Avon told Tarrant and Dayna not to get involved.

There is lots of double crossing in this episode between the Federation and the rebels of this old colony. Avon wants to find out the Federation's new weapon. It turns out that it is a new laser that makes you permanantley passive and suggestive when you get zapped with it. Tarrant and Dayna find a crazy old scientist who invented it against his will. He also made a drug that prevents the laser's effects. They manage to give the drug to the rebels.

Of course, guess who is behind it all.

The second episode of the fourth season is about the people on Dorian's planet. It is in war between the men and women and the women are losing. The women have developed telekenetic powers while the men are savages.

One of the women, Pella, schemes to get the door to Scorpio cracked by Avon. Vila, and Orac. Then, all she has to do is telekenetically flip the override switch on the nucular charge on the door. She holds them at gunpoint and makes off with the ship.

It turns out that Orac has figured out how to work the teleporter and teleports Avon on board. He blows away Pella and the rest of the crew teleport onboard.

Also, Dorian's companion joins them.

The credits music is this wacky version of the theme song. It is almost sarcastic. I like it. It fits the dark humor of the show.

Season 4 starts off with one hell of an episode.

Avon and the gang try to find a way off Terminal. It turns out that Servalan sabatoged the getaway ship she she left. A monkey man went looking around inside and it exploded. It turns out that this also triggered the living quarters to explode. Avon and Dayna rush back when this happens. Villa manges to carry Tarrant out in the blaze. Cally does not make it.

This salvage guy named Dorian lands his ship, the Scorpio, on the planet. He saves Villa and Dayna from a plant monster. He leads the crew to his ship, but Avon and crew turn on him and hijack the ship. There is an earthquake and Dorian is knocked out.

It turns out the ship was on autopilot and heads home. After Dorian wakes up and the ship lands, Avon and crew escort him at gunpoint to his home. They meet his female companion and they convince them there is no reason to hold them hostage. Avon and crew have some wine and settle in for the night.

It turns out that Dorian has a creature in the basement that stores all his corruption and aging. Terrant and Dayna go snooping and find this creature. Dorian tells Avon all this and escorts Avon and his companion to the creature. Also, Dorian switched out the clips in everyone's guns for dummys so they could not shoot him.

Dorian was planning to merge the crew with the creature and make a more powerful one. Before he could do this, Avon shoots the monster with a rifle he was hiding since the start. Villa was wise enough to bring it along. Dorian ages and corrupts until he is dust. The monster turns into an ordinary man.

Essentially, this story was a sci fi retelling of Dorian Gray.

It is weird seeing a cubby, teenage Kate Winslet.

The good professor that made the telepathic computers is kidnapped by Mr. Eldritch. Eldritch thinks he will control the minds of all the school children through their new computers and starts a countdown.

Turns of the professor is not the real professor. It is his wife. She hooks up her computer and creates a cleansing program. Eldritch and his men are thwarted and he dissappears. The software on the kid's computers is erased.

I watched a little bit of the first episode.

I like how the episode starts where the other left off.

I also like how Servalan booby trapped the escape ship and blew up that poor monkey man.

I only saw a couple of Blake’s 7 episodes as a child, remember enjoying them, but never had the opportunity to see any more and haven’t much thought about it. However I’ve just rewatched a Doctor Who story from the 80s with Jacqueline Pearce as the baddie and felt some childhood nostalgia! Does anyone know where I can access Blake’s 7 episodes in the UK? I’d like to try at least a couple of episodes for free to see if I like them before investing any £s.

So she sends some of her more competent subordinates, including Arlen, to put a stop to it and destroy Blake once and for all. After all, Blake's the one she's wanted to eliminate most of all since the very start, and that would be a higher priority than continuing to pursue Avon's lot. Plus, Avon's lot are, in her eyes, no longer really a threat after the events of "Warlord" since their base is destroyed and their potential allies all dead and all they really have left is each other and their rustbucket of a ship. She also has pretty much everything she needs after "Gold" anyway.

So that’s why Servalan isn't in "Blake" in-Universe.

I know it was really because Jacqueline Pearce had used up her quota of contracted episodes for Series 4.

Just a theory.

Mods, please remove this if it violates the group's rules.

