Tag Archives: tv: blakes 7

Blake’s 7: Afterlife, by Tony Attwood

Posted on by
Reply

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Vila knew with a distressing certainty that Servalan had started the questioning with him because he was the one most likely to blurt out the truth. She had not threatened him. She had shown no anger, nor had she even suggested she was in a hurry. But then the questioning had only been going on for ten minutes, and after the first fifteen seconds Vila had told most of the truth. At the same time it had not escaped his thoughts that although Orac had given the advice to surrender it had singularly failed to inform Avon how to arrange the escape in two days’ time. The galaxy was, he decided, making less sense every day.

I had read this book years ago – maybe not quite as soon as it came out in 1984, the week after my 17th birthday, but certainly before I had left Cambridge in 1990. Like the other Blake’s 7 books, I picked it up at Gallifrey One, appropriately enough, my previous copy being long lost. Tony Attwood also wrote Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, the first in a forgotten series of three 1980s Doctor Who spinoff novels.

The premise here is that Vila and Avon both survived the massacre on Gauda Prime, Vila by ducking in time and Avon because he was captured and then abandoned. They reunite under the guidance of the glamorous Korell, who may or may not be a double agent for Servalan, and make their way back to both Terminal and Earth to attack the Federation where it hurts. It’s not particularly epic – one other member of the Seven reappears and then gets killed rather abruptly – but it satisfies the itch to know what might have come next if any of them had survived. If you really want more Blake’s 7, I refer you to the Big Finish audios.

Una McCormack asks if I am going to read Paul Darrow’s novel about Avon’s early life next. The answer is yes.

You can get Blake’s 7: Afterlife here (for a considerable higher price than I paid for it).

The three Blake’s 7 novelisations

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter of Blake’s 7: Their First Adventure:

Not a moment too soon, Vila Restal told himself, as the man’s eyelids fluttered and he started to come round. Affecting a look of concern, Vila lightly slapped the man’s face, leaning over him in the manner of an anxious friend.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Blake’s 7: Project Avalon:

Cally’s head was held rigidly in position so that she could only stare straight up into the pitch blackness. She was aware of movement, of murmuring voices. A face loomed over her, garish shadows thrown upwards making a black slash of the mouth, the nostrils broad and flared, and a single slitted eye gazing down. The eye regarded her as it might a specimen in a test-tube, then looked away into the outer darkness.

Second paragraph of third chapter of Blake’s 7: Scorpio Attack:

He didn’t reckon much to the ship. An obsolete class of cargo freighter by the look of it, and judging by the fixtures and fittings long overdue for the breaker’s yard. But if-what was the name he’d seen on the peeling hull? Scorpio? – if Scorpio had brought Dorian to the planet, presumably she could lift them off it. Yesterday wouldn’t be too soon for him.

I picked these up at Gallifrey One, a few years back. There’s no need to write too much about them. The first two are novelisations of four episodes each from the first series of Blake’s 7; the third covers three episodes of the fourth series. (What has happened to Blake, Jenna, Gan and the Liberator in the meantime is not explained.) Hoyle, who wrote some memorable stuff in his own right, hasn’t tried too hard for innovation here, simply turning the TV scripts into fairly vivid – though very male gaze-y – prose. In the days before home video, this was the closest we could get to re-experiencing the stories as broadcast, and I must admit it brought back a smile or two.

The books are not difficult to acquire. You can get Their First Adventure here, Project Avalon here and Scorpio Attack (a bit rarer) here.

Blake’s Seven: Scorpio Attack was both the shortest unread book that I acquired in 2023, and the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on those piles respectively are Christopher Priest: The Interaction, ed. Andrew M. Butler, and Agents, Adepts and Apprentices, by Kathryn Sullivan.

Liberation: The Unoffical and Unauthorised Guide to Blake’s 7, by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore

Posted on by

Second paragraph of chapter on third episode (“Cygnus Alpha”):

“Cygnus Alpha” gives us our third iteration of a totalitarian society (in this case, a theocratic one), demonstrating that, even on the outskirts of civilisation, oppression persists. We have surveillance, both human and divine; we have social control which is as much by the individual as by the state the prisoners are not being held against their will and, when offered freedom by Blake, most choose to stay, simply because it seems the easier option); we have state-sanctioned torture and abuse (and, upon seeing Blake’s condition after torture, Arco blames the victim, telling Blake that he should have stayed out of trouble); we have control using drugs (in the form of Vargas’s Big Lie, that the drugs consumed in the religious ceremonies keep them alive; we have guards who attack Blake in a scene reminiscent of the flashbacks in “The Way Back”. Sexual abuse is not mentioned, but we do have sex as an agent of social control: while Kara is visibly attracted to Gan, her kissing him seems to be as much a way of getting the most powerful man in the new group on her side as anything.

A comprehensive episode-by-episode guide to Blake’s 7, with each season introduced with notes on the overall production context, and clear opinions about which are the best and worst stories. Originally published in 2003, so before Big Finish started to produce audios featuring the surviving members of the original crew (and then their replacements), but an appendix covers the spinoff novels, plays and audios up to that point. I don’t agree with all the judgements – I have a sneaking affection, for instance, for “City at the Edge of the World”, while on the other hand I found the skeevy gender politics of the three episodes by Ben Steed unredeemable. However it’s good to have a chunky reference volume to pore over.

You can get Liberation here (for a price).

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest on my unread shelves. Next on that pile is Mantel Pieces, by Hilary Mantel.

Blake’s 7: The Way Forward, and The Classic Adventures Series 01

Posted on by

Housekeeping point: I spent the last two weeks mainly commuting to work by car rather than by train, so my blogging has caught up with my reading backlog. This week I’m going to write up my recent audio listening instead of bookblogging. Normal service will resume at some point.

Absolutely ages back I listened to a few of the Big Finish Blake’s 7 audios (here, here and here). Around the start of this year I got a couple of full cast stories: the 40th anniversary The Way Forward, from 2018, and the first series in BF’s sequence of Classic Adventures of B7, released in 2014.

I probably listened to them in the wrong order: the absence of Gareth Thomas, who died in 2016, from the first half of the 2018 The Way Ahead is palpable. It’s a two parter centring around the character Avalon (from the episode Project: Avalon), the first part set during Series A and the second during Series C. Avalon herself and Dayna have been recast (Olivia Poulet and Yasmin Bannerman), and Glynis Barber plays Soolin’s daughter rather than Soolin for rights-related reasons, but everyone else is there – Paul Darrow as Avon, Michael Keating as Vila Restal, Sally Knyvette as Jenna, Jan Chappell as Cally, Steven Pacey as Tarrant, Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan and Stephen Greif as Travis. It’s a cracking script by Mark Wright and a great nostalgia fest. You can get it here.

Series One of the Classic Adventures certainly gave me the appetite for more. It starts with an excellent psychodrama, Fractures by the ever reliable Justin Richards (who has written more Doctor Who books and stories than anyone else alive, I think); and then goes into a sequence of five tightly linked stories by different writers, Andres Smith, Mark Platt, Peter Anghelides and the last two by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. Gareth Thomas was still alive in 2014 and gives his best here, along with the aforementioned Paul Darrow, Michael Keating (who gets a particularly good Vila plotline), Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette, with Brian Croucher as Travis this time, and Hugh Fraser coming in at the end as the tremendously nasty President of the Federation. This is six hours of top-notch drama for (in my country) €25, incredible value. You can get it here.