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Peladon's attempts at writing fiction |
Blake’s 7 - The Series
Created by Terry Nation and filmed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this is a UK sci fi series remarkable for being largely gloss free and more than a little cynical well before it was fashionable or cool to be either.
Set about a thousand years into the future the world of Blake's 7 is dominated by the Federation, or to be precise the Terran Federation. To understand the Federation all you have to do is take the last thousand years of human history and project it forward another thousand, throwing in deep space flight and a few other scientific hurdles crossed along the way. Humanity is as it always has been and there have been no conversion to altruism, higher ways or humane morality here. This is a world where the majority of humans continue to do what they always have done; that is to chose their leaders badly, believe too much of what they are told, impose on those who can’t stand up to them, exploit anything and anyone that serves their immediate interests, while all the time pretending that nothing is wrong.
As with every other period of history there are those who do see the reality and think that they could do better; and, as many times before, at least some of them are prepared to fight for their version of better. Blake (personal name Roj) is one of these rebels or resistors, and like many before him he has failed and suffered the consequences.
The series opens just as his past comes back to bite him again, it then draws in a motley collection of imperfect comrades, all with their own reasons for being where they are, progresses through a number of standoffs between first Blake and the Federation and later his comrades and the Federation, and ends…… well that depends on your point of view, tragedy or farce, but probably unsatisfactorily for most people.
It was an unusual series for its time in a number of ways, not least because of the lack of certainty it offered and the strength and assertiveness of the female characters, at least in the first series (all of which were written by its creator). Though the costumes and sets have dated, as one would expect, the relationships between the people portrayed haven’t; and for the most part the female characters would not be out of place in something produced now. Or, given the casual sexism that remains in much popular science fiction, even in a series not yet produced.
Though this equality of the sexes slips noticeably once writers other than Nation appear on the scene, enough of it remains for the series to largely escape the jarring notes of female tweeness and willing subservience seen in so many things produced at the same time, and indeed afterwards, in many genre.
It must also be one of the few family programmes (it went out early evening) ever created that has no children in it at all and there is really nothing remotely childlike about much of the first three series. Even the humour is adult as it is based around character interactions and verbal interplays requiring a high degree of linguistic skill. Because of the lack of colloquialisms and slang the scripts travel well across times and geographical regions and in my view sound far less strange than those series were a self conscious use of 'street talk' reduces the shelf life of a dialogue. Would that more current writers would understand how quickly 'clique language' and swearing dates.
I doubt that Blake's 7 would make it out before the watershed today. Though there is very little graphic violence, and no bad language, the calm acceptance of the self serving banality of evil that runs through a lot of it would probably be seen as an affront to delicate young minds. The absence (for the most part) of explicit sex and abusive language, and the focus on issues other than personal emotional baggage and angst, would similarly mark it out as not for family consumption these days. In fact I doubt that it would be possible to get something like it commissioned today, at least in the UK.
How parents of the first decade of the 21st century would explain to their children about a the wholesale slaughter of civilians, a race that annihilates itself by war, a society that destroys itself rather than be a strategic pawn, and the use of the threat of destruction to force a society to serve your economic interests, all of which are themes in this 'family series', might make an interesting dissertation.
Blake's 7 also has no real goodies, baddies that are ‘us’ and not ‘someone else’ and offers no tidy endings. Though personally I don’t fall into the camp that lauds the last episode even I can admit that it is in no way tidy.
to be continued......
I suppose I should declare my axes for grinding upfront.
I love
series one, like series two, have some affection for series three and dislike
(or on a bad day loathe) series four. This breakdown in interest and appreciation
is driven by several factors, including the following:
1. I like stories that are heavy on concept as well as character,
2. I’m not overly impressed by special effects, (except when they are
LOR standard)
3. I think that action only has a point if it serves the plot,
4. I like characters that behave like real people, not soap people, at least
some of the time,
5. I have no patience with writers of prime time series who think that I have
some form of
memory dysfunction and therefore am incapable of recalling events, or people,
from one week to another,
6. I hate having my intelligence insulted.
So having declared my interests and prejudices what do I think is going on?
to be continued........
So why did I write so much on something nearly 30yrs old and from which I can make no profit?
Weeelll,
I had fun doing it - well most of the time, and I never intended it to be so big of course. When I started it I thought I'd be lucky to write 10,000 words given that I'd never written and fiction at all before, but I got caught up in the ideas and the scenario I found developing and just went with it.
to be continued........