Cult Edge has issued the Blakes 7 Production Diaries for Series 3/C. For this season, they've found so many BTS and production pics & docs, they've had to split it into 2 volumes.

These books are the last word in how the series was filmed, behind the scenes, writers and actors etc and are literally filled with production and publicity pics.

They are rather pricey and strictly Hardback, non ebook versions (they're afraid of piracy, and dont blame them) but real labors of love. I've gotten series 1 & 2 and they are amazing and are pretty much the last word in B7 filming history.

Hello all. Cavan Scott here, who once produced Blake’s 7 for Big Finish and wrote a few of the audio adventures.

In loving memory of actor Michael Keating, I reveal my original plans for continuing the Blake’s 7 audios with Michael’s character Vila in the central seat.

https://www.cavletter.com/michael-keating-and-my-original-plans-for-continuing-blakes-7/

Hope you enjoy!

Here in the Netherlands British television prior to cable/satellite television with the BBC we did get Dr Who on public broadcast, but Blake's 7 only 2 seasons and it was never repeated, and that was before my time. Therefor it wasn't part of our cultural memory like Dr Who. So when I heard about Blake's 7 I was very interested, first because I heard about it's premise (dark/dystopian/sarcastic), secondly there haven't been any good space opera's lately. I was a fan of Star Trek, but the quality drop under Kurtzman makes it unwatchable for me.

I really didn't mind the low budget SFX (even for it's time), I approached Blake's 7 like a theatre stage play.

I liked the premise of the rebels fighting against a superior enemy but always against the odds and with sacrifices, it's more grounded and realistic on how rebels would realistically fight against any oppressor. The Liberator and teleportation gives them a technological advantage, but it isn't enough to make them overpowered. With the current AI development, the series take on AI is refreshing in the sense that AI isn't always subservient to humans like the ships computer, but especially with Orac isn't always aligned. The seventies and early eighties we're also the time of more dystopian SF, Soylent Green, Mad Max, Logan's Run, Silent Running, etc we're a product of the zeitgeist and mood at that time, Blake's 7 fits in.

Actor wise Paul Darrow and Michael Keating steal the show with their performances, but the rest of the crew is hit or miss. It's the same with many other tv series with a larger regular cast, writers tend to gravitate to certain characters, they don't always get the chance to grow. It's a shame that TV at the time wasn't highly regarded, stage plays and movies we're better career wise, nowadays they could have made a better career with it.

I really didn't mind the ending as it fits the premise of the show, but like other tv shows I have a personal distaste for open endings or unsolved mysteries, when there is a story I always want to know what happens next. TV has always had this problem because each season is almost always separately renewed and writers mostly don't start writing until it is.

I heard about rumors of a remake/reboot, but I really dislike them in general. Like all cultural things, things are best borrowed and improved upon, not simply copied. I would like to see more SF series which borrows Blake's 7 thematic setting. The SF show I regard as my personal all-time favorite so far, Farscape, borrows a lot of themes from Blake's 7 and it really improves upon it, I highly recommend it if anyone hasn't watched it yet. Battlestar galactica is one of the few exemptions of a (soft) reboot which largely succeeded imho, but they deviated also on many things, so it can be done but I would be difficult. Especially because many tv writers don't like working with existing material, they want to inject their own stories and creativity often changing things for the worse or even having nothing to do with the original material.

The villian of the episode is a dumb little cyclops puppet. It is so arrogant that it forgets it was on life support when it teleports to the Liberator.

Also, it made no sense when they take Servalan into custody. They chain her up outside for some bizarre reason instead of putting her in a prison cell.

It seems like the final episode of the season is a doosey.

I already know we lose the Liberator.

Edit: I have now watched the last episode, Terminal.

Avon gets a message from space that his buddy Blake is alive and wants to meet him. He keeps this from the crew and plots a course.

After passing through a strange mist, the Liberator reaches the man made planet Terminal. Avon telports there and tells the crew not to follow him or he will kill them. He is to report back every hour. If he does not, the crew is supposed to leave him.

Avon makes his way to an underground installation and gets shot with a knockout dart. He wakes up and escapes his cell and finds Blake. Blake is hooked up to life support and can't leave for three months. He says he has found a treasure of great riches and immortality.

Avon gets knocked out again by the guards and is taken to Servalan. She wants the Liberator in exchange for Blake. Avon calls the Liberator and tells it to get the hell out of there. Unfortunatly, Cally and Tarrant have been following Avon and get captured. Servalan uses them as leverage to get the Liberator. Unknown to her the Liberator picked up some nasty enzymes from the mist cloud it past through and is dissolving. The rest of the crew is beamed down to Terminal and Servalan and her crew is beamed aboard the Liberator. Avon and his crew watches and Servalan fires up the engine and the Liberator breaks apart.

The crew walks away and Avon is smiling.

I discovered this scene from Eastenders and had to share it. Just substitute 'Michael' for 'Veronica'. Farewell Vila/Michael, you will be sorely missed.

This was probably the best episode of the season.

It also has a holodeck way before Star Trek.

Warring factions settle their war by having a fight to the death between champions they choose. One of them turns out to be Tarrant's twin brother. Of course, Servalan is the neutral arbiter in the competition and has a scheme of her own...

As reported by the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba.

https://x.com/lizo_mzimba/status/2057398692601077892?s=61

I just spotted Travis in the crew from "Robots of Death" . I've watched this episode a billion times but never made the connection. But this time I heard his voice and knew I knew it from somewhere and then it only took a moment to work out. It's funny because BBC SciFi only shows Red Dwarf now (as I feared they would) so I haven't seen Blake's 7 in ages.

I did not quite follow the plot of this one.

I am going to have to look at a summary. There was this technology on this planet where all the information of an object could be stored on a keycard. The card could be plugged into a machine where it would rebuild a copy of the object. It did not work on living creatures. The creature would die when it was built.

The main computer on the planet was actually this creature called Moloch. He was the predicted evolution of these aliens. He tries to beam aboard the Liberator and take it over. He forgets that the computer he was attached to was keeping him alive and dies.

Initially, I thought the episode was stupid, but it won me over.

The crew of the Liberator come across a metal sphere in space. It is totally shielded. Blocking out all signals.

Cally gets taken over by an alien force again and teleports into the sphere. The crew go in to rescue her. It turns out that the sphere is Ultraworld, a big computer with a brain as it's core. All they want to do is absorb the minds of the crew into there computer and put the Liberator in a museam.

Avon and Cally get absorbed, but Terrant and Dayna outsmart the aliens and save the day. They manage to restore the minds of Avon and Cally. The aliens take over the Liberator remotely and dock it in the sphere. It turns out that Villa and Orac confuse the core brain with comedy and cause it self destruct. The crew get back to the Liberator and make it break loose from the docking clamps. They narrowly escape before Ultraworld explodes.

Really, the original space effects are pretty good. The models are good for the most part. I like the use of light on the models. Space on the show is actually colorful.

I think it was a case where the actors got a little too big for their britches.

The one that played Blake was afraid of being typecast and felt he did all he could do with the character. I disagree with that. We barely get to know Blake in those first two seasons.

The one that played Jenna left because her role was not that big on the show. Still, I think she should have stuck with it and waited for episodes that focus on Jenna.

What cracks me up is that the sets are so damn cheap on the show. You really see it on Servalan's ship. The set is like painted cardboard. Her ship also looks really fake too.

I think they were relying on the old TV sets to blend the image.

This is a weird ass episode.

Of course, it is a Cally episode.

Cally gets possessed by a powerful alien again. Centuries ago, it was alien royalty and it tries to make the crew of the Liberator her subjects. She can take control of the minds of the crew and manipulate them. She can also knock you out with an electric shock. The alien tries to absorb Cally, but Avon knows Cally will not let it kill him. So, Avon waltzes up to it and takes her ring, the source of her power. The alien begs for her life. She does not want to die. Avon chucks her ring into the fire.

It this episode, Avon is out for revenge for the federation killing his girlfriend. Or so we think.

It turns out his girlfriend is still alive and was a Federation spy. She later joins the rebels and captures Servalan. Avon does not know she was a spy and finds Servalan chained up in a basement. He agrees to set her free if she tells him who a secret agent was. He thinks that agent killed his girlfriend, but it was his girlfriend. The girlfriend was dressed as a federation officer and mistakenly shot. Avon frees Servalan and she double crosses him and puts a gun to his head. A rebel shows up and Servalan has to shoot him. Avon narrowly teleports away during the distraction.