The Magificent Seven

It may come as a surprise, but Doctor Who is not the only science fiction program on television and for me, there is one other that goes hand in hand with it. While there are others that I have enjoyed over the years, the one I am referring to is like a younger brother to Doctor Who and was on air during my very early formative years. This weekend, I finally took a trip in my TARDIS back to Monday 2nd January 1978 to witness the beginning. Doctor Who had not yet returned after Christmas (having concluded The Sun Makers the week before Christmas, it wouldn't be back until 7th January with the start of Underworld) and "Mull Of Kintyre" was only half way through its run at number one. Charlie Chaplin had recently died, "Star Wars" had just been released to UK cinemas and Firefighters had been on national strike for seven weeks...

It wasn't those seven weeks that I'm here to talk about of course but the wonderful "Blake's 7". There is no narrative connection between "Blake's 7" and "Doctor Who" and there is no reason to suppose that they exist within the same fictional world (unless your imagination accepts them both to be part of our real world!) but with both being made by the BBC it was inevitable that there would be some production cross-overs. David Maloney had directed several stories for "Doctor Who" and a dozen other shows and now he turned his hand to producing. Taking a quick glance at IMDb I noticed Doctor Who alumni Michael E. Briant, Pennant Roberts, Derek Martinus, Fiona Cumming, and the masterful Douglas Camfield among the show's directors and mighty Robert Holmes among the writers. Top of the list however is the man who created the series, none other than the Dalek creator himself, Terry Nation. None of this would have meant anything to me at the time of course, but having watched both shows at such a young age has them indelibly entwined in my memories. They belong together, I can't think of one without being reminded of the other

It seems almost impossible in retrospect. I was barely 15 months old when "Blake's 7" started but just about 5 years old when it ended. It was broadcast at precisely the wrong time for clear memories as I have know for a long time on a musical front - I know about 60s and 70s music from my parents' collection and I have good references for mid 80s onwards from my own experience but I have never had any kind of grasp of things from around 1978 to 1983. Where my precious memories come from remains to be seen but they are definitely among those early "Doctor Who" memories - I have a definite but fragile memory of Adric joining the TARDIS (Full Circle November 1980), I had a long stripy scarf but a memory of my brother pointing out the Doctor Who connection, I loved K-9 but he left the show shortly after Adric joined and had been used sparingly in the preceding year. My clearest early Doctor Who memory is of Tom Baker falling from the gantry and regenerating into Peter Davison (Logopolis March 1981), which was odd because I already related to him as Tristan in "All Creatures Great And Small" of which I have no specific memories. As for "Blake's 7", I only have four memories and two of those are from when my brother watched it on video in the early 90s. My secondary memories courtesy of VHS are Servalan on a beach and a gun fight at an industrial sight (power station, oil refinery or something along those lines) while my genuine first-time-around memories are simply Orac being carried and possible abandoned temporarily in a woodland area, and what was either the very last episode or the end of an another series where the ship (which was not the Liberator because it had a small white interior) crashed/exploded and everyone was left strewn on the flight deck presumably dead. It remains to be seen where those events fit into the series but those memories are precious.

And so I finally begin my own voyage with Blake and reconnect with those delicate childhood memories 39 years later as a reboot of the series seems to be on the cards (currently listed on IMDb with no details other than being in pre-production). It is my intention to document that voyage here as a companion to my Doctor Who reviews blog. "Blake's 7" is a different beast with a single on going story rather than multiple serials, so I can't say for sure how/when I will write about it, but with three episodes per disk I'm already three episodes in and in a good place to start...