Blake's 7 - Fanlore

Blake's 7

(Redirected from B7)
Name: Blake's 7
Abbreviation(s): B7
Creator: Terry Nation
Date(s): 1977-1981
Medium: tv series
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
External Links: IMDB Epguides
Subpages for Blake's 7:

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Contents

Show synopsis

British television show created by Terry Nation, Blake's 7 takes place in a dystopic interplanetary empire of the future. Running for four seasons of thirteen episodes each between 1977 and 1981, the show was made with the BBC's usual production values for science-fiction shows at that time (low special-effects budgets, miminal sets, and most outdoor scenes filmed in one or two locations) but the series as a whole had sharp, political scripts. Blake's crew was canonically made "Blake's seven" by including the original ship's computer, Zen, in the count in an episode early in the first season: in second, third, and fourth seasons this "count the computers" was silently continued.

As a television show that chronicles the adventures of a ragtag band of fugitives vagrant on a space ship, Blake's Seven is a descendent of Robin Hood, and a forbear of Farscape (Blake's Seven on Acid!) and Star Trek: Voyager (Blake's Seven on valium!). As of 2008, the show was slated to be re-made, a la Battlestar Galactica.

B7 cast

In order of appearance:

Seasons one and two

  • Roj Blake, played by Gareth Thomas
  • Vila Restal, played by Michael Keating
  • Jenna Stannis, played by Sally Knyvette
  • Kerr Avon, played by Paul Darrow
  • Olag Gan, played by David Jackson
  • Zen, voiced by Peter Tuddenham (Peter Tuddenham voiced all three computers, and in some episodes, there were scenes where Peter was both sides of a conversation between Orac and Zen or Slave)
  • Cally, played by Jan Chappell
  • Supreme Commander (later President) Servalan, played by Jacqueline Pearce
  • Commander Travis, played by Stephen Greif (series 1) and Brian Croucher (series 2)
  • Orac, voiced by Peter Tuddenham

In season three, Blake, Jenna, Gan, and Travis (B7 hewed to the British sexist/classist tradition that all women of whatever class and any working-class characters of any gender are referred to by their given name only) had all left the series one way or another. The two new characters in season three were:

  • Dayna Mellanby, played by Josette Simon
  • Del Tarrant, played by Steven Pacey

By the beginning of season four, Cally and Zen had left the series, and were replaced (in Zen's case, a virtual replacement only) by another two new characters:

  • Soolin, played by Glynis Barber
  • Slave, voiced by Peter Tuddenham

Cally's lack of surname had always been justified by her being "an alien": Soolin's lack of surname was never explained at all.

Blake's 7 fandom

The series began during the period after the original Star Trek and before the first Star Trek movie; hence its fandom participated in the normalization of many common fannish practices of today, for example the social history of slash and print zines. Its final episode, "Blake," caused such an uproar in the fandom that even today, thirty years on, fans are still working out Post Gauda Prime (PGP) stories of their own.

Several early Blake's 7 fan clubs sprang up in the UK during and immediately after the first season was broadcast (1977-1978), and one of them, Horizon, the Blake's 7 Appreciation Society is still active thirty years later.

The series was not broadcast in the US until the late 1980s, and video recorders were neither cheap nor common in the UK till after that time, so videotapes could not be shared. Fans in the US received tapes made by pointing a portable videocamera at the screen of the TV while it was broadcasting an episode. These camera copies were poor quality to begin with, and became poorer quality as they were copied and passed on. A joke circulating among American B7 fans after the series was broadcast in the US was "My tapes were so bad, I didn't realise Travis was played by two actors!"

Like many SF fandoms, there is an enormous gen fandom that persists even now, when the formerly huge slash fandom is almost completely gone.

B7 fanworks

Like most pre-web fandoms, early B7 fanfic was sharply divided into slash, explicit het (referred to in contemporary zines as "adult"), and gen. Fanfic was being published in zines from 1977 onwards. An early post-1st season story, written not long after the first season ended and before the second season was broadcast, was simply titled The Epic as it was at the time (50,000 words) the longest B7 fan story ever published.

