Blake's 7 on Blu-ray!

[DarrenTR1970]

I think the miniature footage of the rocket was recycled from Doctor Who, but I'm not sure from where.

I looked through my book to see if there was any mention of reusing footage from Dr. Who buy couldn't find any.

However, the production crew did reuse a lot of costumes and props from Dr. Who as well as several other BBC productions including historical dramas for some of the costumes/uniforms that the cast wore.

 

[Marc]

Also, they're reusing the space pod from "Time Squad,"

Which would mean it got got 3 appearances the third being in Countdown.

 

[JD]

Why not? It's a power plant like any other. The parts of it inhabited by humans aren't exposed to radiation or radioactive material, since power plant designers are not stupid and obviously would design the plants to keep the human-occupied areas well away from those things. Nuclear power is the second-safest energy source in the world, on a par with wind and solar. As the following chart shows, the death rate from coal power plants is literally a thousand times higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Energy_Production_Death_Rates_per_TWh.png

My surprise applies to any power plant, not just a nuclear one, I had just always assumed that any power plant would only let in people who absolutely needed to be there for the place to run, and anybody else wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it at all.

People are very bad at risk assessment. They fear new, unfamiliar things that aren't really that dangerous, while being blase about everyday things that kill people all the time, like traffic accidents. People's historic fear of nuclear power comes more from that unfamiliarity than from any real threat. Yes, on those very rare cases when a nuclear plant suffers a catastrophic failure, it can be very dangerous, but that's why they're carefully designed to minimize the risk, so on a day-to-day level they're much safer than a coal power plant.

Honestly, I'd probably be more shocked by people filming at an active coal power plant than a nuclear one. "Hey everybody, let's go get lung cancer!"

As far as health and safety are concerned, TV and film productions have shot in far more dangerous places. There was an episode of The Middleman where they shot in a decaying, abandoned factory full of asbestos, and the cast and crew were advised not to touch anything.

Yikes, I was not aware of that. No thank you.

 

[Set Harth]

There was an episode of The Middleman where they shot in a decaying, abandoned factory full of asbestos, and the cast and crew were advised not to touch anything.

Unfortunately just being there and breathing the air would be the problem.

 

[Christopher]

My surprise applies to any power plant, not just a nuclear one, I had just always assumed that any power plant would only let in people who absolutely needed to be there for the place to run, and anybody else wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it at all.

A power plant is a big place. Most of the shooting was just in corridors and such. Although I have seen power plant control rooms used as filming locations.

I don't think power plants necessarily need to be active 24/7. There are multiple power plants on the grid, and occasionally one goes down for maintenance or whatever and the other plants take the load.

 

[JD]

I guess that makes sense, and it's not as bad if it was just corridors and things like that. I've never seen the episode, so I was picturing them running around doing big shootouts and action scenes in the middle of all the generators.

 

[Christopher]

Hydroelectric dams are popular filming locations, usually on the exterior, but you sometimes see filming around the turbines.

Anyway, shootouts probably aren't an issue, since screen pyrotechics are more harmless than they look. I'm often surprised by how often Japanese tokusatsu series film fight scenes in the Oya History Museum, a historic underground quarry often used to represent caverns, ruins, temples, evil lairs, and the like. I've seen them use pyrotechnics and drive vehicles in the caves, and apparently the museum operators are fine with it, so presumably they take the necessary precautions.

 

[diankra]

My surprise applies to any power plant, not just a nuclear one, I had just always assumed that any power plant would only let in people who absolutely needed to be there for the place to run, and anybody else wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it at all.

Honestly, I'd probably be more shocked by people filming at an active coal power plant than a nuclear one. "Hey everybody, let's go get lung cancer!"

Yikes, I was not aware of that. No thank you.

My dad worked for the CEGB before privatisation, designed a lor of power plants. The power source (nuclear, hydro, coal) has little effect on the rest of it.

 

[diankra]

A power plant is a big place. Most of the shooting was just in corridors and such. Although I have seen power plant control rooms used as filming locations.

I don't think power plants necessarily need to be active 24/7. There are multiple power plants on the grid, and occasionally one goes down for maintenance or whatever and the other plants take the load.

