Something Like Star Trek?

Meta
Title:	Something Like Star Trek?
Creator:	Judith M. Seaman
Date(s):	February 1997
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Blake's 7
Topic:
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Something Like Star Trek? is a 1997 Blake's 7 essay by Judith M. Seaman.

It was printed in Avon Club Newsletter #66.

The topic was how Blake's 7 was different, and more superior, to other science fiction television programs.

From the Essay

The idea that the BBC may have had doubts about the message of Blake's Seven is not entirely surprising as the moral tone of the early series was distinctly shaky. The first series was 'about' a singularly unpleasant terrorist who stole a spaceship and recruited a gang of criminals in order to carry out a campaign of bombings and random destruction. In the second series this campaign escalated towards genocide and mass murder. Not, perhaps, the most desirable themes for early evening viewing.

Once Blake departed, the moral tone improved, though only because the remaining characters were personally (if not socially) honest and their actions were more those of a group fighting persistent, though not entirely unjustified, persecution, rather than a senseless rampage of violence.

So what is there in that to interest anyone? Briefly, not much. Fortunately there was a lot more to Blake's Seven than that.

More than any other science fiction series I remember, Blake's Seven was about people. The good ship Liberator wasn't operated by a dedicated group committed to one aim. It was inhabited by a diverse collection of individuals, each with their own ideas, goals, plans for the future and memories of the past. They had no great faith in each other, no sugary friendships hidden under the surface bickering. If the right opportunity had come up Avon would have left, Vila would have run, Jenna would have sold out.. Each of the characters had a freedom of action unusual in that type of series where most 'characters' can be plotted purely from their place in the cast list.

What else was different about this group. They faced moral choices, two-way bad moral choices that couldn't be escaped by doing nothing. The kind of choice that exists in real life but is rare on TV at that time in the evening. This aspect grew rapidly through the third series and reached a climax in the fourth (sorry to all those who don't like the fourth series, but that's where the major moral choices are). Moral choice is what leadership is about, a leader who fails to make those choices is no leader. On top of that then- choices were not always correct.

Anything else? Yes... Heroic victory is rare in real life, permanent winning is a failure of its own. The characters in Blake's Seven lost, personally and as a group, on many different occasions. They only came together at all because they had each lost before the series even started. What was important to the series wasn't any prospect that they might win, but how they faced and handled defeat. The laws of time and space and human life were not suspended totally for the heroes benefit. Losing was always on the cards and that kept the characters human, like us. If they were wounded, did they not bleed.

If the props in Blake's Seven were plastic the people were real - a pleasant change after hundreds of sci/fi epics where the reverse is true.

But what was it all about? Was it just another soap opera in space, or was it social realism on the flight deck? There were themes in Blake's Seven that wouldn't have disgraced a full scale drama. There were moral problems raised that had relevance far beyond the series. The heroes' were not all good and the 'baddies' were not all bad. If 'right' wasn't always easy to identify, neither was 'wrong'.

In this respect the series attempted a lot, not surprisingly it didn't always succeed. At times it didn't go the way we wanted it to go, or examine the themes we expected or the relationships we fancied. In a lot of ways it failed. Many other series have failed too. Blake's Seven aimed higher - if it failed finally, it still achieved more than most even attempted.

Something like Star Trek? No, something very different!

Fan Comments

... I realized yet again why I try to never read her stories or buy her zines... Judith's view of Blake as a "singularly unpleasant terrorist" with a campaign of "random destruction" that "escalated towards genocide" is not mine. "Once Blake departed, the moral tone improved, though only because the remaining characters were personally (if not socially) honest..." According to Judith, Avon and company were better rebels third and fourth seasons than Blake was the first two with his "senseless rampage of violence".