:: theLogBook.com DVD Reviews ::

A season whose production was revealed to the cast and crew at the same time as the general public - i.e. during the end credits of the last episode of the third season - this final baker’s dozen of Blake’s 7 episodes marks a radical shift in the series’ direction, at least on par with Babylon 5’s crew abandoning their Earthforce allegiance to join the “army of light.” The finale of the previous season had dispensed with Blake, the all-powerful starship Liberator (and its ever-helpful computer, Zen), and any hope of the surviving Liberator crew escaping the hellish artificial planet appropriately named Terminal. The bad guys had won, it seemed - but surely that couldn’t stand as the end of the series, though the BBC’s battle for ratings had more to do with the final season’s existence than the battle between good and evil. (more…)

As Terry Nation’s space opera entered its third season - originally intended to be its last - huge changes were underway in the series’ format. Perhaps the most significant of these was the fact that Blake, played by Gareth Thomas during the first two years, was no longer a regular part of the show, which naturally invited all sorts of questions about how the show could still be called Blake’s 7. But with the first two episodes written by Nation himself almost acting as a pilot for the show’s new direction, there was little doubt that this was the same show, continued, and not a spinoff. Blake’s crew was looking for him - whenever the business of surviving not only the totalitarian Federation, but the season opener’s alien armada, gave them that luxury. As the new leading man of the series, Paul Darrow as Avon came into his own, though the first few episodes handicap him with a kind of curious morality that Avon hadn’t exhibited before, and wouldn’t exhibit again later (due to BBC bosses’ concerns that you couldn’t have such a strongly amoral character as the hero). (more…)

Blake and his band of would-be dictatorship-toppling cohorts returned to the BBC’s airwaves in January 1979 as a bona fide hit. This meant that they could finally throw off their low-budget shackles a bit - though a lot of the money seems to have gone to June Hudson’s extravagant costume design, dressing many of the cast in head-to-toe leather - and for the first time, writers other than series creator Terry Nation had a chance to guide the Liberator crew’s adventures. (more…)

So, my favorite show is finally on DVD. I’d say I can die happy, but I think I’ll wait until the release of the fourth season, and then I’ll die happy after rewatching the whole thing. The series in question is the much-missed and often unfairly maligned Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), a show which I didn’t catch until it began airing in the States circa 1985. I still, in fact, remember the first time I saw it - it replaced Oklahoma PBS’ Saturday night airings of Doctor Who, and I was pissed. Somehow, though, that first episode gripped me enough to break through that and I stuck with it for the remainder of the series. (more…)