Yes, the sets wobbled with tedious regularity – but they did on Doctor Who as well, and that’s one of the most popular shows in the world. The consoles also wobbled. So did the shelves, the scenery and the spaceships. And sometimes bits fell off as well.
The cast often fluffed their lines or came in too early or couldn’t get the props to work, and in one episode – ‘Trial’ – a BBC worker’s toolbox was visible on the set during a scene.
In the exterior location scenes, you could often see camera dolly tracks in the dirt!
Making its television debut on BBC 1 on 2 January 1978 – the night that Star Wars blazed across the cinema screens of London for the first time – Blake’s 7 was the BBC’s attempt to present to the viewing public a serious homegrown science fiction adventure series.
The BBC intended that Blake’s 7 would in some respects be a replacement for one of their police drama series, Softly, Softly: Task Force, which had ended after eight seasons in December 1976.
That series was produced at a rate of one in just under two weeks, using a mixture of filming on location (for outdoor scenes, fights or other special sequences) and then one or two days recording in a videotape studio at BBC Television Centre. This production schedule would be inherited by Blake’s 7.
Set in the ‘third century of the second calendar’, the series presented the grimly depressing central premise of an Earth under the yoke of a near-omnipotent, brutally totalitarian government known as The Federation.
Ruthlessly crushing all attempts at individual freedom and creative endeavour, the Federation controlled its populace using air and water-administered tranquillising drugs and the immediate elimination of any and all dissidents through murder or sentencing them to exile to an off-world penal colony for crimes of which they were innocent.
Utilising just such a fabricated charge – in this instance, child molestation (a daring move at the time) – the Federation disposes of Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas), former hero and leader of the underground resistance movement.
Blake manages to start a revolt whilst on the prison ship carrying him and a fresh group of criminals to their life of servitude on prison planet Cygnus Alpha, ultimately escaping along with a small group of fellow prisoners aboard a technologically advanced, abandoned alien spaceship, which they dub the Liberator.
From this point, writer Terry Nation (co-creator of Doctor Who‘s most notorious monsters, the Daleks and the sombre, serious post-apocalyptic drama series Survivors), began the slow development of the character and his band of mismatched fellow escapee’s into a reworked, futuristic version of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, with the Federation cast in the role of King John’s tyrannical forces.
The series’ original seven were Blake himself; the duplicitous and self-serving hacker and embezzler Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow); full-time thief and accomplished coward Vila Restal (Michael Keating); the gentle giant Olag Gan (David Jackson, pictured below) who had seen his home planet of Zephron destroyed by the Federation (and killed several of its raiders in its defence); beautiful smuggler and space pilot Jenna Stannis (Sally Knyvette); Cally (Jan Chappell), a tough combat expert with telepathic powers from Saurian Major; and Zen – the ship’s near-sentient computer.
Throughout its run, the core cast underwent a number of changes.
The character of Blake himself departed (when Gareth Thomas opted to pursue other career avenues after completing his contracted 26 episodes of Blake’s 7) to be replaced by the far less charismatic standard hero character of mercenary Del Tarrant (Steven Pacey).
The giant Gan and telepath Cally were both killed off, and Jenna left the Liberator. Two new female characters took their places – weapons expert Dayna Mellanby (Josette Simon) and blonde gunslinger Soolin (Glynis Barber).
Rounding out the new team were the non-human forms of the smugly superior mini-supercomputer, Orac, and – following the destruction of the Liberator at the climax of season three – the introduction of the far less imaginatively designed replacement ship Scorpio – an interstellar cargo ship and Mark II Planet Hopper of the Wanderer Class – and its obsequious onboard computer, Slave (based on the character of Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield).
With Blake no longer at the head of the outlawed band, Darrow’s Avon character emerged as the natural successor to Blake’s vacated leadership.
Now, with a cynical anti-hero in control, the war against the Federation took on a much darker, less noble aspect.
This change of direction led to a much more intimate small-scale style of warfare between the two opposing forces, the chief highlight of which was the complex and ambiguous love/hate relationship between Avon and the physical embodiment of the Federation, Servalan – an almost high camp performance from Jacqueline Pearce, which nevertheless demonstrated the character’s cold-blooded insanity to sometimes chilling effect.
