Blake's 7 on Blu-ray!
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bookmarked for future listening.
Listen to the one for Orbit and they raise an interesting point.
How would Blake have handle the situation - would he have countenanced tossing Vila out the airlock? Jumped out the airlock to save Vila?
Sorry for the late reply, work has kept me busy this week.
To replace the characters of Blake and Jenna, David Maloney needed to cast two new members of the regular crew. Josette Simon was still at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when David considered casting her in the role of Dayna Mellany. "It was my idea to have a Caribbean girl, because it was all the rage at the time. It was easy to find Josette, but the trouble was having to go to the Afro-Asian committee at Equity and plead that they give her a temporary card, because it was her first job. When we started the third series, we shot the second episode first, and I remember Vere with Josette, instructing her about television the first time on location: 'Now, dear, this is a two-shot; it's because there are two of you in it.'"
"We had looked everywhere," Vere Lorrimer continues, "because all the actresses we saw who might possibly suit the part were either too old - there's nothing wrong with being too old, but I always felt we wanted a "baby" in the show, a young person - and also, she had no ethnic accent, which was very advantageous to us. Not that I was against ethnic accents, but I did not want her to either sound like was from Liverpool, or alternatively have a strong American accent. We felt that we wanted it all sort of neutral, so you could concentrate, perhaps on the acting rather than her ethnic-background voice, and fitted absolutely everything. She not only turned out to be an excellent actress, but she was so successful that the Royal Shakespeare people have cast her in parts like Ophelia. She was good to look at and sweet to work with, and we all called her 'our baby'."
"I remember Vere and David going to see this show at RADA, and they both liked her," says Judith Smith. "Then there were the problems of, 'She hasn't got an Equity Card - how can we prove that this is the girl for the role?'" In order to get her a temporary Equity Card, they had to prove to Equity that no one else could play this role as well as Josette, and that meant seeing just about everybody in her age range; they just went through the whole shebang again. It must have taken at least six months, because they'd started filming for season three in August of seventy-nine, and Gareth had announced well before the end of season two's recording that he was leaving the series, so that all started before the transmission of the second series."
Dee Robson took over as the costume designer for series three and was responsible for the images of the two new cast members, Josette Simon and Steven Pacey, who played Dayna and Tarrant in the third and fourth series. "Steve and I sat down and talked, and decided to base his costume on the swashbuckling idea of pirates, Errol Flynn, the Barrymores and so forth. Josette was a novice, she was right out of drama school, and she was also the first black girl in the show to get a leading role. She was exquisitely beautiful, with the most amazing shape, and was wonderful to design for. She was the kind of person who would just put herself entirely in your hands. Because of the nature of the show, her clothes couldn't have too many trimmings. She started off as a slightly Grecian figure, Diana of the hunt, running down the beach, shooting an arrow, a wild free spirit who joined the rebels because the Federation killed her father. After that, we kept to fairly simple tight-fitting lines that stayed close to the body."
And in case anyone is wondering about Caribbean women being all the rage at the time, this song was Number One on UK and European charts during the summer of 1978.
To replace the characters of Blake and Jenna, David Maloney needed to cast two new members of the regular crew. Josette Simon was still at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when David considered casting her in the role of Dayna Mellany. "It was my idea to have a Caribbean girl, because it was all the rage at the time. It was easy to find Josette, but the trouble was having to go to the Afro-Asian committee at Equity and plead that they give her a temporary card, because it was her first job. When we started the third series, we shot the second episode first, and I remember Vere with Josette, instructing her about television the first time on location: 'Now, dear, this is a two-shot; it's because there are two of you in it.'"
"We had looked everywhere," Vere Lorrimer continues, "because all the actresses we saw who might possibly suit the part were either too old - there's nothing wrong with being too old, but I always felt we wanted a "baby" in the show, a young person - and also, she had no ethnic accent, which was very advantageous to us. Not that I was against ethnic accents, but I did not want her to either sound like was from Liverpool, or alternatively have a strong American accent. We felt that we wanted it all sort of neutral, so you could concentrate, perhaps on the acting rather than her ethnic-background voice, and fitted absolutely everything. She not only turned out to be an excellent actress, but she was so successful that the Royal Shakespeare people have cast her in parts like Ophelia. She was good to look at and sweet to work with, and we all called her 'our baby'."