As with the original Doctor Who, B7 was broadcast "before the watershed" (before 8pm) and expected to be suitable for children, so episode scripts when televised could not include either explicit sex or swearing. Very early fanfic, written while the series was being broadcast, was in general expected by fan editors and publishers to correspond to BBC pre-watershed standards: though swearing might be permitted, even heterosexual relationships could not be explicitly sexual. Horizon began to produce "adult" fanzines, heterosexual relationships only (even an early reference to male/male rape was objected to) in the early 1980s, after the series was no longer being broadcast.

Slash appears

Relations between the gen fandom and slash fandom varied over time. Unlike other fandoms of the time, many B7 zines had both gen and slash stories (especially many by Ashton Press). But because actor cons were very common, gen fans often thought of the slash fans as an embarrassment. (A quote from Paul Darrow, "Why is Gareth always raping me" was frequently used to show how inappropriate the actors thought slash was.)

Slash fanfic began to be published in 1983: an early zine that included same-sex as well as mixed-sex relationships was The Big Boy's Book of 1001 Things To Do In Zero Gravity With A Federation Handblaster, first published August 1983, which includes what may be the first B7 slash story, "Licence", pairing Del Tarrant with Jarvik, a character who appears only in a third-season episode Harvest of Kairos.

However, the first known B7 all-slash fanzine was E-Man-Uelle, available here; the first two issues were also published in 1983 (issues 1 to 8 came out roughly twice a year between 1983 and 1987). While badly produced and badly typed, these zines were the first to publish some B7 fan writers who later became better known in other fanzines and other fandoms: Julien, Jane Carnall, Julie Kramer, Bryn Lantry and others. These zines were stories pairing Kerr Avon with either Roj Blake (Blake/Avon) or with Vila Restal (Avon/Vila), which remain the most popular slash pairings.

Hermit.org hosts a link to fansites hosting Blake's 7 fanfic online. Many early stories are still only available in fanzines: the slash library is an institution at British slash conventions.

The Fandom Implodes

In the 1980s, when relations between many of the BNFs and many of the actors exploded, many fans -- starving for information in an era before the Internet -- blamed slash fans for the explosion, though in retrospect, slash had little or nothing to do with the explosion.

B7 online

In the 1990s, when B7 fandom hit the Net, a lot of the online new fans were quite startled the first time they heard of slash. Slash fans on the various B7 lists and newsgroups grew tired of repeating the same arguments, and drew up a The Generic Slash Defense Form Letter[1] still available on the net.

Spacecity -- an adult B7 mailing list late '80s-early '90s

Notable slash fanworks

Blake/Avon

Avon/Vila

Last Stand at the Edge of the World, a novel which is nominally gen, but featured Avon and Vila in a group marriage with Kerril, Vila's female love interest in the aired episode "City at the Edge of the World." Several adult and explicitly slash sequel stories were featured in anthology zines by the same publishers.

Southern Lights Special, later Southern Comfort, which were the adult/slash anthology companions to the publishers' gen Southern Lights zines. Each issue was differentiated from their gen counterparts by the issue number plus either a .5 (adult gen and slash, including Blake/Avon and Avon/Vila) or a .75 (all Avon/Vila issues).

Fanvids

  • A memorably heartbreaking videotape fanvid contained scenes from the last episode to the song Send in the Clowns.[2]
  • Comedy Tonight by MVD
  • True Believer by Viv Nichols of the Media Cannibals
  • Some of the most innovative vids of the 80s were made by Gayle F and Tashery S, including Walking and Falling, and Continental Drift.

Post-Gauda Prime

Fix-it fic for the series is known as Post Gauda Prime (PGP)

Lists and Communities

Archives

Zines

Print zines

Online zines

These either started out as ezines, or were archived on the web after going out of print.

External Links

References

  1. ↑ The Generic Slash Defense Form Letter
  2. ↑ Shown by the Skaro Hunting Society in the mid-1980s. Maker unknown. (busaikko)
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