Author Topic: The Return of Blake's 7  (Read 5643 times)

davedoty

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on: July 09, 2011, 06:03:57 AM
This is probably of great interest to a small number of people, and almost no interest to everyone else.  Big Finish have acquired the rights to Blake's 7:

http://www.bigfinish.com/news/  (scroll down a couple of entries).

It specifies that it will star the original actors, which implies it's set in the original continuity, but no further details.  I hope "original actors" simply means that it's the people from the original show, and not the actual season one original lineup, since I liked the last couple of seasons much more.

Apparently there will be quarterly releases, alternating between hardback novels and audio adventure box sets of three adventure mini-seasons.  That is, two novels and two box sets each year, spaced out for one Blake's 7 release per quarter.  That seems about right.  Any less, and the franchise can't gain any momentum.  Any more, and I think they'd be grossly overestimating the current audience.

For those unfamiliar with Big Finish, they've been producing Doctor Who audios for over a decade set during the first 8 Doctors runs, and featuring spinoffs of characters from the early years, and from other secondary media.  They haven't had a 100% hit rate, but they've been pretty consistently more good than bad, and they've done a good job of trying new and interesting things instead of just the same stale media tie-in stories we've been trained to expect.  This is good news for the Blake's 7 franchise, because hopefully they'll be able to build new and interesting things within the series' framework, instead of a series of random, unimportant adventures that just happen to slot between episodes of the original show.

The two-year gap between seasons two and three, in which the characters were instrumental in the off-screen intergalactic war, has got to be pretty tempting to Big Finish.



stePH

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Reply #1 on: July 10, 2011, 02:04:43 AM
For those unfamiliar with Big Finish, they've been producing Doctor Who audios for over a decade set during the first 8 Doctors runs, ...

Actually, only the fifth through eighth Doctors... Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann (the first three are quite unavailable, and for unknown reasons Tom Baker has declined to participate).

Colin Baker's stories in particular are better than anything he ever did onscreen.

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davedoty

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Reply #2 on: July 10, 2011, 02:09:59 AM
They've covered the first four through their Companion Chronicles series, as well as some Lost Stories.  Also, they have already recorded some of Tom Baker's first series of audios.  Sadly, it was just thismuch too late to have some Sarah Jane stories.  She was to be involved, then backed out (assumably due to her illness) shortly before she passed.

Agreed on Colin Baker.  He went from being my least favorite Doctor to amongst the best due to his Big Finish work.  Sadly, Sylvester McCoy dropped from near the top down into the "meh" range for the same reason.



stePH

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Reply #3 on: July 10, 2011, 09:05:55 PM
Ooh, damn, I've been out of touch... they've been recording fourth Doctor stories now? Cool! And regrettable that Sladen isn't available... but at least we can still have Romana and Leela.

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davedoty

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Reply #4 on: July 10, 2011, 11:53:28 PM
This should probably be in a Doctor Who thread instead of a Blake's 7 thread, but ah well:

There will be two 6-story series, one starring the Doctor and Leela, one with the Doctor and the Mary Tamm Romana.  There will also be a Lost Stories box set, in which they will take scripts that were commissioned but not produced during his original run, and either adapt them for audio or recreate them if they're lost.

One can assume that if they do well (of course they will) and Tom Baker enjoys himself, there will be more.  Despite her absence from the initial releases, Baker's ex-wife Lalla Ward (Romana II) has expressed an interest in working with him again, and will hopefully participate in theoretical future projects.

(And for the record, yes, K-9 will be in at least some of these stories.  Not sure about all.)



stePH

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Reply #5 on: July 11, 2011, 03:17:02 PM
This should probably be in a Doctor Who thread instead of a Blake's 7 thread, but ah well:

It's a Big Finish thread. Always was.  ;D

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