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.

All 13 episodes are included here, including the shockingly doom-laden series finale, Blake, which proceeded to make the third season's finale look like light comedy. As shock endings go, Blake's 7 still ranks as one of the all time greats. Does it leave things open-ended for a continuation? Depends on how you interpret it. Does it give the show closure? Yes, and violently so.

Blake, as it so happens, is one of only two episodes with a commentary for this season, the other being Assassin. Paul "Avon" Darrow and Jacqueline "Servalan" Pearce ham it up during Assassin, gleefully reminiscing about the show and even riffing mercilessly on one of the guest stars' performance (!!). Darrow joins writer/script editor Chris Boucher and Blake himself, Gareth Thomas, for the final episode, which becomes rather amusing when one realizes that Thomas hasn't seen the show in ages and has forgotten what happens in it!

There are also, at last, some other substantial extras in this set, directed by Kevin Davies. Davies had originally devised an affectionate four-part "making of" special for the Blake's 7 DVDs, only to run afoul of B7E, the outfit that bought the Blake's 7 rights from the estate of the show's late creator, Terry Nation. Davies' original documentary would have affectionately addressed the many charges over the years that Blake's 7 had become more than a little campy, which reportedly was an aspect that B7E wished to bury as they tried to launch a gritty, modern-day revival of the series (in any case, that attempt has been stalled indefinitely since the departure of Paul Darrow from the B7E project). As the new rights holders, however, B7E had - and used - the power to veto Davies' documentary in its entirety, which held up the release of the first season DVDs for a year.

In any case, some of the material gathered by Davies finally sees the light of day here in a handful of new documentary pieces which apparently did pass muster with B7E; "Special Sounds: Radiophonics" focuses on the creation of Blake's 7's unique sound effects by, initially, Richard Yeoman-Clark and eventually Liz Parker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Workshop archivist Mark Ayres also appears to discuss the preservation of the material in question. Actually, having recently seen a similar documentary about the Workshop's 1960s era in the Doctor Who: The Beginning box set, it has to be said that this is a nice companion piece. "Ken Ledsham's Blake's 7 Designs" focuses on the enormous problems encountered by the set designer who took over early in the series - only to find that his budget had already been blown on the elaborate Liberator standing sets. And "Forever Avon" accompanies Paul Darrow on a vist to a space exhibit at the London Science Museum to discuss the legacy of his most famous role. The Davies documentaries are, as always, great fun, though I did find some of the editing in the first half of "Forever Avon" to be ponderously slow in places.

Other period Blake's 7-related clips are included from the usual suspects - Pebble Mill At One and Blue Peter - along with the very amusing fourth season edition of "Blake's Bloops," replete with gun prop miscues, stumbles, and Jackie Pearce and guest star Betty Marsden infamously fluffing a scene from Assassin repeatedly. More bloopers and misfires can be found in a section of exceedingly rare raw studio recording tape, including the infamous Gold blooper in which Darrow, as Avon, is meant to fail to reach an airlock door in time, but due to a problem with the door prop, he instead quite casually walks into the airlock in question and laughs "Well, that'd solve a lot of problems then, wouldn't it?" The studio session tape is accompanied by an informative series of subtitles, which reveal that the raw tape had been recorded over with a live political event - except for the last half hour of the tape, which revealed these gems.

Compared to previous seasons of Blake's 7 on DVD, there's a wealth of material here, and while everything covered there is fascinating, it really just amounts to a bittersweet reminder that a more extensive documentary covering the series as a whole exists somewhere. Still, it makes for a nice DVD package, and hopefully, somewhere down the road, that documentary can still be released, even if it winds up being of the "uncensored! unauthorized!" variety.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief