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

can hardly wait

[Hognoxious]

IIRC for most of the series there was only five of them, and none of them was Blake. Cervelat the villainess was hot though.

Re:can hardly wait

[shogun]

IIRC for most of the series there was only five of them, and none of them was Blake. Cervelat the villainess was hot though. From wiki: Cervelat, also spelled cervelas, servelat or zervelat, is a type of cooked sausage produced mainly in Switzerland and in parts of Germany. In its modern Swiss variety, it consists of a mixture of beef, bacon and pork rind that is packed into zebu intestines, slightly smoked and then boiled.

I'm sure there a joke in your sausage appreciation somewhere...

Re:can hardly wait

[Hal_Porter]

That's Servalan.

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:can hardly wait

[OriginalArlen]

I must say the practice of picking your Slashdot username from cheesy British science fiction TV of the 70s is totally lame, and betrays a pathetic obsession with nostalgia at the expense of personal development.

Also, Arlen was by far the sexiest female character in the whole show. A lot of women on the B7 slash fanfic list I accidentally ended up subscribed to for a while had different ideas about the most attractive characters on the show, though. Not to mention leather trousers...

Re:can hardly wait

[Ford Prefect]

I must say the practice of picking your Slashdot username from cheesy British science fiction TV of the 70s is totally lame, and betrays a pathetic obsession with nostalgia at the expense of personal development.

Nerd! Neeeeerd! ...

Oh, wait.

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'?

[LurkerXXX]

I'm not sure what your complaint about the current Dr. Who special affects are. They are quite decent. Not to the level of a Hollywood movie, but quite decent for current TV budget sci-fi. They are definitley not to the level of Battlestar, but that's really high-end compared to about anything else you will see on TV instead of the big screen. They are much more on-par with U.S. efforts than the old days of Blake's 7.

I'm an American who loves Dr. Who, and I'm very excited to hear about a possible return of Blake's 7. Maybe because that's because I grew up watching Captain Kirk throwing styrofoam boulders at aliens. Cheesy special effects don't bother me if the script and characters are worth watching.

Re:The effects were 'average'?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Cheesy special effects don't bother me if the script and characters are worth watching.

That's what made it good, it was it experimental drama at the time and I think the BBC gave the crew a long leash to play about. An interesting programme partly because of the story of Blake which had to written around real life events. Gareth Thomas was an actor from the RSC (same schooling as Patrick Stewart - and my cousin knew him enough to nod to). AFAIK, though this may be rubbish, the story was something like Gareth did the pilot/first episode then fell out with the writers, didn't like the story/scripts or whatever. He came back at the end to do the final episode.

The characters (not the actors) hated one another. And several new actors joined/left in the short run.

There were no heros in Blakes 7. Everyone was faulted and mostly they were nasty people.

It's a story of criminals, theives, terrorists and a fascict Federation. Possibly inspired by Lucas' Empire in Star Wars.

Even Blake, the heroic namesake eventually sells out the crew.

There's a conspicuous absence of moralising in it - complete opposite of Star Trek

They had a lot of derivative plot devices and were obviously sci-fi geeks who understood the genre history, like the interracial kiss (Trekies will understand the significance of this) which they actually made quite sexy.

There were some original ideas. Teleport bracelets seemed a nice plausible device and added some script potential.

As mentioned above, the Liberator design was really something cool.

I hope Sky don't massacre it. As an old sci-fi nerd who watched them all I expect something along the lines of The Sopranos in space if they are to do it well and grasp the original ethos.

Re:The effects were 'average'?

[blincoln]

Makes me wonder why so many Americans love Doctor Who.

I'm American, and I love Doctor Who because of the stories and the quirky British feel of the whole thing. I'm not sure any other culture could have come up with a series that bounces between funny, sad, and surreal constantly throughout an episode and doesn't fall on its face.

There have been one or two episodes I thought were weak, but that's true of any series. I wouldn't complain if the effects were better, but they're not a critical flaw any more than a stage play is critically flawed because the sets aren't good enough to use for a feature film.

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.

Re:The effects were 'average'?

[pipingguy]

They are definitley not to the level of Battlestar, but that's really high-end compared

Yet BG still seems to hire exclusively hungover camera operators with delirium tremens.

Re:The effects were 'average'?

[techno-vampire]

It's a story of criminals, theives, terrorists and a fascict Federation. Possibly inspired by Lucas' Empire in Star Wars.

If you'll take a look, you'll see that the Federation symbol in Blake is the Trek communicator turned on it's side. That's because it's roughly based on the Trek Federation gone bad. Instead of everybody works together, you have constant backstabbing; instead of electric razors that stun, you have cattle prods that kill.

It's Servalan

[Reality Master 201]

And she'd have you killed for that.

Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK

[eldavojohn]

So I recently was turned on to modern BBC programmes (I'll spell it their way) with much joy resulting from watching The Mighty Boosh ... on YouTube. I realize that this is in all likelihood illegal which is unfortunate because I like to pay credit where credit is due.

I moseyed on over to the BBC website in hopes of a NBC, ABC or even Comedy Central style of ad based hosting. No luck. I couldn't download and install the iPlayer either. I realized that cost Brits a pretty pound to produce so no hard feelings there. But there wasn't a low quality flash version for me. None. Nothing. I cannot figure out how to enjoy this programme legally.

Their site has two questions in their FAQ in regard to this:

Can I download programmes from outside the UK?

The BBC uses Geo-IP technology to identify where your are based on the location of your internet service provider (ISP). This ensures that only internet users in the UK can enjoy programmes on BBC iPlayer.

If you download a programme to your laptop or a portable hard drive, you can watch this wherever you are in the world. However, you will only be able to download new programmes once you return to the UK. And

Can I use BBC iPlayer outside the UK?

Rights agreements mean that BBC iPlayer television programmes are only available to users to download or stream (Click to Play) in the UK. However, BBC Worldwide is working on an international version, which we will make available as soon as possible.

Radio programmes are available outside the UK in addition to podcasts at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/. ÂMany BBC News programmes are available for viewers outside the UK at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/video_and_audio/default.stm and BBC Sport highlights are available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport.

Do make sure you check for news on BBC iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/. I do hope that changes in the near future. In the meantime, does anyone know the best way to get ahold of episodes of new Dr. Who, The Mighty Boosh & (soon) Blake's 7?

Re:Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK

[TheRaven64]

It's not being made by the BBC, it's being made by Sky, which is part of Murdock's empire and so will, no doubt, be widely distributed to anyone who wants to buy it (unless it's a cable company that competes with Sky).

Re:Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK

[Telvin_3d]

Just so you know, all those NBC and ABC clips you like don't play for people outside of the United States. I'm not sure about the Comedy Central ones. Sometimes they work for me (in Canada) and sometimes not, so I'm not sure if they have sketchy ID technology or a sketchy server streaming the clips.

Same reason as the BBC; they licence by region.

Really, it's a losing battle. Everyone I know who enjoys BBC shows grabs them from torrents as they come out then picks up the DVD sets when they get released. Most of us don't even bother watching the North American broadcast if it even gets one. Not only do they tend to be six months to a year behind but they are also edited. The BBC doesn't have advertisements like our TV does so when they get broadcast over here they have to be cut for time to make more room for the commercials. Also the occasional content or swear word.

For anyone who likes Doctor Who it is particularly bad. They had to cut an entire B plot from last season along with many, many character scenes. It's great on the forums. Every once in a while you get a new poster who can't figure out what the hell everyone else is talking about and it usually comes out that they have only seen the American cut.

Re:Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK

[multisync]

I moseyed on over to the BBC website ... I cannot figure out how to enjoy this programme legally.

This is what the rest of the world experiences when they try to watch shows on the websites of U.S. networks. It's a shame, too, as the alternatives - downloading high-quality torrnets you can watch in your player of choice, for example - is already more attractive than being forced to watch a lower quality stream in an embedded player, complete with commercials. I would truly like to support the producers of these shows (or those who finance their production) but I don't want to compromise on quality, and I don't want to be forced to watch some crappy stream in an embedded player that doesn't work in my browser/operating system of choice.

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:Average?

[mpe]

Describing the effects as 'average' is a bit of an exaggeration - they were absolutely terrible.

Actually the effects were "state of the art". Just that they were nearly 30 years ago.

Re:Average?

[MrSteveSD]

Actually the effects were "state of the art". Just that they were nearly 30 years ago.

No chance. "State of the art" at the time was moving the camera instead of having the flimsy spaceship models moving around on sticks. They clearly did not move the cameras, because that would be a very smooth gliding movement, not the horrible wobble you see in the series. Another thing that struck me was how awful some of the matte paintings were. There's a backdrop in "Voices From The Past" that looks like a 3-year old's finger painting. It was all down to the crappy BBC budget I suppose. It's a shame, because the design of the Liberator is very nice.

Why the frickin' remake frenzy?

[jollyreaper]

Dr. Who wasn't a remake, it was a revival. It's all still part of the same continuity and often quite good. I wish they'd pry the keyboard away from Davis' cold, dead hands and let other writers do more episodes. Some of the strongest episodes were penned by who was it, Moffit? Moffat? The guy who wrote "Girl in the Fireplace" and that other one with the stone angels that could kill you when you weren't looking. That's some classic who right there!

