Blake's 7 Remake In the Works 212
bowman9991 writes "Remember the BBC's Blake's 7? Looks like the classic space adventure series is being reworked by Sky One. If they get it right (like the recent Battlestar Galactica revamp), this one has massive potential. 'As part of a drive to invest more in homegrown drama, Sky One has ordered scripts for two 60-minute pilot episodes. If successful, it will be expanded into a six-part series.' Created by Terry Nation, the man responsible for the Daleks in Doctor Who, Blake's 7 ran from 1978 to 1981 and had cult appeal. The effects were average, but the story and characters were compelling."
can hardly wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
I moseyed on over to the BBC website [bbc.co.uk] in hopes of a NBC, ABC or even Comedy Central style of ad based hosting. No luck. I couldn't download and install the iPlayer either. I realized that cost Brits a pretty pound to produce so no hard feelings there. But there wasn't a low quality flash version for me. None. Nothing. I cannot figure out how to enjoy this programme legally.
Their site has two questions in their FAQ in regard to this:
The BBC uses Geo-IP technology to identify where your are based on the location of your internet service provider (ISP). This ensures that only internet users in the UK can enjoy programmes on BBC iPlayer.
If you download a programme to your laptop or a portable hard drive, you can watch this wherever you are in the world. However, you will only be able to download new programmes once you return to the UK.
Rights agreements mean that BBC iPlayer television programmes are only available to users to download or stream (Click to Play) in the UK. However, BBC Worldwide is working on an international version, which we will make available as soon as possible.
Radio programmes are available outside the UK in addition to podcasts at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/ [bbc.co.uk]. ÂMany BBC News programmes are available for viewers outside the UK at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/video_and_audio/default.stm [bbc.co.uk] and BBC Sport highlights are available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport [bbc.co.uk].
Do make sure you check for news on BBC iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk].
Re:The effects were 'average'? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, it did look pretty cool. I just hope they don't do what they've done with Doctor Who, try and upgrade the special effects and some of the original character of the series. New Doctor Who is very hit and miss, depending on who writes a particular episode, and reeks of just trying to hard.
The fact is, UK productions will never be able to match the budget of US productions so we can't expect to produce the same standard of special effects. Trying to inevitably fails and, to make things worse, usually causes the story, character and humour to suffer.
This is apparent to me every Sunday morning, when I watch Doctor Who on iPlayer back to back with a torrented episode of Battlestar Galactica. Makes me wonder why so many Americans love Doctor Who.
Re:Good Luck Watching It Outside the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Same reason as the BBC; they licence by region.
Really, it's a losing battle. Everyone I know who enjoys BBC shows grabs them from torrents as they come out then picks up the DVD sets when they get released. Most of us don't even bother watching the North American broadcast if it even gets one. Not only do they tend to be six months to a year behind but they are also edited. The BBC doesn't have advertisements like our TV does so when they get broadcast over here they have to be cut for time to make more room for the commercials. Also the occasional content or swear word.
For anyone who likes Doctor Who it is particularly bad. They had to cut an entire B plot from last season along with many, many character scenes. It's great on the forums. Every once in a while you get a new poster who can't figure out what the hell everyone else is talking about and it usually comes out that they have only seen the American cut.
Blake/servalan/avon (Score:2, Interesting)
In Blakes 7, however, while there are monsters of the week, and problems are solved with guns, The drama depended upon the characters and the actors ability to convey tension. At first this was Blake and Avalon, and then we were lucky and go Servalan. A magical ship flying around the universe would not be as interesting if it were a simple military order. I suspect there are few females who can look dangerous in an evening gown. The show had it's reprieve when it was allowed to continued after series two. It was given a honorable end when all major characters that were not dead died in the correct fashion and in the correct order, most critically by the death of Blake at the hands of you know who. I know that deaths were left ambiguous in case the show continued, but for me it was the end, as poignant as Black Adder Goes Forth.