Yep, before dad retired they had to-the-second schedules, as during Corrie ad breaks demand surged as people put on kettles and went to the loo (causing pumping stations to turn on).
So off time was scheduled to miss peak demand.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

From my Behind the Scenes book Page 38

It isn’t often that a cast member objects to a particular location being used, but when the Blake’s 7 crew returned to Oldbury-on-Severn Nuclear Power Station at the beginning of the second series to shoot scenes for ‘Redemption’, Jan Chappell was less than pleased. “We actually worked on the top of the core in the power station,” recalls David Maloney. “Jan was very early to be alerted to the problems of radioactivity, and said she didn’t want to do it again, that we shouldn’t film there, and I looked into it, and thought, ‘no we shouldn’t’. The power station people were delighted to have us film there, because it showed everyone how safe nuclear power was, but, in retrospect, it could have been dangerous. Jan had it written into her contract that she didn’t film in any nuclear power stations, and I admire her for that.”​

 

[diankra]

My surprise applies to any power plant, not just a nuclear one, I had just always assumed that any power plant would only let in people who absolutely needed to be there for the place to run, and anybody else wouldn't be allowed anywhere near it at all.

Honestly, I'd probably be more shocked by people filming at an active coal power plant than a nuclear one. "Hey everybody, let's go get lung cancer!"

Yikes, I was not aware of that. No thank you.

Reportedly, John Wayne and the cast of Dad's Army all had ill effects from stuff they'd breathed during shooting (in the latter case the end title battleground sequence). That might be an urban myth.

 

[Starkers]

I don't think the John Wayne link is an urban myth as such, it relates to filming of The Conqueror in 1956. A large number of the cast and crew developed cancer and many died. There's never been a definitive link made between the location filming and the incidence of cancer but there appears to be strong evidence there could be a connection.

As for Chappell, worth remembering that she was 12 years old when Windscale happened (I believe the worst nuclear disaster until Three Mile Island).

Talking of Three Mile Island, that accident happened just a few weeks after Series B of Blakes 7 finished filming. Whatever side of the fence you come down on, for Jan in 1979 I imagine that incident just reinforced to her that she'd made the right call!

 

[Christopher]

Reportedly, John Wayne and the cast of Dad's Army all had ill effects from stuff they'd breathed during shooting (in the latter case the end title battleground sequence). That might be an urban myth.

It's true that 41% of the cast and crew of John Wayne's epic Genghis Khan turkey The Conqueror developed cancer after filming downwind of a nuclear test site, including Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, and Lee Van Cleef. It's unproven whether the filming site was the cause, since most of them were heavy smokers, but Moorehead was a nonsmoker, and plenty of other film crews at the time had equally high smoking rates with nowhere near as high a cancer rate.

The Conqueror (1956 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But of course, there's a huge difference between an aboveground nuclear bomb testing site, where radioactive fallout contaminates the surface, and a nuclear reactor, where the radioactive material is carefully contained and leaks are exceedingly rare. In the 1950s, they didn't understand the dangers yet, but things were different by the 1970s.

 

[Qonundrum]

And now, I'm back, with a new B7 episode, Deliverance!!!

WOOHOO!

• A space station! Rotating! ...wait, if they have artificial gravity, why do they have a rotating station like '2001'?

And where they got that clip of the rotating station from? B7's first season was so tight in budget, a lot of which was put to the main Liberator set (which, based on the documentaries and other extras, had been punted around badly.)

• My favorite bad girl! Following dots on a screen!

• Now we're on a shuttle! The pilot informs us that since they're passing close to a certain planet, they're on the right path to their destination! I must say, navigating space is peculiar to the B7 universe.

No much of an argument here. 2D grids to chart out 3D space (what sort of weird scale are they using) do oversimplify things, but - akin to sea travel, perhaps, looking up at the right time of day (sun position) night (constellations, predictable in location per year anyhow) to see a star is something ancient sea-faring humans did to know they were on course. That said, outer space being much larger, reference points do require a lot more work and mapping. But if I arrived near a recognizable planet and, having remembered the course set on my journey, it does narrow things down. Where would we be without computers the moment space travel is actually feasible?

• But wait! The planet's gravity is pulling them in! Oh no, the pilot passed too close!!! ...what?!?

Probably a leftover from 60s sci-fi, like Doctor Who, where the Ice Warriors followed a satellite beam that directed them to the sun instead of the moon and they somehow couldn't change course to get free of the sun's gravitational pull... (due to limited fuel, of course... but at infra-luminal speed, that ship will still take a while to get there if nothing else... what would the Ice Warriors do for all those months before slowly being barbecued...)

• Now the shuttle explodes!!!!! My favorite sadist smiles sadistically. Of course she has something to do with it!!!

• And for the first time, we see the planet's inhabitants, who look like some kind of NeanderthBWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWA, sorry, I had to pause the episode. I know everyone there was doing their best, but these primitive-like people were just too ridiculous!

Yeah, the season 1 budget was impressive for its miniscule nature, but the inhabitants don't really do it for me either. I recall the story's pacing being a tad slower than usual as well.

