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

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

[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.

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:can hardly wait

[Hal_Porter]

That's Servalan.

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: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: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!

[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: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.