There must be a new idea somewhere in TV land. I fear this will ruin a perfectly happy, though corny, idea, just like the Bionic Women is now ruined. And it will be the same reason. Trying to send in a child to do an adult's job.
Re:The effects were 'average'? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's what made it good, it was it experimental drama at the time and I think the BBC gave the crew a long leash to play about. An interesting programme partly because of the story of Blake which had to written around real life events. Gareth Thomas was an actor from the RSC (same schooling as Patrick Stewart - and my cousin knew him enough to nod to). AFAIK, though this may be rubbish, the story was something like Gareth did the pilot/first episode then fell out with the writers, didn't like the story/scripts or whatever. He came back at the end to do the final episode.
The characters (not the actors) hated one another. And several new actors joined/left in the short run.
There were no heros in Blakes 7. Everyone was faulted and mostly they were nasty people.
It's a story of criminals, theives, terrorists and a fascict Federation. Possibly inspired by Lucas' Empire in Star Wars.
Even Blake, the heroic namesake eventually sells out the crew.
There's a conspicuous absence of moralising in it - complete opposite of Star Trek
They had a lot of derivative plot devices and were obviously sci-fi geeks who understood the genre history, like the interracial kiss (Trekies will understand the significance of this) which they actually made quite sexy.
There were some original ideas. Teleport bracelets seemed a nice plausible device and added some script potential.
As mentioned above, the Liberator design was really something cool.
I hope Sky don't massacre it. As an old sci-fi nerd who watched them all I expect something along the lines of The Sopranos in space if they are to do it well and grasp the original ethos.
Why the frickin' remake frenzy? (Score:5, Interesting)
But this remake frenzy, why? After a while, nostalgia just ain't what it used to be. Galactica died an early death and so I can understand the urge to see it again. The current effort's been a mixed bag, some are in love with it and some are just shaking their heads wondering what RDM was smoking when he came up with that shit. But please, where are the new ideas?
When Babylon 5 came about, JMS didn't say "Ok, so I'm going to rip off Star Trek and put it on a space station." Hell, no. He said "Look, I'm going to borrow a bunch of shit from the best brains in the field, I'm going to mortar those bricks together with a bunch of my own ideas and then I'm going to put something on the screen that nobody's ever seen before outside of a novel." And sure enough, that's just what he did. Firefly was the same way.
I guess what the suits are thinking is "hey, this concept was good enough to get the greenlight decades ago, maybe we'll be able to make money with it now. Certainly less risky than trying to do anything completely original, right?"
I can't wait until we can start financing this stuff directly, no more need to involve fuckhead suits. Pull 10,000 geeks together on the net and we can back the damn project, $20 at a time.
Re:Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plenty of parallels between Firefly and B7. Indeed Firefly might have done better had it been made outside of the US, especially considering the amount of character development involved.
Stationed in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
I was stationed in the UK with the USAF and caught the last 2 seasons of B7. I loved it. Sure, the production value wasn't great, but I loved the dark characters, especially Darrow's Avon. These weren't the clean white knights of some quest, these were the gritty, angst riddent, heavily flawed humans. There were no clearly the white knight hero, but there was clearly one single evil, Servilan. God, for the longest time, anyone mentioned "clip haired bitch" I would picture her.
When the show ended with the dreamscape shoot out, I was among the thousands that sent in a plea to continue the show. Even offering a way out of the apparent slaughter of all the crew.
Now, I appreciate the killing off of major characters for the sake of the story. Love "MI-5" ("Spooks"), "Life on Mars" (oh, isn't there a 80's follow on to "Life on Mars"?), and "Torchwood". But, can't stand the new "Robin Hood" with ninjas, an arab female version of Wesley Crusher, and way too much modern crud.
Wrong show to do this with (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a very different situation from BSG, where the original was a good idea that was undone by pretty relentlessly cheesy aesthetics and a sense of writing that often did leave something to be desired. BSG aged poorly and rapidly. A re-imagining thus made sense there, because there was room to work and stuff to jettison as well as keep. It was possible to make a new BSG that a fan could look at and say "Wow, that's better than the original." Not all fans did, but a lot did, and that's significant.