• The Liberator just so happens to be in that area. It's amazing how small the Galaxy is in B7. I have neighbors I don't see for months, but our heroes are always in the right place at the right time!

B7's opening credits and various f/x shots show an impossible number of planets that Liberator whizzes past (and not to scale, ouch!) As stories don't have a consistency regarding the sense of space, even the otherwise magnificent "Duel" has Travis stating other patrols managed to prod Blake "into this galaxy", which opened up a slow of questions and later a lot more as otherwise the Terran Federation feels as if it's only got a small part of our galaxy and not across multiple galaxies...

• Our heroes descend on the planet and immediately split up, like in the best horror movies!

Terry Nation could often make the tropiest of tropes tropied more interesting, but he was definitely wearing out having just written the bulk of the season, with script editor Chris Boucher increasingly having to fill in plot gaps. It's no wonder Boucher took over to make the show his own. He knew the guts of what made B7 work as well as Terry Had.

• They find their first victim. They look for identifying marks and find... A wallet? Huh? I have to say, I don't remember the last time I saw a pedestrian wallet in a sci-fi series set in space!

LOL!!! But wallets and personal ID were and will always be around and needed.

• Our heroes find the survivor, but Jenna is captured by Neanderthals!!! And no one notices anything!!!

The power of plotting...

• Cally passes the time with some really cool VR headsets! Okay, that's a good techno-futuristic idea, considering the Walkman hadn't come out yet!
  
  
  
  
  
  

Definitely proof that more than Trek could put out ideas... oh, the same prop was used in "The Way Back" and possible "Seek-Locate-Destroy" as well. Oh, that title is not to be conflated with the Dalek battle cry either, but Cally or Blake pinched one from somewhere.

• And on the spaceship they realized they were lost Jenna "But wasn't she with you?" "Not with you!!!" Jeez. I know these aren't professional soldiers, but they're pretty smart people. Didn't they learn anything from the time they lost Cally?!?!

Nope. The power of plotropia can't allow that for non-serialized shows. Besides, I was snoozing when the previous one aired so I wouldn't have noticed. (Or that's what some may have done, it's the other reason shows of the time weren't tightly serialized; having to get newcomers or casuals up to speed all while weaving a continuing plot that doesn't annoy those fans there since the first episode is a daunting task...)

• As the rest of the crew go to save Jenna, Blake and Cally check the dead man's wallet and discover that he's a surgeon, or rather... A SPACE SURGEON! Probably deals with space-colds, space-appendicitis and space-migraines. Did Star Trek TOS also put the prefix "space" everywhere???

TOS did on occasion, but I think Terry made it his own by this point.

• Well, the other survivor wakes up, mega info dump. Okay. The guy finds a gun from who knows where and Cally is taken hostage. In the same episode, both women become damsels in distress. The attitude towards women in this series is schizophrenic.

Better than the 1960s, worse than the 1990s.

• My favorite female villain with Travis! I love their exchanges. Servalan explains her evil plan, so evil it even shocks Travis. And it seems like a stupid plan, too. If they blow up the shuttle, don't they also risk losing the McGuffin?

Calculated risk, and they could get other power packs if needed.

• Meanwhile, our heroes on the planet are attacked by Neandarthals BWAWAWAWA (sorry, I can't resist). Avon kills one, but there are so many of them that they are forced to flee.
• Now, a quick pause. How useless are our heroes' weapons? A modern automatic would have massacred the natives. This one seems to be as effective as an 18th-century musket. I can assume that Avon and the others didn't mean to kill them all, but nothing in the episode suggests that. And anyway, it was self-defense.

Now imagine if the Federation had a machine gun style laser light gun... the guards would whip 'em out all while wearing the VR gear and their imagine they were zapping at rats or bunny rabbits or something.

• However, our heroes take refuge in a bunker where a sort of vestal virgin welcomes them.
  
  
  
  
  
• Now, it's clear someone in the costume department screwed up. Why isn't her dress see-through?!?! When I see B7, I have very specific expectations about how the female alien guest of the week should be dressed!

That one's easy: The see-thru material was more expensive. Show was out of budget at this point.

• Now this woman kneels adoringly at Avon's feet as soon as she sees him, mistaking him for some god from a prophecy. And it won't be the first time. A woman throwing herself on her knees at the feet of a man she's never seen, promising him fidelity and utmost obedience. I must say, the scene makes me a little uncomfortable. Times have truly changed.Now this woman kneels adoringly at Avon's feet as soon as she sees him, mistaking him for some god from a prophecy. And it won't be the first time. A woman throwing herself on her knees at the feet of a man she's never seen, promising him fidelity and utmost obedience. I must say, the scene makes me a little uncomfortable. Times have truly changed.

