AT LEAST SEVEN REASONS TO LOVE BLAKE’S SEVEN

Well, here’s a posting that shows me at my awkward, geekiest, and most nerdish worst and which is almost guaranteed to send the few of you that remain running screaming towards the horizon, although I really don’t believe anyone at all is likely to choose to come and read this anyway. Incidentally, “Horizon” is the name of a popular “Blake’s 7” fan club, so it wouldn’t be the most inappropriate place to head for. It would have been just as easy to call this piece “At least seven reasons to loathe, hate and detest Blake’s 7”, by the way - it was always a show that divided opinion - but just for today I’m dabbling with a more positive outlook, just to see whether it works for me.

I may have inadvertently done the TV series “Blake’s 7” a huge injustice recently with one of my more cutting replies made to one of the comments which were in response to my recent contributions to the debate on “spoilers”.

For those of you who haven’t heard of this show, it was a science fiction adventure series created by Dalekmeister Terry Nation and made by the BBC and its 52 episodes were broadcast in chunks of thirteen per series over the four years between 1978 and 1981 in the wake of the release of “Star Wars” in the UK. In fact episode one was broadcast during the first week of 1978, the week after “Star Wars” got its UK premiere.

It doesn’t have the finest of reputations as a quality drama in the history of TV and is sometimes described as a British “Star Trek” which is to do it something of a disservice, because, whilst there are certain parallels in that they are both set in outer space and mostly take place on a starship, it would only be the laziest of journalists who would think that the later show was a carbon copy of its predecessor. Strangely enough though, an episode in the first season called “Duel’ which guest stars Isla Blair in an outfit that left a strong impression on my younger self, tells a story that is entirely similar to Star Trek’s very own “Arena”, so maybe they do have a point.

Over the course of the second half of last year (due to a few rather happy confluences of online special offers and sales) I rewatched the entire 52 episode run of the series (this is what I used to do in the wee small hours before I started my morning at work in the days before I discovered blogging – I may well feel inclined towards returning to it once the tales from Lesser Blogfordshire finally dry up completely…) and found myself being rather pleasantly surprised by it, much as I was during my “Survivors” marathon a few months earlier. Yes, a lot of it still looks rather cheaply made, and some of the design work leaves a lot to be desired, but, all in all the series tells some cracking little stories, is populated by interesting and engaging characters and contains just enough that is spectacularly arch to remain, at the very least, entertaining thirty years later.

I had acquired the first year fully expecting to be bored rigid and sit in my armchair mocking scornfully and berating myself for the waste of yet another fifteen quid or so on utter tat, so I was completely surprised to find myself becoming more engrossed and wanting to see more of it. I even enjoyed the supposedly rubbish fourth year more than I expected to, although I found the allegedly superior third year was not quite as much fun as received opinion would have had me believe. I suppose that it just goes to show that you should ignore what people “reckon” and find out for yourself.

The eponymous character of Roj Blake, whose “Seven” (or eight or six) they are, is played by Gareth Thomas, “Stocker’s Copper” to anyone in the know, but also seen in the ITV children’s classic “Children of the Stones” which, alongside “The Owl Service” and that public information film about playing near the water provided some of the spookier memories of a generation. The fact that “Blake” is a rebel (and is also a – even if only on trumped up changes - convicted paedophile by the way, which is unusual for the lead in any British drama series) trying to bring down the accepted (if brutal and dictatorial) regime should put him on the outside in 1970s culture, but instead he is the hero in our drama.

Blake doesn’t even appear much in two entire years of the four year run, the actor having departed the show at the end of year two. The “Seven” would go on bearing his name without him being there (which used to provide an easy laugh for Terry Wogan on his radio show) which seemed to be another trend in BBC drama series of those years, as “Howard’s Way” carried on long after Maurice Colbourne who played the title character of Tom Howard had died. The living, breathing Blake, however, does make brief cameo appearances at the end of each subsequent year, once as part of a veritable jigsaw puzzle of a cunning trap, and once as things reach their fateful, unforgettable and truly unexpected climax on the planet of Gauda Prime (a planet, incidentally, you might be disappointed to learn is not made of cheese).

The sneering Kerr Avon is played, with an air of mounting insanity and a knowing curl of the lip, by Paul Darrow, who presents a performance that is almost the dictionary definition of arch. Avon doesn’t even appear in the first episode (a historically significant omission a bit like Judge Dredd not being in issue one of 2000AD…) but eventually moves up from disloyal and untrustworthy sidekick to centre stage, becoming the leader of the gang when Blake does his disappearing act. Over the years he develops a sort of double act with the master lock-picker called Vila, played with easy good humour by Michael Keating who, alongside Avon is the only other one of the original “Seven” to make it through to the last episode. Interestingly, “Blake’s 7” remains one of the few ongoing drama series outside of soap opera where regulars would bite the bullet on a regular basis. Spoiler previews of the second series made much of the fact that one of the regulars was going to be killed off during that run, but it might have been a more unusual story to tell you that some of them might survive.

