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Doctor Who & Blake's 7 - the same universe?

Starkers said:
diankra said:
Yeah, but actors appearing in both series in different roles isn't really relevant to whether they can be in the same continuity - unless you're going to follow it through and say that Avon was once a UNIT captain who got killed before ending up as the Borad's Maylin, and Vila lived on Pluto for a while, where he called himself Goudry (and Blake's partner in their first rebellion also commanded Snowcap Base during the 1986 Cyberman invasion).
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Noty to mention actors within the same series; I mean that Soolin does look suspiciously like a mutoid :)
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EJA said:
The actress who played Servalan played Chessene in "The Two Doctors." And didn't the guy who played Travis II also appear in "The Robots of Death"? I've only seen a bit of that story, so I'm not sure.

If the B7 and DW universes are the same, I think we have to come up with an explanation for where all of DW's alien civilizations disappeared to in B7.
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I don't think anyone has mentioned Michael Keating (Vila) who was in 'The Sunmakers;' and was considered for the role of the The Doctor before the producers settled on Sylvester McCoy.
 
diankra said:
Lonemagpie said:
Candlelight said:
Terry Nation wanted the Andromeda Aliens in "Star One" to turn out to be Daleks, but was apparently vetoed by the BBC.
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It wasn't vetoed, it was just an idea that didn't get very far before Nation moved to the US and made himself (and the Daleks, whom he hoped to launch in their own US series) unavailable for the episode.

David Maloney says they discussed it over lunch during planning for the season, but Chris Boucher says that no plans got as far as reaching his desk on paper. I had conversations with both of them about this, a few years back.
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As far as I recall it, Chris's account is pretty much 'It seemed a great idea in the pub over lunch, and then we got back to the office and sobered up.'
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I'm guessing if they had used them they'd have had to have a reveal at the end of Star One, with the shape shifting Andromadans being revealed as patsies much like the Vardans in The Invasion of Time.

It would be kinda cool to insert a few Exterminates before Villa says "Avon, this is stupid!"

I'd never heard that Michael Keating was considered for the 7th Doctor before now. That would have been cool, the man who defeated Colin's Bayban the Butcher replacing Colin's Doctor!
 
It would be the second irony of the changing Doctor: Colin Baker became the Doctor after playing the guy who shot Davison, then gets replaced himself by a guy who beat up one of Colin's characters!
 
diankra said:
The major exception to this being that the Carnell in Corpse Marker and the subsequent Kaldor CDs has to be the one Scott Frederick played in B7: Weapon, and that Paul Darrow's Kaldor city character Iago is implied throughout to be someone on the run from the same society as Carnell, who's using a false name...
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What, so there's an implication that this Iago character might well be Avon, alive and on the run? Hmmm. Not quite sure what to make of that. I've always been more of the opinion that Avon was killed, along with the rest of the Seven, at the end of B7 "Blake." I just have difficulty seeing him surviving that massacre (although I have sometimes wondered if Jenna might still be alive; I once actually wrote a DW/B7 crossover fic where the 8th Doctor meets Jenna and her son).

So, any theories as to what might've happened to DW's alien races in Blake's time, assuming they're the same universe?
 
Starkers said:
I'm guessing if they had used them they'd have had to have a reveal at the end of Star One, with the shape shifting Andromadans being revealed as patsies much like the Vardans in The Invasion of Time.

It would be kinda cool to insert a few Exterminates before Villa says "Avon, this is stupid!"
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Of course, it wouldn't have been "the Daleks in Star One" it would have been a different episode altogether, written by Terry Nation.
 
diankra said:
The big problem with reconciling the two series is that in Who aliens, and non-humanoid aliens, are common.
In Blake's 7 there's very few - even humanoid aliens are a rarity to judge by Avon's initial reaction to Cally. So to fit Blake anywhere into the Who universe, you have to explain where all the aliens went...
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Two words: Time War.

:D
 
Actually the more I think about it the more aliens I think there were in Blakes 7. Of course taking Cally as an example, although its implied she's an alien, it is sometimes hard to determine if the Aurons (or others) are actually alien, or just a human colony who evolved slightly differently.

In the first series alone there are the beings in Time Squad, The Web, Duel, Mission to Destiny...not to mention Cally (possibly) and of course the System, although we don't see them just the Liberator.
 
Candlelight said:
diankra said:
The big problem with reconciling the two series is that in Who aliens, and non-humanoid aliens, are common.
In Blake's 7 there's very few - even humanoid aliens are a rarity to judge by Avon's initial reaction to Cally. So to fit Blake anywhere into the Who universe, you have to explain where all the aliens went...
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Two words: Time War.

