: THE COLLECTION – SERIES ONE is available now on BBC Blu-ray.