But this remake frenzy, why? After a while, nostalgia just ain't what it used to be. Galactica died an early death and so I can understand the urge to see it again. The current effort's been a mixed bag, some are in love with it and some are just shaking their heads wondering what RDM was smoking when he came up with that shit. But please, where are the new ideas?

When Babylon 5 came about, JMS didn't say "Ok, so I'm going to rip off Star Trek and put it on a space station." Hell, no. He said "Look, I'm going to borrow a bunch of shit from the best brains in the field, I'm going to mortar those bricks together with a bunch of my own ideas and then I'm going to put something on the screen that nobody's ever seen before outside of a novel." And sure enough, that's just what he did. Firefly was the same way.

I guess what the suits are thinking is "hey, this concept was good enough to get the greenlight decades ago, maybe we'll be able to make money with it now. Certainly less risky than trying to do anything completely original, right?"

I can't wait until we can start financing this stuff directly, no more need to involve fuckhead suits. Pull 10,000 geeks together on the net and we can back the damn project, $20 at a time.

Re:Thoughts

[mpe]

Blake was a deeply cynical space opera, with every character angling for their own objectives. I get the impression that is what Whedon tried to do with Firefly.

There are plenty of parallels between Firefly and B7. Indeed Firefly might have done better had it been made outside of the US, especially considering the amount of character development involved.

Stationed in the UK

[WED Fan]

I was stationed in the UK with the USAF and caught the last 2 seasons of B7. I loved it. Sure, the production value wasn't great, but I loved the dark characters, especially Darrow's Avon. These weren't the clean white knights of some quest, these were the gritty, angst riddent, heavily flawed humans. There were no clearly the white knight hero, but there was clearly one single evil, Servilan. God, for the longest time, anyone mentioned "clip haired bitch" I would picture her.

When the show ended with the dreamscape shoot out, I was among the thousands that sent in a plea to continue the show. Even offering a way out of the apparent slaughter of all the crew.

Now, I appreciate the killing off of major characters for the sake of the story. Love "MI-5" ("Spooks"), "Life on Mars" (oh, isn't there a 80's follow on to "Life on Mars"?), and "Torchwood". But, can't stand the new "Robin Hood" with ninjas, an arab female version of Wesley Crusher, and way too much modern crud.

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:Stationed in the UK

[techno-vampire]

I've heard that B7 once had to stop shooting in a quarry because of noise. The director (I think) went over a ridge to find out what was going on and found that Dr. Who was using the same quarry.

Wrong show to do this with

[Snowspinner]

This is frankly a poor idea - the sole substantial flaw in the original B7 was its production values, and that's always the flaw in aging sci-fi. The writing was basically spotless, and there's very, very little room to improve on it. B7 has aged pretty well, aside from its effects.

That's a very different situation from BSG, where the original was a good idea that was undone by pretty relentlessly cheesy aesthetics and a sense of writing that often did leave something to be desired. BSG aged poorly and rapidly. A re-imagining thus made sense there, because there was room to work and stuff to jettison as well as keep. It was possible to make a new BSG that a fan could look at and say "Wow, that's better than the original." Not all fans did, but a lot did, and that's significant.

That's going to be very, very hard to do with B7. Frankly, it'll be hard to get a casual fan to say that, little yet a hard core one.

And the other route for a SF revival - the Doctor Who/Star Trek:TNG route where you just continue in-continuity from where the old one left off is, as the article notes, closed to B7.

Making this a poor property to revive.

Remade by Sky...

[xiox]

This is being done by Sky, that channel with such great programmes, such as..... mmmm..... Simpsons repeats, Star trek repeats...

Have they actually made anything worthwhile before?

Re:Blake/servalan/avon

[zippthorne]

Did you even watch the last season of BSG?

Half of the last season was the build up to and trial of former President Gaius Baltar, Ph.D

The main bad-guy for the current season is President Laura Roslin.

Re:I hope they don't!

[Peet42]

Much better would be to give it the Dr. Who treatment. The special effects can be total crap, but make the writing good

Er, sorry, have you watched the new "Doctor Who"? The SFX are better than average, which can't be said for some/many of the scripts. I agree there are some good ones, but there are a few stinkers too.

Re:I hope they don't!

[BigBadBus]

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

You know you're an old nerd when...

[Blittzed]

Your two home computers are called 'orac' and 'zen' :)

I remember that one of the very few occassions as a youngster that I was allowed to stay up 'late' was to watch Blakes 7 on the TV. Fortunately my Mum was into Sci-Fi so she used to let me stay up past my bed-time to watch it. It was usually on an hour or so after Doctor Who had finished, so it used to be a double dose of Sci-fi goodness. Watched the first episode of Blakes again a year or so ago and my god has it aged! I am not really sure a re-make is a good idea - I think it may just ruin the memory.