Arnold
Tash Jayasinghe
CibbuanoBlakes 7 - The Way Back
January 11th 2007 10:30
An entry for all the sci-fi fans and cult TV enthusiasts out there... good news, I have in my possession the entire series of Blakes 7. I will be reviewing episodes here and there as I work my way through the series from beginning to end.
When I was younger and an emerging Doctor Who fanatic I used to recieve a newsletter from the Doctor Who Australian fanclub (or whatever it was called) and there would always be mentions of this other show every now and again called Blakes 7. Now, my problem was, Blakes 7 was never really shown on television when I was a kid (I'm unsure if it gets shown now, maybe it does on UKTV) so I never got to watch it. I was desperate to see another cool UK sci-fi show like Doctor Who. Eventually I found a video at Video Ezy, but I only really got to watch two episodes and that was so long ago, at least fifteen years ago. Now, I finally have all four series within grasp and I intend to watch it from beginning to end.
For those of you not in the know, Blakes 7 is a cult British sci-fi show. It shares a few ties with Doctor Who... both have typically shoddy 70s/80s British special effects, several actors from Doctor Who also turn up in Blakes 7, and Blakes 7 was created and (initially) written by Terry Nation - who also created the Doctor's most famous adverseries, the Daleks. Blakes 7 differs from Doctor Who in several ways though... it's altogether darker, features a more ongoing storyline (so I gather), and the principal characters are hard to secondguess.
I just watched the first episode, 'The Way Back'. In this episode we are introduced to a future where Earth and all it's colony-planets are ruled by a brutal and oppressive regime known as the Federation. Blake is the one-time leader of a resistance group, though his memories of this time have been violently erased (shades of '1984' and 'Total Recall' here). What follows is his realisation of what happened and the way in which the Federation deals with him. This episode sets up Blake as a figurehead for a resistance movement, and introduces us to some characters we assume will come to fight beside him. What's surprising though is that the show isn't afraid to throw a few curveballs... Blake eventually falls in with the more overtly criminal element of society, IE. Thieves, murderers and smugglers. Characters set up to be allies are revealed to be traitors or are killed off without any warning. It makes for an unpredictable experience. 'The Way Back' ends with the beginning of a new life for Blake, his final words acting as a prelude for what is to come. This episode also shows some memorable directorial flashes, especially in the flashback sequences to Blake's torturous brainwashing.
As I mentioned earlier, the production values are a little b-grade. But what seperates a lot of British sci-fi from it's American contemporaries is it's willingness to run with it's imagination rather than be restricted by what it can achieve realistically on screen. Blakes 7 (like Doctor Who) asks the viewer to suspend their disbelief while we are shown wobbly spaceships and rubbery aliens, whereas Star Trek puts forward aliens that look and act like regular humans, and shows us scores of spaceships that look like they were all built from the same mecano set. Blakes 7 also presents us with the antithesis of Star Trek's utopian future... the Federation is corrupt and merciless, and even the good guys are fraught with ambiguity. We don't know where we stand with the characters, at least - not yet.
Stay tuned for further reviews!
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Comment by Tracy
Movies and Life
I used to watch this prog when I was a kid in England. I loved it. Hope you enjoy it,
Tracy
Comment by Luke
Book Club
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
Comment by Tracy
Movies and Life
Comment by Luke
Book Club
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior