Pardon my indulgence, but as there are several links between Blake's 7 and Dr Who, I thought I'd start up a post.



I've just seen the last ep of Season 4 again - still a great ep even today.



I was interested to read that Terry Nation had an idea to use the Daleks in 1 ep, but was vetoed by the BBC - would have been interesting to see to say the least.



I'd love to see a B7 revival sometime, I want to see Avon and Servelan kick up a storm again!!!

The last episode of Series 4 is the ONLY redeeming feature of what has to be the silliest, most camp and awful era in a sci fi show's history (even worse than the McCoy years in Dr Who -  and that's really a hard act to beat!).



Blake's 7 series 4 was a travesty to the show's history.

It starts with Series 1 and 2 as being intelligent adult - oriented sci fi with political intrigue, then lapses into farce and total utter stupidity in Seies 4.

(Paul Darrow's over acting and dramatic over the top voice is embarassing.........and what about Animals - there isn't a word in the English langauge to properly describe how awful that one was!)

P.S.  Even though Seies 4 was as likeable as vomit, I, too would liketo see a revival of Blake's 7, if it were to be as well done as Doctor Who.

I agree.



The first 2 seasons were great and had a lot of future promise, but then went pearshaped when Blake & The Federation storyline were both written out.



Series 3 was reasonable, but Series 4 was pretty bad.



Although I think the latter half of Series 4 was reasonable - but nothing like the 1st 2 seasons.



Animals was a pretty appalling episode I agree.  I actually found myself laughing at how bad the acting was in Series 4.



The last ep was a classic, but thats all I can say that was truly good about the last series.



Fingers crossed a new version comes out sometime - but only if Blake is in it - he was really the 'soul' of the show.

Here, here!

I maintain that there was worthwhile things across 4.

Rescue--absolutly killer 360 degree pan at end of episode, strangly this was edited out in the video release.



Power--Sets up the format for the season; such as it is.



Traitor--One of Holmes' weakest scripts, but hey, where else are you going to get him?



Star Drive--generous plot, the Scorpio crew stumble across the real plot by accident.



Animals--Og wasn't in Evil of the Daleks, for which we are all thankfull.



Headhunter--More than a one line pun, although not by much.



Assassin--A comedy!



Games--A bit of a Gambit retread, even uses the previous story title for a character name!



Sand--Tanith Lee's not my fave fake SF writer, but it's not the worst she's done for this show--that was Sarcophagus!



Gold--We get to see what happens when a crew member is trapped in the docking tube.



Orbit--a favourite, as good as anything from the first three seasons. Say I.



Warlord--an embaressing scene with sparking goblets mars an otherwise quite good story.



Blake--Strange and dreamlike.

As I said - the 2nd half of Series 4 was much stronger than the 1st.  The stories seemed more focused.



Having said that, Series 4 wasn't a match for the previous seasons.



The only times during series 3 & 4 that the show really got going was when Blake appeared....



I'm a huge fan of Travis 2 as well - killing him off was definately a mistake.

I agree with Axel F on almost all that he has said........except I think Travis 2 was a lowdown punk. He was uncouth and lacked intelligence.......the only story where he was cunning and ruthless (as Travis should be, to show how much he is Blake's antithesis) was in 'Voice From the Past'.



Travis 1 was by far the superior interpretation. He played the part of a disgraced former officer of the Federation (with officer attributes in personality and wit). travis 2 was a grunt, just one step up from a criminal off the streets.



Also, I think that Series 4 was an utter embarassment - nothing of any entertainment value (for me) except for 'Blake'.

All the prancing around that Jaqueline Pearce did was just so unappealing (her age was showing - too much make up, nad a horrible feminist haircut - YUK!). The stories lacked any direction. The plots were tediously boring and crafted in the form of soap opera. And the over acting was farcical......Darrow's voice was so loud and intense that he was a borderline opera baritone!

Everyone has their favourite Travis I think!!!



I also think that getting rid of The Liberator was a mistake as well.



Wiping away the threat of The Federation at the end of Series 2 robbed the show of a focus - even if Blake had still left at the end of S2, the other characters could have just carried on his work against them, rather than going for items of personal gains, as the other 2 series did.