That's going to be very, very hard to do with B7. Frankly, it'll be hard to get a casual fan to say that, little yet a hard core one.
And the other route for a SF revival - the Doctor Who/Star Trek:TNG route where you just continue in-continuity from where the old one left off is, as the article notes, closed to B7.
Making this a poor property to revive.
Remade by Sky... (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they actually made anything worthwhile before?
Re:The effects were 'average'? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm American, and I love Doctor Who because of the stories and the quirky British feel of the whole thing. I'm not sure any other culture could have come up with a series that bounces between funny, sad, and surreal constantly throughout an episode and doesn't fall on its face.
There have been one or two episodes I thought were weak, but that's true of any series. I wouldn't complain if the effects were better, but they're not a critical flaw any more than a stage play is critically flawed because the sets aren't good enough to use for a feature film.
Re:Blake/servalan/avon (Score:4, Interesting)
Half of the last season was the build up to and trial of former President Gaius Baltar, Ph.D
The main bad-guy for the current season is President Laura Roslin.
Re:Remade by Sky... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Average? (Score:3, Interesting)
No chance. "State of the art" at the time was moving the camera instead of having the flimsy spaceship models moving around on sticks. They clearly did not move the cameras, because that would be a very smooth gliding movement, not the horrible wobble you see in the series. Another thing that struck me was how awful some of the matte paintings were. There's a backdrop in "Voices From The Past" that looks like a 3-year old's finger painting. It was all down to the crappy BBC budget I suppose. It's a shame, because the design of the Liberator is very nice.
Re:Average? (Score:1, Interesting)
Avon (Paul Darrow) did a very good job I thought.
I can remember coming across them one boring afternoon, and mirthily-making-the-yellow-water-in-my-pants at how totally amateurish the whole shebang was.
There was one sequence where the Dayna character's gun sight on her pistol had been bent at a 45 degree angle (after a bit of bad holstering, no doubt), but they carried on filming as if nowt had happened..interrupting the scene to retake a couple of fluffed lines, only, I think, because they were being filmed by the OU crew.
As commented elsewhere, it was so low a budget, I don't think they'd dare have retaken anything lest the BBC beancounters descended upon them in all their pinstriped Opera an' Proms an' Archers lovin' wrath..
Some of the acting was ham (Mr Darrow, take a bow!), some of it poor, some of it just plain wrong...despite it's flaws, in both the acting and SFX, maybe even because of them, it was enjoyable.
Re:Average? (Score:1, Interesting)
But it was most striking and carefully modelled in the character of Avon, superficially a ruthless rationalist with an eye only for his own interest. But beneath the cynicism Avon does care about the others, only, as he points out at one time, "I have never understood why it is necessary to be irrational to prove that you care, or indeed why it is necessary to prove it at all." He later spends three seasons looking for Blake, the leader he pretends to despise.
Of course, one of the attractions of Blake's 7 was and is its sarcastic humour. "This is Vila. I really should introduce him to you now. He's at his best when he is unconscious."
Re:The effects were 'average'? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you'll take a look, you'll see that the Federation symbol in Blake is the Trek communicator turned on it's side. That's because it's roughly based on the Trek Federation gone bad. Instead of everybody works together, you have constant backstabbing; instead of electric razors that stun, you have cattle prods that kill.
You know you're an old nerd when... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your two home computers are called 'orac' and 'zen' :)
I remember that one of the very few occassions as a youngster that I was allowed to stay up 'late' was to watch Blakes 7 on the TV. Fortunately my Mum was into Sci-Fi so she used to let me stay up past my bed-time to watch it. It was usually on an hour or so after Doctor Who had finished, so it used to be a double dose of Sci-fi goodness. Watched the first episode of Blakes again a year or so ago and my god has it aged! I am not really sure a re-make is a good idea - I think it may just ruin the memory.