It definitely felt hokey and contrived.

Also, that paragraph reminds me of a scene from Red Dwarf series episode "White Hole".

• Aval and friends immediately know how to use all the controls in a sort of control room. How? HOW?!?!

Also, who the heck was doing the countdown voiceover for the launching station when everybody's dead, save for Meegat? Also, her name is an anagram of "me gate" (as in gateway to getting this story done and over with). For all we know, that influenced 1984's "Ghostbusters" with the Gatekeeper too... or not...

• We see the Neanderthal village. Is it just me or is there not even a single woman there? Jenna is saved.

I don't think it's worth thinking into it too much. Either the women are all inside the domiciles, or they're all underground elsewhere and screaming "Brain and brain, what is brain!"

• The guy holding Cally hostage finally dies. The Liberator returns to pick up her crewmates.
• The missile carrying the genetic material is being sent! Megatt and her people can die happy!

You know, I was so prepared for the worst that I almost liked the episode in the end! Of course, there are some points I'm not clear on. Why did Servalan make this haphazard plan, not even knowing where Orac physically was? And she also said she didn't know where the lab was (even at the beginning, the pilot said it was a secret). If they simply wanted to prevent the guy from destroying Orac, they could have just killed him. Why all this drama, even losing a doctor (A Space Doctor!!!!)? Maybe I missed something? And are these alien species we encounter really "alien"? Are they lost Earth colonies? Why else would Aval and the others speak their language perfectly and use their equipment?

Great questions. It's been forever since I've seen it, and I vaguely recall the finale not really touching on the questions either. B7 could put out some plot holes so large that the Liberator could pass through them with ease.

But I didn't mind the pacing, there wasn't too much padding, in short, an excellent episode for me!

We'll see if the next one holds up!

(And really, how useless are those weapons?!?)

"Orac" was definitely a step upward.

 

[Qonundrum]

I plead guilty! In my defense, I can say that I was starting to feel like it was more of an academic assignment than something I was actually enjoying.

Not a good sign, that's true...

I can intellectually understand why it has this cult status. I know they were trying to make slightly more sophisticated sci-fi TV while in America they were producing things like Galactica and Buck Rogers. I can see that all the actors were good and some of the dialogue was delightful. I tried to grade it on a curve. I completely understand the limitations they had to work with. But the fact remains that I can't magically become a 70s viewer by erasing 40 years of excellent sci-fi TV from my mind.

Galactica had some good stuff, mixed with true hokum. Buck Rogers definitely was hokum, then tried getting all serious. Meanwhile, B7 and DW from the same time period are eminently more rewatchable. There is more to good sci-fi than costumes and effects, and as much as B7's costumes were very creative and alluring, those don't hold the show up next to character moments.

Consider that around the same time I was watching Andor. In which a group of a few intrepid heroes fight against a fascist dictatorship. To return to Blake 7, in which a group of a few intrepid heroes fight against a fascist dictatorship. But for the latter, it's more of a hobby, something they do when they have free time between solving a murder IN SPACE and getting tangled up in some space spiderweb. At a certain point, the thought of going back to watch B7 filled me with dread.

On the plus side, series B/2 doesn't do the same "finding its feet by exploring cobwebs in space" and, indeed, ups the ante in terms of danger. "Shadow" (ep 2) definitely grounds the series after "Redemption" answers questions viewers in 1978 were curious about. Starting with "Pressure Point", there's a decent arc and quest with generally good episodes, but a couple clunkers are definitely grueling to get through.

But now a certain detox period is over, and I swear I'll finish the last two episodes!

But folks, I'm telling you. I honestly don't know if I'll watch the second season. Or programme. Or series B. Whatever. You know when you know something's good, but it's just not for you?

'tis up to you at the end of the day. The show does have its ups and downs in each of its four series/seasons, and it's weird when fan consensus gravitates toward series C/3 as being "the best". Or in overall high regard. But if you don't dig the characters, especially Blake, Avon and Vila (B7's equivalent to Kirk, Spock and McCoy... sorta...) then it's worth giving up on. But if I had given up before series 3, I'd never have gotten to see Dayna and she gets some good stuff, not to mention a couple of all-time greats have superlative character payoffs that might make you happy that you pressed on.

 

[Skipper]

WOOHOO!

Why, thank you!

Yeah, the season 1 budget was impressive for its miniscule nature, but the inhabitants don't really do it for me either. I recall the story's pacing being a tad slower than usual as well.

