Posted on 06/15/2018 11:54:31 AM PDT by mairdie
Blakes 7 was a wonderful British TV show, filled with excellent actors, that ran on BBC from 1978 to 1981. Sort of Robin Hood meets Star Trek, with their emblem being the Star Fleet emblem, turned askew. A band of outcasts led by a revolutionary leader take on an entire corrupt Federation. Hmmm.
B7 despite the cheesiness, was good.
I liked Kerr Avon the best.
I think Blake was the better actor, Avon’s eyes kept drifting to the camera, but Avon was DEFINITELY the better character. Complex and layered. Besides, he was adorable!
Old joke that still sticks with me.
“Blake’s 7 - a show that ends up being about 5 guys, known of whom are named Blake”
Never heard that. Really good!
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
So many great old musicals. Remember The Fantasticks?
Oh yes.
Never noticed either dude. Too busy droolin over Soolin, Glynis Barber.
I might have to download that series.
Currently i am almost done with Maverick, i was thinking UFO next.
Is Blakes 7 worth watching?
I have never seen it but Blakes 7 is supposed to be a “classic SciFi” series. I don’t know if that means much. Often things deemed “classic” are crap to my tastes!
LOVED Maverick!
Blakes 7 was, for me, one of the best shows ever on TV. I tend to be a compulsive fan and go pretty deeply into things. For B7, I ran a limited circulation letterzine where I only invited the best analyzers and artists to pull the show apart from top to bottom. We analyzed it as if it were Shakespeare, and it was Shakespearean tragedy. Watch it superficially and it does have the early Dr Who cheesiness. So what. I can take funny monsters. But many of the stories were deep and complicated for the time. I have about 100 B7 music videos because I use them for displaying aspects of a show, and B7 lent itself to continuous cuts through various aspects of the show or the characters.
So, YES!! It’s definitely worth watching.
I like depth and layers of meaning. One marvelous thing with B7 is that if you turn off the sound, as I do to find music video material, the characters ACT 180 degrees out of what they SAY they are. So Blake walks by people hurting, while Avon reaches out his hand. But each actor would tell you that Blake is the humanistic one while Avon doesn’t care. Because they’ll recite back the lines that they gave, not the character they actually performed on screen.
That might not be what brings you to a show. The first episode isn’t very exciting to me because, for me, the show is the conflict between Blake and Avon, and Avon doesn’t appear before episode 2. Even after Blake disappears for most of 2 years, the show is about Avon trying to find Blake and what his character becomes without Blake there as counterpoint.
Am I missing a season?! I thought the last episode had the Blake’s 7 crew beaming down with Orac and the good guys were trapped. Avon gave a cornered rat smile and lifted his gun. And we all knew that Avon was going to be killed next. End of series. Or was it?! Did Avon, Blake, Del Terrant, Gina, and the rest live on to fight and win?!
You missed nothing. Four seasons. But Paul Darrow bought rights to the series and really wanted to restart it. He did write a fairly poor book. MUCH fanwriting on what happened after the screen turned black. A favorite fantasy is that Servalan captured Avon and it goes on from there.
>>Avon gave a cornered rat smile and lifted his gun.
Actually, I think of Avon as being strangely suicidal. There are cases where he just stops dead and someone else, like Vila, has to rescue him. There is something so absolutely bizarre about the fact that Avon spends 2 years searching for Blake, then kills him when he thinks Blake has betrayed him - Avon’s signature issue. I see him coming out of the catatonia and doing suicide by cop. If he weren’t in that mental state, he would normally have just given up.
Yeah Gee, I can remember when Blake said that they would learn how to fly the ship and then they would go forth and defeat the Bad guys. And yet they played cat and mouse games with the Federation and passed up their chances to oft the evil gangster. She’s not just a common gangster. Reply from Avon,” know A Common Gangster is exactly what she is.” I have to think that Blake’s 7 was a prophecy of the future where the British are found to be incapable of taking back their country from the evils of totalitarian socialism. Though I did find that Gina had great looking clothing.
Blakes 7: A successful scifi show format that has been followed dozens of times since...
Blakes 7: A successful scifi show format that has been followed dozens of times since...
I try to remember..
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