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3 hours ago
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Michael E Briant, director of series one
I got the impression Blake’s 7 was just going to be “space opera” and wanted to move on and do other things, but the script for the first episode won me over. It was 1977, before the mass surveillance we have today, so the idea of everyone being watched by cameras, as that opening episode had it, seemed striking. It had shades of Nineteen Eighty-Four and felt very adult and relevant.
The series had been pitched by Terry Nation, who created Doctor Who’s Daleks. He saw it as The Dirty Dozen in Space, but that idea disappeared early on. It ended up having more in common with Robin Hood, following Blake and his rebels in their struggle against the totalitarian Federation. The BBC had commissioned Blake’s 7 as a replacement for its police series Softly, Softly: Task Force and we inherited its budget. The largest expenditure on Softly had been one character’s gabardine raincoat. Blake’s 7 was far more demanding, with futuristic costumes, props and locations. Star Wars had come out in the UK just before our first episode aired. One of the show’s other directors, Pennant Roberts, went to see it. The next morning, I found him in his office – close to tears.
The design of the rebels’ Liberator spaceship was by Roger Murray-Leach. It was marvellous, but the interior wasn’t quite what I’d envisaged. I thought a highly advanced vessel should be operated via thought alone, whereas the set we ended up with had joysticks and controls. The ship’s computer, Zen, was closer to what I’d imagined. Peter Tuddenham did Zen’s voice, hidden away in the corner with headphones and a mic. When a second computer called Orac joined the crew, Peter did it too, switching between the two voices.
Whenever we had a problem making something work electronically, this guy called Mitch Mitchell would solve it. One of his jobs was doing the dissolving body special effect whenever crew members teleported down to alien planets. He’d be sitting in the corner with an electronic pen, drawing the white outlines that appeared before they materialised.
I don’t think the show would have been the success it was without Gareth Thomas as Roj Blake. He was a truthful, clever actor and his performance lifted everyone. Sally Knyvette also brought a sense of sobriety and realism to Jenna, one of Blake’s followers, while Paul Darrow and Michael Keating brought more and more depth to the characters of Avon and Vila respectively. Watching it again now, I’m surprised how good some of it is.
Sally Knyvette, played Jenna Stannis
I was told Jenna was an intergalactic space pirate, a feisty freedom-fighter. I thought: “Great, that’s me!” I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. In my naivety, I imagined a character much like the one Sigourney Weaver got to play later in Alien. I thought I’d be rushing around doing stunts. Instead, I realised early on that it was all about the tight, sexy outfits. After three or four episodes, I thought: “I hate this big hair.”
The “booster” controls I used while flying the Liberator were actually Anglepoise lamps. I’d push them forward and they’d come off in my hands. We ended up with two guys sitting out of shot on either side of my chair, holding on to their other ends. Also, when I pressed any buttons on the console it would wobble, so I had to find a way of making it look like I was pressing hard when actually I wasn’t – a skill similar to picking up a polystyrene rock and making it look heavy. The guns had a button that made them light up but I didn’t realise, until the first time I used one, that the sound was added afterwards. We were told to run down a corridor, aim our guns and go: “Bang bang!”
Shooting in the studio was done against the clock: things often went wrong with sets or special effects, so there was a lot of pressure not to fluff lines. Then we’d do the location work, shooting on film, in places like Wookey Hole caves. For one episode, we shot at a nuclear power station with Vere Lorrimer, a wonderful old-school director who cheerfully had us running towards an unexpectedly big explosion that made us all scream. As we came out we had to be Geiger countered. I was going off like a cracklebox.
There was a bond between Blake and Jenna, but it was a seven o’clock show, so we couldn’t have love affairs. With just seven of us in a ship, it would be getting a bit steamy after 26 episodes. Things were different for Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan, because she was the queen of the Federation and got to vamp it up.
I had signed up for two series but tried to leave after the first because I was finding it very frustrating. Jan Chappell, who played Cally, and I tended to get stuck on the spaceship while the boys tackled the action sequences. We get to do much more interesting things these days in the Blake’s 7 audio dramas. Years after I’d left, I met Terry Nation at a convention in California. He said: “I wish I’d known you back then. If I’d known your temperament, I could have written much better for you.” I thought that was a very sweet thing to say.