You can’t talk about “Blake’s 7” without at least mentioning the ruthlessly ambitious Supreme Commander (and later President) Servalan, played with lip-smacking vampish relish by the utterly charming Jacqueline Pearce. Introduced half way through the first year and teamed up with the sado-masochistic poster boy that was the leather clad, eyepatch-sporting, Space Commander Travis, she would shimmy her way about the galaxy in a series of preposterous evening gowns and become a thorn in the side of our little band of rebels for much of the remainder of the show’s run, pausing on more than one occasion to have a quick snog with one or other of her arch enemies.

Servalan never had much time for Jenna and Cally, the female members of Blake’s crew. Jenna was the curvy, big haired, blue-eyed blonde one, whose taste in skin-tight sequinned clothing turned the heads of many a teenage boy. She disappeared at the same time as Blake, although they were allegedly ‘just good friends’, and eventually turned up in “Emmerdale”. Cally was her stick-thin ‘interesting’ alien friend with mysterious telepathic powers, who hung around for a year longer than Jenna, and always had a slight air of the writers not really knowing what to do with her and nowadays reminds me of at least one of the roving reporters on BBC Breakfast.

As the cast was ‘killed off’, replacement cast members were brought in to make the numbers up to the required seven (or eight or six…). Some of these were more successful than others, and one or two looked slightly too wholesome to be feared rogues, bandits and outlaws. There was an early role (which she’d probably rather not be reminded about) for the now very well respected actress Josette Simon as Dayna, the orphaned weapons expert that was written rather inconsistently and who eventually ended up just sniping at lovable old Vila’s latest antics. Glynis Barber also did a year as the gunslinger Soolin before picking up more familiar weapons and becoming the glamorous half of “Dempsey and Makepeace”.

Any inaccuracy in the numbers were generally rounded up or down depending upon whether you counted the presence of a number of talking computers as bona-fide members of the crew. The “Liberator” was run by the all-knowing brown ball-in-the-wall known as “Zen”, and the crew were also helped and hindered in equal measure by the smug, tetchy, know-it-all “Orac” who was acquired at the end of year one and resembled a perspex box full of Christmas tree lights. When the crew jumped ships to the slightly less sleek “Scorpio” during the last year, Zen’s duties were fulfilled by its obsequious and grovelling equivalent known as “Slave”. These were all skilfully voiced by Peter Tuddenham, a radio actor of great renown.

A very "cool" spaceship...

Before acquiring “Scorpio”, however, for the first three years, the “Seven” went about their business in the “Liberator” which was almost the epitome of the very cool spaceship.  Sadly, and to be scrupulously fair, the series also had an awful lot of fairly dreadful ones. Mat Irvine, possibly the most well-known among the BBC Effects Wizards, once said that he always regretted showing the “Swap Shop” audience that he’d made some of the spaceships out of things like old hairdryers, but I actually think that that particular design has the air of genius about it.

A surprisingly "hot" spaceship...

How many is that? Have we reached seven things yet? Well, if not, here’s the clincher. Episode three of the first series (“Cygnus Alpha”) has a guest appearance by the mighty Brian Blessed, an actor whose mere presence alone justifies the greatness of any series. This time he’s playing a high priest who wants to become a god and, as ever, things do not work out to plan. Anyone who considers Mr Blessed’s acting to be less-than-subtle, mostly based on their exposure to his role as Vultan in the Dino De Laurentis version of “Flash Gordon” (Ah-aah!) should see some of the fine work he did in black and white “Z-Cars” if they get the chance, and some of the finest acting I have ever seen ever is his death scene as the Emperor Augustus in “I Claudius” which is a truly impressive and mesmerising performance.

So there are probably many more than seven reasons there to enjoy “Blake’s 7”, but I’m sure that nothing I can say will convince the six of you reading this that it was anything other than a cheap and shoddy science-fiction show made at the back end of the 1970s, so perhaps instead I can persuade you to form a rebellious band of outlaws and bring down to earth the evil Federation that so blights our lives nowadays. All you need is big hair, a set of curling tongs to wave about with menace, and an infinite supply of sequins and you can quite possibly change the entire universe.

Are you with me…?