:D
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Or that blob thing from Ultraworld ate them all.
 
EJA said:
diankra said:
The major exception to this being that the Carnell in Corpse Marker and the subsequent Kaldor CDs has to be the one Scott Frederick played in B7: Weapon, and that Paul Darrow's Kaldor city character Iago is implied throughout to be someone on the run from the same society as Carnell, who's using a false name...
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What, so there's an implication that this Iago character might well be Avon, alive and on the run? Hmmm. Not quite sure what to make of that. I've always been more of the opinion that Avon was killed, along with the rest of the Seven, at the end of B7 "Blake." I just have difficulty seeing him surviving that massacre.
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Check out The Logic of Empire, a post-Gauda Prime B7 audio from the same team that went on to make the Kalddor City CDs for something of an explanation...

"How did you survive Gauda Prime?"
"Nobody survived Gauda Prime." Avon (played by Paul Darrow)

"Are you finally going to kill me now?" - Avon
"Oh no, that would such a waste. You're the enemy, Avon. There always has to be an enemy." - Servalan.
 
Candlelight said:
diankra said:
The big problem with reconciling the two series is that in Who aliens, and non-humanoid aliens, are common.
In Blake's 7 there's very few - even humanoid aliens are a rarity to judge by Avon's initial reaction to Cally. So to fit Blake anywhere into the Who universe, you have to explain where all the aliens went...
Click to expand...

Two words: Time War.

:D
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Nah. Not all the alien races were involved in the War, it was mainly between the Time Lords and the Daleks. As mentioned in DW "The Poison Sky", the Sontarans weren't permitted to fight in the conflict. Besides, any Daleks around in the B7 timeframe may not have entered the War yet.
 
So assuming that B7 is part of the Whoniverse, which era would it best fit in? No hard dates were ever given in the series; publicity material only ever stated that it took place during the third century of the Second Calender. I'm not sure if it could be during the fifth millennium AD, as a lot of the technology doesn't seem quite advanced enough for what DW tells us about the era. Jack Harkness comes from the late 51st-early 52nd century (he was Rear of the Year in 5094), when humanity possessed advanced time travel tech, something the Federation of Blake's time doesn't have. And doesn't "The Invisible Enemy" have humans of this era having mastered psychic abilities to some extent?

Another possibility I've considered is that the series takes place in the third millennium AD, and that the evil Federation eventually reforms into the more tolerant, benevolent Federation seen in the Peladon stories. But then I'm not sure that's long enough for humans to have totally forgotten teleporter tech which they had in the 25th-30th centuries, according to "Revenge of the Cybermen." What do the rest of you reckon?
 
EJA said:
So assuming that B7 is part of the Whoniverse, which era would it best fit in? No hard dates were ever given in the series; publicity material only ever stated that it took place during the third century of the Second Calender.
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The closest we get to a firm date is in 'Killer', when Blake identifies the derlict spaceship as being the same type that first took humanity to the stars, about 800 years ago.
So that could put B7 around 3000-ish, or it could be 800-odd years since Earth recovered from some catastrophe and sent out explorers.
The argument against the latter option is that, from Blake's comments about the disused church in Pressure Point, it seems that the 'second calendar', abolished a bit under 200 years ago, was probably the AD system.
On the (contradictory) evidence B7 probably takes place around 3000AD, and can't be reconciled with the Whoniverse.


It's slightly easier to put it into Trek continuity, if you assume there's been an awful galactic war which has lost a lot of knowledge, and led to the extinction of the aliens we see in Trek. But that's really only supported by the way that By Any Other Name actually works as backplot for Star One.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot: The clerics in "The Time of Angels", set around the 51st century, had teleportation technology.

One other thing we know about the B7 era is that apparently humans had not ventured beyond the Milky Way galaxy, as evidenced in "Star One", so it would presumably be before the extragalactic era of the early fourth millennium, as seen in DW stories such as "The Daleks' Masterplan" and "Planet of the Ood."

To be honest, I find it very hard to imagine that everyone would just forget about transmat tech. As I said earlier, the Nerva Beacon had a transmat and that station apparently lasted for many thousands of years, as did the transmat system. And I think there are other instances in past DW of humans having various forms of teleportation from the third millennium onwards.

As much as I'd love to say they are in the same universe, fitting DW and B7 together seems a horrendously awkward task, and doesn't really work all that well.
 
I read somewhere that Tom Baker and Gareth Thomas, great drinking buddies at the time, had their own idea for a cross over. No dramatic team up, no working together to save the cosmos, just a quick "Morning Doctor.", "Morning Roj." as they pass each other in a corridor, too caught up in their own adventures to do more than exchange pleasantries.
 
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