Blake's 7 on Blu-ray!

[Marc]

In watching the clip again, I'm wondering if, in any of the interviews they'll mention that Jan Chappell almost didn't appear in the location shoot for the episode "Redemption" because she didn't approve of filming at an active nuclear power station and was quite vocal about it, so she would have been separated from the cast at the beginning and would not have appeared again until the end.
She had it written into her contract after this episode that she would not do any location filming at any nuclear power plants, which is why she stays behind and mans the teleport in subsequent episodes shot in or around nuclear power plant.
Then there's the story about how the cast and crew didn't eat in the nuclear power plant's cafeteria because there were signs posted reading "Danger - Possible Contamination", so they would all go to the local pub to eat.

Wasn't Chappel pregnant at the the time adding to her concerns.

As for the interviews being arhival from the early 90s, guess it must been a cost/rights things because as I've mentioned between there was a lot more update interviews on youtube from proffesionally produce retrospective that covered the first 3 series but didn't have the funding available to do the fourth.

Then again also on youtube can find videos of conventions from the 90s where Darrow and Thomas come out with cigarettes in one hand a drink the the other that wouldn't happen in this day and age

 

[Judge Death]

In watching the clip again, I'm wondering if, in any of the interviews they'll mention that Jan Chappell almost didn't appear in the location shoot for the episode "Redemption" because she didn't approve of filming at an active nuclear power station and was quite vocal about it, so she would have been separated from the cast at the beginning and would not have appeared again until the end.
She had it written into her contract after this episode that she would not do any location filming at any nuclear power plants, which is why she stays behind and mans the teleport in subsequent episodes shot in or around nuclear power plant.
Then there's the story about how the cast and crew didn't eat in the nuclear power plant's cafeteria because there were signs posted reading "Danger - Possible Contamination", so they would all go to the local pub to eat.

Is that the one there explosions went off and the power plant staff said something along the lines of "I hope that was you guys, if it wasn't we're all fucked"

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Is that the one there explosions went off and the power plant staff said something along the lines of "I hope that was you guys, if it wasn't we're all fucked"

Yeah. That's the story Michael Keating tells in the book.
Vere Lorrimer set off the explosion and, according to Keating, one of the staff standing next to him went white as a ghost, and said that it had better been them because if it wasn't, they were all dead men.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Wasn't Chappel pregnant at the the time adding to her concerns.

I don't know if she was pregnant at the time, however, considering the long gaps between series, it's possible.
I do know that in the book, she says one of the primary reasons for not doing the fourth series is because she had a young son at home and she hated the long hours away from him while filming in the studio and on location.

 

[Judge Death]

I don't know if she was pregnant at the time, however, considering the long gaps between series, it's possible.
I do know that in the book, she says one of the primary reasons for not doing the fourth series is because she had a young son at home and she hated the long hours away from him while filming in the studio and on location.

I think she was pregnant at the time.

As for the fourth season, haven't heard that Animals was going to be her final story before she ducked out I think she made a good call!

 

[JD]

Was security a lot more lax around those kind places in that day and age? I thought most nuclear power plants were high security places that wouldn't want a bunch random TV people getting in the way.

 

[Christopher]

Was security a lot more lax around those kind places in that day and age? I thought most nuclear power plants were high security places that wouldn't want a bunch random TV people getting in the way.

Obviously the production got permission ahead of time. This isn't guerilla filmmaking; they have people whose job it is to scout locations and arrange filming permissions.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Was security a lot more lax around those kind places in that day and age? I thought most nuclear power plants were high security places that wouldn't want a bunch random TV people getting in the way.

Doctor Who filmed parts of the serial, "The Hand of Fear" there as well.

 

[JD]

I didn't know that about hand of fear.

Obviously the production got permission ahead of time. This isn't guerilla filmmaking; they have people whose job it is to scout locations and arrange filming permissions.

Well that's pretty obvious, I just meant that I'm shocked they would ever allow a TV production to shoot in an active nuclear power plant.
Although they did shoot Star Trek Into Darkness at the Livermore Lawrence Nation Laboratory, so I guess that kind of thing does happen today.

 

[Christopher]

Well that's pretty obvious, I just meant that I'm shocked they would ever allow a TV production to shoot in an active nuclear power plant.

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

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.