Honestly, I was so prepared for the worst that I might have found even a snail under anesthesia satisfying.

LOL!!! But wallets and personal ID were and will always be around and needed.

You have a point!

Now imagine if the Federation had a machine gun style laser light gun... the guards would whip 'em out all while wearing the VR gear and their imagine they were zapping at rats or bunny rabbits or something.

I must say that B7 is not the only SciFi series to portray weapons as lacking even from a contemporary point of view.

Think of Star Trek phasers. They're little portable WMDs. They can vaporize walls and fire repeatedly. It's like having automatic RPGs. But every time we see a firefight, it looks like something out of a bad 1950s western. Pew pew. Our hero somersaults and ducks a death ray and hides safely behind a rock. When in theory, the bad guy could vaporize the rock and everything around it.

That one's easy: The see-thru material was more expensive. Show was out of budget at this point.

They should be using the budget for these things, not stupid revolving stations! Priorities!

Also, who the heck was doing the countdown voiceover for the launching station when everybody's dead, save for Meegat?

I imagined some recorded voices. Anyway, Meegat says there were about a hundred other survivors (though evidently there wasn't the budget for all the extras).

Great questions. It's been forever since I've seen it, and I vaguely recall the finale not really touching on the questions either. B7 could put out some plot holes so large that the Liberator could pass through them with ease.
"Orac" was definitely a step upward.

Maybe I'm misremembering the details, maybe you can help me.

Servalan explains Ensor came to see her to offer to sell her something named Orac for a hundred million credits. In return, he wanted the power cells needed to save his father and the assistance of Maryatt, a medic and in exchange reveals the location of the laboratory. However, Servalan decided instead to destroy the ship so Ensor's father would die and they can collect Orac at their leisure.

Now, why did Servalan stage this? She could easily have killed Servalan the moment he revealed the lab's location. It doesn't exactly seem like she'd have any problem covering it up. But let's also assume that for some reason she wanted to make [EDIT] Ensor Jr.'s death look like an accident. What reason would there be to suggest Maryatt was a traitor? She could easily have said he'd also died in the accident. Also, how could she be sure that the McGuffin was in the lab (after all, Ensor Jr had it with him). It seemed to me simply a ploy by the author to show us how evil Servalan is.

'tis up to you at the end of the day. The show does have its ups and downs in each of its four series/seasons, and it's weird when fan consensus gravitates toward series C/3 as being "the best". Or in overall high regard. But if you don't dig the characters, especially Blake, Avon and Vila (B7's equivalent to Kirk, Spock and McCoy... sorta...) then it's worth giving up on. But if I had given up before series 3, I'd never have gotten to see Dayna and she gets some good stuff, not to mention a couple of all-time greats have superlative character payoffs that might make you happy that you pressed on.

You know? You've convinced me, when the Blu-ray of season 2 comes out I'll get it

 

[Christopher]

Now, why did Servalan stage this? She could easily have killed [Ensor Jr.] the moment he revealed the lab's location. It doesn't exactly seem like she'd have any problem covering it up.

Would she? We see in seasons 1-2 that the Federation is not entirely corrupt, that there are still people in authority who believe in the rule of law, who wish to prosecute Travis for his war crimes, and who would probably prosecute Servalan if they knew of all her crimes. Even aside from that, this is a plan she's pursuing in secret, to gain power she hasn't been able to gain officially. She doesn't want her rivals in the government and military to know what she's doing. So it's less trouble to arrange Ensor Jr.'s death in a remote space accident, where nobody will even know what happened to him.

 

[Skipper]

[Ensor Jr.]

Uh right! Thank you!

 

[Steve Roby]

Just to wander back to the discussion of dangerous filming locations for a sec: Andrei Tarkovsky filmed a lot of his 1979 science fiction film Stalker in an area of Estonia with a power station and a chemical plant that had polluted some of the areas they were filming in. When you see the movie there are some scenes that'll make you think, ugh, that doesn't look good. Tarkovsky, one of the cast, and some others died within a few years of making the movie, with exposure to toxic chemicals during filming suspected as the cause.

 

[Christopher]

Just to wander back to the discussion of dangerous filming locations for a sec: Andrei Tarkovsky filmed a lot of his 1979 science fiction film Stalker in an area of Estonia with a power station and a chemical plant that had polluted some of the areas they were filming in. When you see the movie there are some scenes that'll make you think, ugh, that doesn't look good. Tarkovsky, one of the cast, and some others died within a few years of making the movie, with exposure to toxic chemicals during filming suspected as the cause.

Everybody's so afraid of nuclear plants, but it's the conventional power sources that have been killing people for centuries.