A NEW BOOK OUT IN EARLY, 2018
Space Opera: Blake’s 7 – A Tragedy in Four Acts is a complete production diary of the BBC Television series
Blake’s 7. Working from scripts, studio plans, production paperwork and a wealth of interviews, the plan is to put the reader firmly in the centre of the action. From the original scripting stage through to studio and location production and post-production. There are moments when more than four episodes are simultaneously in production in a single week.
SPOILERS ARE COMING! IF FOR SOME REASON YOU’VE NOT SEEN BLAKE’S 7, WATCH IT FIRST AND THEN READ FURTHER.
The entire story is told in chronological order, day-by-day whether it’s in the production office or the canteen, the make-up department or the studio itself, each day’s activities are covered in full.
‘We’ve been working on this for a little over seven months now’ says Matt West, ‘we’ve got a while still to go which involves conducting he interviews we’ve already set up. The bulk of the factual detail is covered, but the interviews will add more colour and first person perspectives. We’ve tried to interview as many people as possible who haven’t previously discussed their work on the show, not just guest actors but riggers, cameramen, scene-shifters… anyone we could track down really!’
Andrew Orton explains the book further, ‘Matt and I had written
Maximum Power, a very silly book about
Blake’s 7, with a few colleagues some years ago, before I then opted to write an ambitious investigation into the literary, mythological and historical themes of the television series
Robin of Sherwood in
Hooded Man.
Space Opera is like neither of these. We became fascinated with how the BBC put
Blake’s 7 together. To that end, we’re not splitting the series into episodes so we can describe their plots in detail with our favourite quotes attached. This is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment, blow-by-blow account of all aspects of this fascinating production which managed to put a group of rebel criminals into space to wage war against a galactic Federation, all from a room in Shepherd’s Bush.’
Have you ever wanted to know how the oppressive future of the Federation’s Earth dome was brought to light in BBC TV Centre? How a lead actor breaking his foot almost meant Blake never visited space station XK-72? Or how Avon could see the Scorpio flight deck when he stood over Blake’s corpse on Gauda Prime?
Space Opera will answer all of these questions and more.
Neither Max nor Andrew saw
Blake’s 7 on its original broadcast as Matt explains: ‘I was introduced to it by the four omnibus VHS tapes released by BBC Video, and then through friends and rogue traders managed to acquire the complete run before the BBC finally released them on sell-through’. Andrew similarly discovered it through the video releases, ‘I first saw
Blake’s 7 on VHS in the 1990s. It’s what you did when
Doctor Who releases were down to one a month with a hundred stories still to materialise, and you had a desperate urge to watch more multi-camera drama from the BBC with John Savident or Julian Glover in it. The series is a keeper, part of the core of British telly from the 1970s that I think everyone should watch –
Survivors,
Secret Army,
I, Claudius,
Dad’s Army – and it has always felt a shame that these programmes are largely lost to an entire generation or two of the potential audience. However,
Blake’s 7 has always had a strong following, and I am shamelessly one of them, caught in its web since seeing those 52 episodes when I was twelve. Frankly, I’d be a fan of any series that calls itself
Blake’s 7 when Blake’s not in it and there’s not seven of them’.
Matt and Andrew have previously collaborated on
Maximum Power! which was a very different kind of series guide. ‘We set out to make the most pointless series guide we could, full of mistakes and inconsistencies’ says Matt, ‘But it developed into more of an affectionate jostling of the original show, and it became a struggle not to include some genuine facts as we went. Consequently there’s always been this folder of
real stuff left out of the book. It’s nice to finally find a use for it!’
As mentioned already,
Blake’s 7 was a frantic production as Andrew explains, ‘By the 1970s, the BBC had the making of populist drama down pat, and was brilliant at it, with its set design departments and costume departments and special effects departments. And yet… the production of
Blake’s 7 was often a chaotic duel, with hectic schedules, accidents and breakdowns, and last minute script changes always on the horizon. It takes a certain kind of planning to put the first episode of a series like this out six days after
Star Wars was released, and the irony was not lost on the production team. We want to tell this tale in their voices, to discover their stories, and build the complete picture of how this remarkable series was made. A book that is nearly forty years overdue!’
‘One would hope’ says Matt, ‘that by the end of this project the ultimate book will give context to some episodes and scenes and show
Blake’s 7 for what it really was: Great drama but bloody hard work for all involved!’
Space Opera is scheduled for release early in 2018.
