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). Jan Chappell and Michael Keating remained as Cally and Vila, respectively, with Jacqueline Pearce also continuing her role as the increasingly vampy villainess Servalan. Departing with Thomas were Sally "Jenna" Knyvette and Brian "Travis" Croucher.

This necessitated filling out the Liberator's crew roster anew, and young newcomers Dayna and Tarrant, played respectively by Josette Simon and Steven Pacey, joined up. One of this DVD set's most unusual features, and an absolute treasure to see, is Pacey's screen test, with Darrow feeding him lines from a confrontational scene in Power Play, the episode which really introduced Pacey's character. Pacey plays the part more aggressively in his screen test, also lowering his voice (something the actor has since said was done to make him appear older than he was at the time for fear of not being believable in the role). In the end, Pacey played the character differently, so not only is the rarity of the footage part of its charm, but you get to see a very different performance than what was seen in the series.

Sadly, Pacey doesn't appear in any of the commentaries, as I would've liked hearing more from him. Not that there's really anything to complain about in this season: Jacqueline Pearce and Chris Boucher spend at least as much time getting caught up watching the story of Death-Watch as they do commenting on it, and Paul Darrow finally gets in on the DVD commentary action. He's joined by Boucher and Jan Chappell for Rumours Of Death, and participates in what's damn near a dream-team commentary on the season/series finale Terminal, along with Pearce, producer David Maloney, and Gareth "Blake" Thomas himself (who made a cameo return to his role in that last episode). Darrow is an absolute joy on these commentaries, delighting in pointing out how Shakespearean the show's plotlines had become, and talking about his portrayal of Avon in general. Please, all of you, come back for the fourth season commentaries - and bring your castmates. For those of us who aren't fortunate enough to be able to pop over to the U.K. to witness any of the live cast reunions whenever one of these DVD sets is released, this stuff is manna from heaven.

Makeup artist Sheelagh Wells gets a featurette to herself here, recounting her work on the show's stars and its alien creations as well (including the alien creation that led her to demand to have her name removed from the credits). She's already covered some of this ground in her book Blake's 7: The Inside Story, but as always there's nothing to compare to hearing the person themselves speak. And while there are no deleted scenes per se here, there are outtakes, in the form of an edited-down version of film editor Sheila Tomlinson's gag reel, which even includes the infamous "teddy bear" stunt pulled by Gareth Thomas during location filming for Terminal while trying to bust Darrow up in a particularly somber scene.

The "Introducing Dayna" and "Introducing Tarrant" featurettes are simply "best of" compilations of clips featuring those characters and explaining their backgrounds, but in the end it's just a compressed version of what you'd get if you just watched the episodes yourself. And finally, there's another Kevin Davies-edited trailer for the next (and final) season, set perfectly to the operatic strains of Mark Ayres' score for The Innocent Sleep. Sadly, Davies' full-length documentary, vetoed since the first season box set by B7 Enterprises (the outfit Paul Darrow ended his association with which has still not gotten a Blake's 7 revival of any kind beyond the drawing board), is still a no-show. Here's hoping against hope that maybe B7E will come to its senses and finally let that show out of the bag in the upcoming season 4 set.

The third season has the bizarre distinction of containing my all-time favorite episode (the very off-format Sarcophagus, almost the first SF TV musical but not quite) and my least favorite (the utterly insipid Ultraworld), and even more strange than that is the fact that those two episodes ran back-to-back. But the sheer number of all-time classics here (Terminal, City At The Edge Of The World, Rumours Of Death, Aftermath, Death-Watch - funny, all of those episodes spring from the pen of either Terry Nation or script editor Chris Boucher) make this a must-get set. Trust me, Blake's 7 is a good reason to own a region-free DVD player.

And another good reason to own Blake's 7's third year on DVD: the limited edition which contained a perfect replica of the late 70s/early 80s Corgi die-cast Liberator toy. I already had one of the original toys, quite well-worn, but this thing is just beautiful in its little plastic Blake's 7 bubble - I think I'll keep it in there.

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