"I remember Vere and David going to see this show at RADA, and they both liked her," says Judith Smith. "Then there were the problems of, 'She hasn't got an Equity Card - how can we prove that this is the girl for the role?'" In order to get her a temporary Equity Card, they had to prove to Equity that no one else could play this role as well as Josette, and that meant seeing just about everybody in her age range; they just went through the whole shebang again. It must have taken at least six months, because they'd started filming for season three in August of seventy-nine, and Gareth had announced well before the end of season two's recording that he was leaving the series, so that all started before the transmission of the second series."
Dee Robson took over as the costume designer for series three and was responsible for the images of the two new cast members, Josette Simon and Steven Pacey, who played Dayna and Tarrant in the third and fourth series. "Steve and I sat down and talked, and decided to base his costume on the swashbuckling idea of pirates, Errol Flynn, the Barrymores and so forth. Josette was a novice, she was right out of drama school, and she was also the first black girl in the show to get a leading role. She was exquisitely beautiful, with the most amazing shape, and was wonderful to design for. She was the kind of person who would just put herself entirely in your hands. Because of the nature of the show, her clothes couldn't have too many trimmings. She started off as a slightly Grecian figure, Diana of the hunt, running down the beach, shooting an arrow, a wild free spirit who joined the rebels because the Federation killed her father. After that, we kept to fairly simple tight-fitting lines that stayed close to the body."
And in case anyone is wondering about Caribbean women being all the rage at the time, this song was Number One on UK and European charts during the summer of 1978.
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I'm starting the series again after months (episode "Breakdown") and I'm feeling seriously guilty. I know that this series is a classic, that I shouldn't judge it with modern eyes, that the storytelling has changed profoundly in 40 years etc etc, but really, finishing an episode is a chore, not something that gives fun. When I saw that there were still 3 episodes left I felt really discouraged. I'm only going forward because I spent money on this set.
Fans of the series, forgive me, I'm now fighting with all my strength not to use fast forward because they've been discussing where to take poor Gan for TEN MINUTES TEN.
Fans of the series, forgive me, I'm now fighting with all my strength not to use fast forward because they've been discussing where to take poor Gan for TEN MINUTES TEN.
I don't have the energy to put my usual notes, I just want to say: the Blake 7 are involved in the death of innocent lives, and the episode ends with our heroes laughing in the best tradition of American TV shows from the 70s/80s.
I think it will be a few months before I see episode 11.
I think it will be a few months before I see episode 11.
If you get to Series C there's an even worse 'everybody died but let's all laugh' moment!!
Oddly Breakdown was popular when she show first aired, lord knows why, it's never been one of my favourites. Technically a Gan centric episode yet he spends most of it unconscious. There is some good stuff for Avon and Vila at least. Bit of a waste of Julian Glover mind you.
A classic example of the show taking half the episode's run time to get to the actual story and then not having enough time to do it justice.
Others milage may vary but I'd say the next three are better than this, in fact Bounty is one of my favourite episodes of the show. A rare episode that gives Cally something to do, really gives Jenna something to do and even throws in a female guest star who gets stuff to do!
Oddly Breakdown was popular when she show first aired, lord knows why, it's never been one of my favourites. Technically a Gan centric episode yet he spends most of it unconscious. There is some good stuff for Avon and Vila at least. Bit of a waste of Julian Glover mind you.
A classic example of the show taking half the episode's run time to get to the actual story and then not having enough time to do it justice.
Others milage may vary but I'd say the next three are better than this, in fact Bounty is one of my favourite episodes of the show. A rare episode that gives Cally something to do, really gives Jenna something to do and even throws in a female guest star who gets stuff to do!
I'll give them a try, thank you!
You know, I'm really trying to grading this show on a curve, but I can't magically become a viewer in the 70s who at most had Star Trek TOS and Space 1999 as references. More than enjoying these episodes it feels like an academic assignment. Sometimes I'm more interested in the costumes and sets than the actual story (but I genuinely liked two or three episodes!)
There are things I like about "Bounty," mainly the female guest star, but it has its problems too. Really, I wasn't crazy about any of the last several episodes of Series A.
