Slashdot Mirror
Blakes Seven To Return
Clownfush writes "Blake's 7, magnificent UK low budget high drama Sci-Fi from the early 80's is to return, as a former star acquires rights to the show. "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I was young and impressionable when Blake 7 first came out, I really liked it at the time, but why bother trying to revive it now.
Anyone under 25 or most Americans will have no idea what it is. I can't remember much about it myself. So it is just playing on the sentimentality of a few.
Considering the state of SF in general nowadays it would be nice to get something new rather than rehashes of old ideas, we have plenty of them already. As far as I can see this is just £7M down the pan.
Avon (the character played by Paul Darrow) was a huge influence on me, altho' I was too young to realize it at the time. He was a dark and complex character, a technology expert who could clearly and rationally see that he could make the most money and wield the most power by betraying his comrades... but he could never quite bring himself to do it. He'd always set off with the intent of doing so, then change his mind at the last minute and use his superior intellect to save the day, then hate himself for it afterwards. He got most of the best lines too. Oh, and he may or may not have been shagging Blake's arch-enemy, the head of the secret police. Certainly they were both up for it, and even avoided killing each other for that purpose while remaining nominal enemies otherwise.
There simply aren't characters with this kind of depth in modern scifi, even in relatively intelligent shows like B5. I can't wait to see the new episodes.
This programme was so cool! Not for the fact that it was a top notch sci-fi soap but that it had great characterisation. The first anti-hero in Avon. The D&D rogue character in Villa. Now obviously, its almost certain that the new show will be a pile of steaming... but let me just wallow in dreams that it will be good... P.S. Not nostalgia, got all the vids!!
When the show ended there were arguments over whether or not Avon actually dies in the final scene. He is surrounded by guards, it cuts to black and there is a lot of gunfire....
:)
Presumably he is gunned down like the rest of his crew BUT he could have survived... Somehow? Surely? Maybe?
According to the article the actor that played Avon (Paul Darrow) will be the only actor to return. Set 25 years after the last series hopefully the question of Avon's survival will be answered.
Apologises to anyone that didn't no what happened to Avon at the end and has been slowly working their way through the series
When you think about it, or at least when I do - most future spaceships must be almost completely controlled by computer - not with some gits standing on a bridge for effect like they do in the thoroughly rung out Star Trek. At most a human would be suggesting the general strategy of any sort of engagement, and then wiping their brow 14 nanoseconds later when it was all over. Generally this is what happened on the original series of Blake7, with the occasional 'manual control' for dramatisation. They let the computer get on with driving the hardware, and they got on with the scheming on how to overthrow the corrupt Federation and each other.
I really hope they spend most of the money on good script writers who give the characters the depth that they had in the original series, and just enough on the sets/cgi to get by.
Hey, and model the new ship on the old one, I thought it was cool!
From
this page - so good it had to be posted.
* Trust is only dangerous when you have to rely on it.
* Reality is a dangerous concept.
* There is no logical reason why aliens should be hairy.
* I am not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'm not going.
* No good deed goes unpunished.
* It is frequently easier to be honest when you have nothing to lose.
* Civilization has always depended on courtesy rather than truth.
* On Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
* The art of leadership is delegation.
* All that patience gets you is older.
* Show me someone who believes in something, and I will show you a fool.
* Regret is part of being alive -- but keep it a small part.
* He who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.
* Infallibility depends on your point of view.
* There are times when even the most cynical must trust in luck.
* Heroics seldom run to schedule.
* Dignity, at all costs, dignity.
* The choice is very simple -- either you can fight, or you can die.
* In the end, winning is the only safety.
* Power usually makes its own rules.
* Some days are better than others, Section Leader.
* It is not necessary to become irrational in order to prove that one cares; indeed, it is not necessary to prove it at all.
* While there's life, there's threat.
* Luck has nothing to do with it.
* Strategic withdrawl is running away, but with dignity.
* Idealism is a wonderful thing; all you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use.
* Nobody is indispensible.
* Everyone's entitled to one really bad mistake.
* In the end, your word is all there is, really.
* There are other rules, but you'll find out what those are when you break them.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I don't see it as the Arthurian theme. If anything, it was more of the Robin Hood theme.
The problem with either of those comparisions is that Blake is not in a lot of the episodes.
I guess you could make a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" comparision. But that has problems because there isn't an original story for the characters to be from. Just a theme.
I liked it because it was different. In Star Trek, the crew is always right and good and more enlightened than everyone else in the universe.
In Blake's 7.....
AVON: Only seventy kilos... Vila, strip off the insulation material in the cargo hold. [Vila turns.] Vila! [Avon takes some small object from a panel and hands it to him.]
VILA: But that's plastic. It weighs nothing.
AVON: Get rid of it anyway.
VILA: A kilo and a half if we're lucky.
AVON: Do it! We've got five minutes. [Vila turns and heads out.] Not enough! Not nearly enough! Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?
[The door can be heard opening.]
ORAC: Vila weighs seventy-three kilos, Avon.
[The door closes.]
[ Avon fetches his gun and gets a determined look on his face]
AVON: [Whispering] Vila!... Vila?
I was actually thinking of Blakes 7 when i saw Farscape - don't know why really, its not that they have that much obviously in common - apart from a group of people on the run from the police state.
Blakes 7 was also unusual in that our heros were usually dealing from a position of strengh. Usually writers hate to make their people to strong because then they can't write their way out of it later (bad writers perhaps?) - but the ship "The Liberator" was the fastest ship in known space (only its sister ship was as fast, and it was only see twice and quickly met an untimely end), the ship has regenerative properties and could restore itself even after the most heavy of attacks. It had teleportation ability over wast distances, something that the federation had never been able to work out. The (almost) sentient computer Zen had wast amounts of knowledge about most things they ran into, and the ship was well stocked with copious amounts of food, clothes and valuables (in the form of gems, precious medals, and currency) - and at the end of season one they manage to aquired "Orac" before the federation does. A supercomputer of a special kind, its dying inventor originally invented the chip and computer principles that all computers in exsistance are based on - because of this the sentient Orac is able to tap into any computer system at all and control it.
But that didn't really stifle the creativity - perhaps because there was always a certain amount of internal strife.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Nothing new here at all. Paul Darrow acquired the rights to make new B7 from Terry Nation about 15 years ago and has been media-pushing it in the hope of getting some funds about once a year ever since. It's been 'about to return' as a movie or TV series for a long time now.
Which isn't to say that I don't consider it worthy of a return, but it is hard to see how an Avon spin-off could reasonably be called Blake's 7. OK so in the original series, seasons 3 & 4 were missing Blake, right up until the final, wonderful, paranoid apocalypse in the final episode, but it was Blake's crew, still basically on Blake's mission, and wanted by the Federtaion because of their history with Blake.
In any case, if you want a fix of Blake's 7 style grit and pessimism, I can strongly recommend Chris Boucher's "Kaldor City" audios, in which the Paul Darrow character could very easily be a post-Blake, in-hiding Avon, which also features various characters Boucher originally created for Blake's 7, all set in the society (and with some of the characters) he built for the Doctor Who classic "Robots of Death"
I'd say, use B7 as an inspiration, sure, but it was effectively brought full-circle in 'Blake' and anything more would rather spoil the delicious uncompromising bleakness of that final showdown. How often DO the bad guys get to win?
TomV