The Official Terry Pratchett Forums

by **Quatermass** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:29 am

Well, I just had a quick flick through the forum, and I couldn't find any threads, especially posted by yours truly, on this underrated series (besides an argument I had with Pip, I think, on a thread about Firefly), so...I might as well post this one.

So...Blake's 7. One of the more adult series for its time, and yet with a budget that makes Doctor Who look like a blockbuster. Filled with more moral ambiguity than you can shake a blaster at, some wonderful acting (kudos especially to Paul 'Avon' Darrow, Michael 'Vila' Keating, and, of course, Jacqueline 'Servalan' Pearce), and some of the weirdest stories...

Well?

by **jaeger** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:54 am

It was awful :evil:

A very very poor rip off of Star Trek , Dr Who and any other sci-fi of the time. Even Gareth Thomas had the good sense to abandon ship . . . . And he was the main character (Blake) :shock:

.

by **Jan Van Quirm** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 12:10 pm

For the time and the budget it was far more original than Star Trek and more avant garde than Dr. Who in that it dared to look on the dark side (what could be more bleak than framing your hero for child molestation in the very first epi? :roll:

).

Like Dr. Who they had a Twurp's Peerage of British Luvvies queuing up to guest star on there and it was written by Terry Nation - anyone who says it was pants doesn't know their TV pedigrees from their fundaments

Sorry - as pooh isn't around atm I'm commandeering the skull ring! :twisted:

by **Jason** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 12:13 pm

I agree Jan, Blakes 7 is a TV classic. Not sure how well it will have aged. Haven't seen it for a couple of decades.

by **Tonyblack** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 12:45 pm

I loved Blake's Seven, but I did think it started to lose itself towards the end. I may be the only person who preferred the Scorpio to the Liberator though.

I still can't believe the last episode. I was emotionally shocked for ages. :shock:

by **Quatermass** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:05 pm

Jan Van Quirm wrote:For the time and the budget it was far more original than Star Trek and more avant garde than Dr. Who in that it dared to look on the dark side (what could be more bleak than framing your hero for child molestation in the very first epi? ).

Agreed. And doing it in 1978, when Mary Whitehouse was at the height of her powers...

Very bleak stuff.

Jason wrote:I agree Jan, Blakes 7 is a TV classic. Not sure how well it will have aged. Haven't seen it for a couple of decades.

It's...not exactly aged well as far as production values are concerned. Stories are, more often than not, quite good, though.

Tonyblack wrote:I loved Blake's Seven, but I did think it started to lose itself towards the end. I may be the only person who preferred the Scorpio to the Liberator though.

I still can't believe the last episode. I was emotionally shocked for ages.

Agreed, but the first series wasn't as good either. It took a while to find its feet. Series 2 and 3 were the better ones.

It's a good ending, even if it was intended in a way that they could bring back anyone they needed to. Except for Blake. Gareth Thomas made it very clear that Blake should die for good. Hence the blood bags. He needed to look like his guts were blown out.

by **The Mad Collector** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:13 pm

I liked Blakes 7 but it really hasn't aged well. The sets and effects looked bad at the time but now are a joke. If it was relaunched with the sort of budget behind the new Doctor Who I could see it doing well.

by **Tonyblack** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:17 pm

The Mad Collector wrote:I liked Blakes 7 but it really hasn't aged well. The sets and effects looked bad at the time but now are a joke. If it was relaunched with the sort of budget behind the new Doctor Who I could see it doing well.

And a cast with more commitment. :lol:

by **Penfold** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 1:38 pm

My memory of Blake's 7 was that I rather enjoyed the fact that the cast members unexpectedly got killed off from time to time, allowing for some genuine suspense not knowing if your favourite character was going to make it through unscathed.

by **jaeger** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 2:44 pm

Jan Van Quirm wrote: . . . . it was written by Terry Nation - anyone who says it was pants doesn't know their TV pedigrees from their fundaments

Sorry - as pooh isn't around atm I'm commandeering the skull ring!

That would be me then huh :wink:

Just because something is written by a person well regarded in their field, does not always necessarily follow that it should automaticly be good.

Still it's horses for courses and wouldn't it be boring if we all agreed all the time

Here comes the shallow bit

Bearing in mind I was a young hormonal teenager at the time . . .all I did like at the time was servalan and her risque costumes :roll:

by **chris.ph** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:17 pm

i was the same with leela :lol:

by **David Brown** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:47 pm

I loved Blake's 7, at the time. Or, at least, I loved series two...

I saw the very first episode, but then Scouts started up again, and I missed the rest of the series. Some months later, they repeated the last two, as an edited together, feature length, wossname, but I forgot until half way through, so only caught episode 13.

I thought series two was let down by the recasting of major villain Travis, and was always very disappointed that Tarrant (not the curly hero from series three and four, but the very blond nasty from episode 1) never re-appeared.

Series three was, I thought, on a downward spiral, and the only episode I found any good at all in series four was the last one, where they all died.

And now for the controversial bit. I've just watched "Planet of the Daleks", and I have to say that Terry Nation was very capable of writing stilted dialogue for formulaic characters in weakly plotted stories.