Liberation: The Unoffical and Unauthorised Guide to Blake's 7

by Alan Stevens, Fiona Moore

This definitive guide book to the classic 1970s BBC science-fiction series Includes comprehensive facts, figures and analysis, examination of key episodes from their genesis to the final version, excerpts from the original drafts of scripts and interviews with people involved in the production. This book is the ideal companion for anyone interested in the show, or in the development of television science fiction during the late 1970s.

433 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 2016

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Alan Stevens is a British writer and producer who is based in the Southeast of England, where he runs his own audio production company, Magic Bullet Productions.

Stevens has produced a number of documentaries, serials and dramas for radio and independent audio release, including the Blake's 7/Doctor Who' spinoff series Kaldor City and the second Faction Paradox audio series, and has co-written two guidebooks for Telos Publishing, Liberation: the Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Blake's 7 and Fall Out: the Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to The Prisoner, with Fiona Moore. He writes articles for Celestial Toyroom, the magazine of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, and has written in the past for Doctor Who Magazine and DWB.

Reviews

[Rob Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blake's 7 (sometimes styled Blakes 7) is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC. Four 13-episode series were broadcast on BBC1 between 1978 and 1981. It was created by Terry Nation, who also created the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. The script editor was Chris Boucher. The main character, at least initially, was Roj Blake, played by Gareth Thomas. The series was inspired by various fictional media, including Robin Hood, Star Trek, Passage to Marseille, The Dirty Dozen, Brave New World and classic Western stories, as well as real-world political conflicts in South America and Israel.

Blake's 7 was popular from its first broadcast, watched by approximately 10 million in the UK and shown in 25 other countries. Although many tropes of space opera are present, such as spaceships, robots, galactic empires and aliens, its budget was inadequate for its interstellar theme. Critical responses have been varied; some reviewers praised the series for its dystopian themes, strong characterisation, ambiguous morality and pessimistic tone, as well as displaying an "enormous sense of fun", but others have criticised its production values, dialogue and perceived lack of originality, with broadcaster and critic Clive James describing it as "classically awful".

In this book, each of the show's four seasons is given a short behind-the-scenes overview. We get production and cast listings, a brief summary and a fairly thorough analysis. The main selling point of the book is the authors' own analysis of the episodes. Stevens and Moore have scripted some of the commercially available spin-offs themselves, and they certainly know their subject. Any reader who's ever puzzled over an uncharacteristically charitable act from Avon, or wondered why the show had to end in a massacre, will find the answers here. Stevens and Moore's thoughtful dissection of plot and character is probably the most scholarly examination of Blake's 7 I've read. It's an intelligent, well written critical analysis, packed with details about production problems, script alterations, and acute observations of characters and sub-texts.

Recommended for fans.