Blake's 7

I was 8 years old when Blake's 7 first aired on BBC 1 and I loved it.

I was a fan of DR.Who so I liked Blake's 7 also. I have been watching it recently on UK Gold and it has brought back fond memories. Admittedly the Special Effects were very low budget just like DR.Who-You could always spot the shaky badly handpainted sets! The acting was a mix of good and bad, Avon (Paul Darrow) was excellent as was Servalan (Jaqueline Pearce) and Villa (Michael Keating) was very good also. Some episodes were really good and the script was great with some great dialogue by Avon. If you can overlook the very poor effects and men in rubber suits dressed as monsters then this was overall a great show.The last episode was a great cliffhanger although it upset me when I first saw it. I would love to see the series remade with Paul Darrow and the others-we never did know whether or not Avon and company died or not, so it could be remade. This was a classic series!

This has to be one of the best--perhaps THE best science fiction serials ever produced. It is a true serial in that the story goes, stage by stage, through a complete, novelistic sequence. Even though the fourth season was not planned when they finished up the 3rd (originally designed as the finale), the ideas, themes, and characterizations continued as a logical (if sometimes twisted) culmination of the history that had preceded it. Blake's 7 inspired what is undoubtedly the finest American sci fi series ever--Babylon 5, which in some ways surpassed B7, certainly in terms of quality effects and production values. If you look carefully, I believe you can spot a ship closely resembling the Scorpio in some of the battle formations in Season 4 of B5.

My personal favorite performer on Blake's 7 was the extraordinary Jacqueline Pearce--surely one of the most gifted actresses of our day. In one way it is a shame that she will always be remembered for his work on this series, but, from another perspective, her creation of Servalan has a truly legendary quality, larger than life and yet intensely human. Jackie imbued Servalan with a wit, grace, and elegance that made her absolute evil all the more intriguing. Paul Darrow as Avon provided the perfect complement to Servalan's infamy. Coldly self-aggrandizing and exquisitely poised in his own right, Darrow's performance is often tinged with streaks of frighteningly believable psychosis, especially during the memorable final season.

If this series had had a wider airing in the US, it would have attracted a massive cult following over here. Grab this on tape if you can find it!

In 1978, America had "Battlestar Galactica" and Dirk Benedict. England had "Blake's 7" and Paul Darrow. England had the better deal.

Sure, "Blake's 7" had a shoddy budget and clunkier sets than "Doctor Who", but the show had more interesting characters. You could not find a more diverse bunch of criminals, freedom fighters, and guns-for-hire - and these were the heroes (or anti-heroes)of the show. Almost every week they fought Servalan, Travis, and the evil Galactic Federation (boo,hiss!) while sometimes barely getting along with each other. The show flagged a bit in the last season, but it had the best series finale of all time in my opinion.

Blake's 7 is my favorite sci-fi series, mainly because of the witty dialogue and shades-of-gray characterizations. I own all the videos and rewatch the Blake episodes often.

I understand a TV movie in the UK is projected for 2000. I wish Blake or Gareth Thomas were involved and, also, that people who understood Blake's 7 better were involved. The last two recent radio dramas (done by the people involved with the proposed movie) have suffered by being Blakeless as well as being rather corny and twisting the characters so formerly well defined by the series.

I strongly recommend the Blake's 7 series to anyone who can be mature enough to ignore the terrible special effects. This is a series where characterization and acting are strong.

For those of us weaned on Doctor Who, shows like Blake's 7 are instantly appealing. But for today's audiences, try this trick:

Listen closely to the dialogue and notice how the acting--unlike the SFX--is quite good. Then imagine that George Lucas, Jerry Bruckheimer and any actor you admire collaborated on a faithful remake, line for line, with top-level effects. Can you see it? (May require more than one viewing.)

Good. Prior to Battlestar Galactica on TV and Star Wars on the big screen, this is about all we had in terms of production values. (We were lucky if the boom mics were not showing at the top of the screen.) We had to make do with fascinating story ideas and characters we could inhabit each week. If the monsters were made of rubber, the spaceships made of cardboard, well, we lived with it.

Note to Spielberg, Bruckheimer, Lucas, et al: Keep the script stet and consider giving these back to the world.