There's a very revealing comment in Volcano--Tarrant is offering the Pyroans protection for a home base--"Our armament,  offensive and defensive, is better than any other mercenary group can muster." Intentionally or not he's revealed their motivation. They're not freedom fighters any more! There had been a plan to have season three being a "looking for Blake" year, as Gareth Thomas' resignation caught the production team a bit short. And strangly enough another plan was to give up on the remaining characters and star afresh with a new group!

I think the actors that were bought in for Series 3 & 4 were pretty weak to say the least.



The guy who played Tarrant was awful - good character, but bad actor.  The same can be said for Soolin as well.



It was the bad acting that allowed Paul Darrow to dominate proceedings and over-act to buggery.



The 'Search for Blake' idea sounds good, pity they didnt do it, because it would have given the series much needed focus after The Federation was dismantled.

Steven Pacey didn't believe he could play a middle aged guy at the age of 23. His big break had been in a musical theatre piece "Leave Him to Heaven", a retro-fifites production which ABC played on New Years Eve 1981.

There was much recycling of previous guests; Glynis Barber had been a mutiod in Project Avalon before coming back as Soolin and Kevin Stoney comes back as a blind trooper who's recognised Servelan!

It was interesting seeing Richard Hurndall appear in one of the Season 4 eps.



He was just ok in The Five Doctors, although I personally would have gone for Geoffrey Bayldon, who was a firm fan favourite to appear in that special.



He was great in Catweazle, one of my fave shows as a small kid.

We had a laugh about this last meeting--JNT was notorious for casting people to do what he could see they'd already done, and it's known that this role was what decided him to cast Hurndall in The Five Doctors. So his image of Hartnell must have involved adult nappies and a bit of larceny.

I think JNT was a warped and very silly queer..........especially when you consider the things that inspired him to make his moves as producer of Dr Who!



Axel F - man, I totally agree with what you've been writing!



Getting rid of the Liberator was like pushing the self destruct button on the show.

Slave was such a miserable dork! All that grovelling and humbleness with working class English git accent. It was absolutely terrible!



Glynis Barber could not act - but her a** was gorgeous!

Same can not be said for Pacey's!!! But you're right about his abilities, he couldn't act his way out of a primary school pantomime!



Series 3 was not that bad until after "City at the Edge of the world" - then it was terrible until we had "Terminal" -  a good story which, incidentally, I can still remember watching for the first time at age 4 or 5 when it was aired on ABC in the very early 80s. I can still recall how creepy I thought that space virus was which ate its way through the Liberartor.



The idea of making Seires 4 a search for Blake sounds good.

It's a shame that they decided to make it 'lost in space' with operatic voices and camp costumes!!!!

Three was the one where they were looking for a motivation; in four they had the strange new format of being based on a planet and every week encountering a new mad scientist/ character actor who needed to reign it in.

You can see why Who fans hit the panic button when Michael Grade confirmed the show would be coming back after an unprecedented eighteen month break in 1986; exactly the same gap between Blakes 7 seasons three and four!

Yeah - and look at what happended during the cursed McCoy years!!!!!

Nyah--this does also include season 23, not a vintage year but still worthwhile. The main difference is the 14 episode seasons.

I've heard various plans over the years to do a mini series of Blake's - but not featuring the Blake character, which is a mistake, because as Ive said before, the reason why the show worked was because of the dynamic determination of the Blake character against the Federation.



Without Blake, the rest of the crew became a rabble - as was evidenced in Seasons 3 & 4.



I've been reasonably impressed with the dvds for it, although it's disappointing that the planned Season by Season documentaries didn't surface.

The follow up plans have been focused around Paul Darrow of late. He's decided against it. Instead we have him in the Robots of Death/Blakes 7 crossover Kaldor City audios and his own book Avon: a Terrible Aspect. There's also two radio plays The Sevenfold Crown and The Syndeton Experiment, and Tony Attwood's authorised follow up novel Afterlife which has probably launched a millon fan fictions by readers who thought "I can do better than that".