I wanted to wrap up my ongoing Patreon review series with a ranking of all four seasons, but I found it hard to judge the seasons as unified entities, since they’re all uneven or flawed in their own ways. I concluded that if I had to rank them, it would be D, B, C, A, but there’s a lot of overlap, so it’s hard to say for sure.
Probably my fault for having too high expectations. But I mean, after years of hearing what a cult series Blake 7 was (with conventions and all)... As soon as I saw the Blu-Rays I rushed to get them!!
I really wish they would show viewers at least ONCE why the Liberator is seen as a terrifying war machine by the bad guys.
So far we've seen two battles in space:
1) In the first one the Liberator got away thanks to the intervention of the nebulous cosmic entity.
2) In the second one they ran away like hell.
In neither battle did the Liberator do any substantial damage to the opponents.
But the bad guys are always like "Oh no, Blake has an unstoppable killing machine at his disposal!!! What are we going to do!??!".
I swear I imagined the Liberator looking like this in battle (the grey and red ship - the bad guys are the green)
So far we've seen two battles in space:
1) In the first one the Liberator got away thanks to the intervention of the nebulous cosmic entity.
2) In the second one they ran away like hell.
In neither battle did the Liberator do any substantial damage to the opponents.
But the bad guys are always like "Oh no, Blake has an unstoppable killing machine at his disposal!!! What are we going to do!??!".
I swear I imagined the Liberator looking like this in battle (the grey and red ship - the bad guys are the green)
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In fairness in Duel Liberator's energy banks were almost depleted before the attack began and it's possible Blake's tactics may have worked, either Travis might have got out of the way or Liberator might have smashed through the pursuit ship, taking extensive damage for sure, but given Travis' ship would be destroyed and one of the other pursuit ships was dead in space because they'd expended all their power this would leave one pursuit ship to deal with, and given they'd lost Travis a lot would depend on the competency of that ship's commander (always assuming it had one rather than just a crew of Mutoids following Travis' instructions.)
Worth adding that for all it's advantages Liberator is just one ship and it can be outflanked quite easily. In fact given it's advantages it is in many ways better suited to hit and run attacks than a prolonged battle where it can be outmanoeuvred by superior numbers.
Series B and C see the Liberator take on much bigger odds on occasion.
Worth adding that for all it's advantages Liberator is just one ship and it can be outflanked quite easily. In fact given it's advantages it is in many ways better suited to hit and run attacks than a prolonged battle where it can be outmanoeuvred by superior numbers.
- Faster than anything else
- Force wall
- fantastic self repair system
- Teleport
- Zen
Series B and C see the Liberator take on much bigger odds on occasion.
on the subject of the Breakdown, on the Maxiumum Power podcast for the episode it's mentioned the goop the Liberator flies through in C-13 was originally planned for this episode.
I never got the impression that they were terrified of the Liberator, just desirous of its power and advancement. It's huge, it's alien tech, it's incredibly fast (which in itself requires enormous power), and they know from the London's report that it was the sole survivor of a massive space battle and that it has a very deadly, inexplicably advanced security system that Blake, Avon, and Jenna were somehow able to circumvent.
I looked over the Series A transcripts to see what the Federation thought of the Liberator. In "Seek-Locate-Destroy," the Federation councillors are more concerned about Blake's reputation and how any act of resistance is attributed to him, whether he's actually responsible for it or not. It's Servalan who mentions that "Blake has command of a superb space vehicle" -- not terrifying, just superb -- but she dismisses that as unimportant, because he's still just a man with a few followers. In "Project Avalon," Travis says he's been impeded in his pursuit of Blake by the Federation's orders that the Liberator be taken intact, which suggests covetousness of its advancement more than terror of its weaponry. If they were terrified of it, they'd want it destroyed at all costs. Instead, they see it as a prize whose acquisition is more important than killing Blake (though Travis disagrees).
I would say that in Series A and B, the Federation is more interested in Blake than in the Liberator.
It's only after the war and the decimation of Federation forces does acquiring the Liberator become a top priority for Servalan.
It's only after the war and the decimation of Federation forces does acquiring the Liberator become a top priority for Servalan.
I'm not sure. I think it's Project Avalon where Travis says he's had multiple chances to destroy Blake but the Federation's insistence on taking the Liberator intact has stopped him.