Servalan (pictured below) put the opera into space-opera with increasingly architectural costumes and a performance that puts all other divas to shame.
A textbook sociopath who would destroy a planet to advance her ambitions and happily use sex as a weapon, she rose through Federation ranks to become President. Sadly, her empire collapsed soon after.
She could never work out if she would rather kill or kiss Avon, and spent a lot of time and energy attempting to do both.
Although Terry Nation also departed the series, the ratings were still steady and several later episodes were still well written – with the final story of the series, entitled simply ‘Blake’, arguably one of its strongest, finest and certainly most controversial.
The end came on the evening of 21 Monday December 1981. By 8.10 pm, more than ten million viewers had watched in shock and disbelief as the heroes they had followed faithfully for four years were cut down in a hail of Federation gunfire, whilst the returning Blake was himself killed by Avon.
With no reassuring announcement that the show would return, BBC1 simply got on with the rest of its evening schedule. Blake’s 7 was over.
Concerned viewers writing to the BBC in the aftermath received a letter simply explaining that all good things come to an end, but also pointing out that there was no blood on the Scorpio crew as they fell.
The letter encouraged viewers to value the nobler aspects of the series before bidding a fond goodbye from all the characters and the production team.
Glynis Barber found further television fame starring in the BBC’s stylised adaptation of the comic strip Janeand the LWT action series Dempsey and Makepeace, where she met her future husband, co-star Michael Brandon.
Steven Pacey starred in the sitcom Troubles and Strifeand concentrated on a wide range of theatre work.
Josette Simon found much success with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, where she won several prestigious drama awards.
Her television work included the educational Pob’s Programme.
Jacqueline Pearce’s career after Blake’s 7 was hampered by a period of poor health, until she returned to acting with the film White Mischief and television shows including Dark Seasonand Moondial.
She died in September 2018 after being diagnosed with lung cancer. She was 74.
Gareth Thomas found further success in the BBC drama serial Morgan’s Boyand appeared regularly in London’s Burningas well as pursuing a varied stage career.
He died in April 2016 from heart failure, aged 71.
Paul Darrow concentrated on theatre work, including shows made by his own theatre company, and his principal television work was in the newsroom drama Making News.
Guests who appeared in Blake’s 7 over its four-year run included Brian Blessed, Carol Hawkins, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover, T.P. McKenna, Ronald Lacey, Colin Baker, Valentine Dyall, Roy Kinnear, Lynda Bellingham, Stratford Johns, Gillian Bailey, and Harry Fielder.
Roj Blake
Gareth Thomas
Kerr Avon
Paul Darrow
Vila Restal
Michael Keating
Jenna Stannis
Sally Knyvette
Cally
Jan Chappell
Olag Gan
David Jackson
Orac/Slave
Peter Tuddenham
Zen
Peter Tuddenham
Supreme Cmdr. Servalan/Commissioner Sleer
Jacqueline Pearce
Dayna Mellanby
Josette Simon
Del Tarrant
Steven Pacey
Soolin
Glynis Barber
Cmdr. Travis
Stephen Greif (1)
Brian Croucher (2)
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The cast often fluffed their lines or came in too early or couldn’t get the props to work, and in one episode – ‘Trial’ – a BBC worker’s toolbox was visible on the set during a scene.
With Blake no longer at the head of the outlawed band, Darrow’s Avon character emerged as the natural successor to Blake’s vacated leadership.
The end came on the evening of 21 Monday December 1981. By 8.10 pm, more than ten million viewers had watched in shock and disbelief as the heroes they had followed faithfully for four years were cut down in a hail of Federation gunfire, whilst the returning Blake was himself killed by Avon.
Glynis Barber found further television fame starring in the BBC’s stylised adaptation of the comic strip Jane and the LWT action series Dempsey and Makepeace, where she met her future husband, co-star Michael Brandon.
She died in September 2018 after being diagnosed with lung cancer. She was 74.
