Blake's 7 Remake In the Works

bowman9991 writes "Remember the BBC's Blake's 7? Looks like the classic space adventure series is being reworked by Sky One. If they get it right (like the recent Battlestar Galactica revamp), this one has massive potential. 'As part of a drive to invest more in homegrown drama, Sky One has ordered scripts for two 60-minute pilot episodes. If successful, it will be expanded into a six-part series.' Created by Terry Nation, the man responsible for the Daleks in Doctor Who, Blake's 7 ran from 1978 to 1981 and had cult appeal. The effects were average, but the story and characters were compelling."

Comments

The effects were 'average'?

[damburger]

That is being quite kind if I remember Blake's 7 correctly (unless NASA have suddenly discovered that cardboard is a really good material to make spacecraft out of)

Re:The effects were 'average'?

[Master of Transhuman]

You missed the point of the last episode. Blake didn't sell out the crew. He was faking that to recruit new members for his revolution.

It was Avon's equal misunderstanding of this that caused him to shoot Blake in the last episode. And I think Avon at that point realized everything was over, which is why he apparently committed suicide by pointing his gun at the surrounding troops.

Of course, it would be nice if they could rescue that whole scene in a new version, but probably best to let it lay and ret-con the whole series.

Average?

[TheRaven64]

Describing the effects as 'average' is a bit of an exaggeration - they were absolutely terrible. Some of the acting was pretty dire too. The really compelling thing about the series was the fact that the characters were believable. Vila, for example, was the archetypal coward and was rewarded for his cowardice by being the only character in all of the episodes, while more aggressive characters tended to die off quite quickly. Blake was on a mission to save everyone, but everyone else was out for themselves. The people behaved like people and the politicians were interested in expanding their own power, rather than acting in the interests of their people (except on Auron, but they all died). It was a refreshing counterpoint to Star Trek.

Re:can hardly wait

[Hal_Porter]

That's Servalan.

Re:Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Most broadcasters that provide free access to their library online take a similar approach. I can't use NBC's site at all without proxying through a gateway in the US. As for comedy central, I can view old episodes of The Daily Show, but that's about it. BBC World might eventually provide a similar ad-supported service (BBC in the UK is prhibited from using advertising to generate revenue, they're funded by the 'Television Tax' a compulsory annual cost of about £120 , roughly $240 at todays exchange rates). But that'd be limited to programmes already shown on BBC world, which contains a subset of the programmes broadcast int he BBC, and often much later. Annoying, I know; I get most of the shows I watch from news groups. Can anyone comment on the legality of downloading (ie not sharing) from newsgroups?

Re:Stationed in the UK

[WED Fan]

Oh, have to mention something from when I was in Japan in the mid-70's that ties in with B7.

Most outdoor battles done on B7 and Japanese hero shows, Kamen Rider, Rainbow Man, Diamond Eye, etc, were filmed in quarries. Need a place where you can set off explosions, a quarry is a great place. Some were jarring, our heros are in a park or on a beach, then suddenly bad guys show up and we're in a quarry.

Of course, you knew when our heroes were walking through piles of rock the shooting was going to start soon.

I took a tour of Toho Studios in '76 and saw the very short suit for Godzilla, one of the Ultraman suits, and saw the filming of a samurai movie. The production value of a lot of the Toho TV stuff was like the BBC's.

Re:Stationed in the UK

[Tony Hoyle]

B7 did a fair bit of shooting in nuclear power stations and oil refineries.

Obviously there's only so far you can go with the explosion effects in such places though :p

Re:can hardly wait

[imipak]

Two great things about B7:

• (1) (a) In Star Trek, the galaxy is ruled by the Federation, a benevolent democratic agglomeration of worlds united for the common good. The protagonists are the crew of a Federation starship; although there's enough conflict to generate drama (plot), they are normally function as a well-oiled unit, with everyone committed to working alongside their crew mates to, generally, Do Good. (ISTR Gene Roddenberry saying something about wanting to show liberal democracy as a benevolent force for good - I'm sure ST fans out there can quote me chapter and verse or correct me. Whether it was intentional or not, the Enterprise is a clear metaphor for American geopolitical values and objectives in the 60s, or at any rate for the high school textbook version of same at any rate.)
• (1) (b): In Blake's 7, the galaxy is ruled by the Federation, a authoritarian, semi-fascistic state with heavy Orwellian overtones of manipulation of the masses by propaganda and brainwashing technologies of various types. The agglomerate many worlds for colonial purposes; many planets are Occupied by the Federation whilst they are stripped of their resources, often by enslaving the local population. The protagonists are the crew of a spacecraft who all have their own agendas, but chiefly thrown together because they escaped from the same prison ship. Whilst Blake is a committed freedom fighter type, and attacking and destroying the Federation is their chief goal, several of the crew were imprisoned for non-political crimes. (Avon and Vila, computer fraudster and lockpick respectively, in particular.) The crew barely hold together at times, with Avon in particular openly plotting to leave Blake at various times. And who can forget Avon preparing to throw Vila out of an airlock to lighten an overloading ship?) The tensions amongst the crew, of which this is only the most obvious, are the motor that drives much of the dramatic tension.
• (2) -- all the technology! The cardboard sets and props were totally believable at the time, most of the time (there were some stunningly lame "view out of a porthole" effects, and the supposedly computer-generated animations of things like scanner plots were completely lacking stuff that would be essential these days, like spurious data readouts and vernier markings, blinking alerts, etc. But this was before the days of mass-market GUIs, remember; it was only a year since the wooden mouth demo at PARC, IIRC. But the great thing about the tech was that it was almost never gratuitous; it served plot and/or character, sometimes in amazingly imaginative and ideas-based manner. Witness Vila's lock-picking tools, Cally's personal digital music player (in 1978!), Travis' James Bond hand (character devices); teleport - ok not original, but a fundamental plot device in many episodes (Avon getting himself captured, and holding out against torture until he's referred up to the Chief LaserProbe Merchant - at which point he triggers a beacon, and the crew teleport into the torture cell and kidnap the head torturer; and dare I mention IMIPAK, a gun which has no effect at all on the person shot (who may not even notice if they're not looking), until the user uses a remote control device to trigger the irradiated victim, who then curls up and disappears in a puff of bad light (or something - the nature of how the thing actually kills them is never described, because it's the McGuffin-like usefulness to the plot of having the audience knowing who's marked for death and who isn't, etc etc. Just to name one, at the start of series 3 Avon is stuck on a beach on a remote planet, with the empty Liberator in orbit but uncrewed. He has Orac with him though (luggable supercomputer, which incidentally is a quantum computer although the term hadn't been coined then AFAIK!) Avon fires up Orac, uses it's long range comms to log into Zen, the Liberator's shipboard computer, and command it remotely to teleport him back on board. ISTR that there is mention of Orac's using encrypted communication protocols as well, so as far as I'm concerned that the first appearance of Ssh.

Re:I hope they don't!

[BigBadBus]

The B7 Fan Club, Horizon, might have more info: they're at http://www.horizon.org.uk/