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Blake’s 7

I agree with you Paul Darrow was the star of the show. However, I rather see new B7 than have no B7 on our screens at all.

In other news, the original series has landed on Britbox.
 
There are other talented people.
 
Is it churlish of me to point out that it's not the first time a Blake's 7 reboot has been announced?
 
Nathan said:
However, this one has reached the casting stage, which the other attempts did not.
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Early days still. Many a slip and all that.
 
An animated Blake's 7 might work, although I think you would need a substantially different look from the original. IMO B7 could be re-cast as cyberpunk without materially affecting the story lines, which might work for it. It shares quite a few tropes with genre cyberpunk, although its original look-and-feel was very much of the BBC cheap-plywood-sets aesthetic. Still, where they did get effort put into them (e.g. the bridge of the Liberator) the sets weren't bad.

From that perspective, I could see that sort of look and feel working in an animated series, although you would probably need the characters to be altered from the original series to make it fit. While not everything needs to be cyberpunk in the way that not everything needs to be anime, I think the look could work well for it as its very much a dystopian future.

Another option might be to do a gothic look, but that sort of got done to death by Lexx and the Giger-isms of the Alienverse and the second Riddick film. The trouble with going down that route is that it's littered with a popular culture minefield and a lot of fairly hackneyed tropes (not that Cyberpunk hasn't been done to death in its own right). A Giger-ish Liberator would be cringe material.
 
I'd do it straight. There is plenty of room for a well drawn 60s SF aesthetic.
 
I think the quality of animation would be more important to me than the "look". By quality I mean the use of movement, lighting/ explosion/ water effects, smooth integration of art with the 3D understructure, the way animated objects interact with the painted background, that sort of thing. I have consumed unholy volumes of anime over the decades so the things that put a lot of people off don't affect me any more - e.g. the various ways Japanese animators have of representing faces, expressions, movement, etc. I could probably see Vila being occasionally exaggerated as the comic relief, for example, while others like Avon and Servalan remain steadfastly grim and realistic. Travis might benefit from exagerrated craziness as his psychosis deepens.
 
I agree with @Vile, I am quite happy to be relaxed and evaluate any new version with *no* harking back to the old .
The *quality* of the plots, scripts, acting and animation are key.
With a core of old men who have vested so much in this, that's going to be a tricky thing to achieve, on the other hand I like to think British SF fans are a little more nuanced and open.. female Doctor anyone?

[okay, that proved me wrong.]

[[Just in case anyone would think it, I love having two female Doctors, and I ran towards the concept with joy even before announced]]
 
Guvnor said:
female Doctor anyone?

[okay, that proved me wrong.]
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Per a post I made at the start of the year, and anecdotal evidence at best, but my pub encounter with some very earnest and comparatively young Dr Who fans (early 20s) indicated that they were perfectly open to the idea of a female Doctor, and thought Jodie Whittaker was doing ok in the role but was being badly let down by some abysmal scripts. I've not watched Dr Who since Ecclestone left so difficult for me to give a view on that particular series, but would agree that decent plotting/scripting is going to be key to the success of any revival of Blake's 7.
 
ltd said:
Per a post I made at the start of the year, and anecdotal evidence at best, but my pub encounter with some very earnest and comparatively young Dr Who fans (early 20s) indicated that they were perfectly open to the idea of a female Doctor, and thought Jodie Whittaker was doing ok in the role but was being badly let down by some abysmal scripts. I've not watched Dr Who since Ecclestone left so difficult for me to give a view on that particular series, but would agree that decent plotting/scripting is going to be key to the success of any revival of Blake's 7.
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I'm an old fart - Tom Baker is peak Doctor Who from my mis-spent youth. By and large I've been a bit underwhelmed with new Doctor Who. It has its moments but a lot of the scripts are a bit crap, and I've only bothered watching a smattering of episodes here and there. Sadly, I think my fanboy days are consigned to the annals of history.

So, I took a look at the Jodie Whittaker episodes to see what the storm in a teacup was about, starting an iplayer account just to do this (which shows how much TV I actually watch these days). Actually, she pretty much nailed the Doctor, getting the mannerisms right with a sort of lost soul vibe that goes quite nicely with the TNG who conceits. Whether or not you think we needed a female Doctor, you can't fault her acting and I can see why the casting folks thought she really nailed the auditions - I've seen worse from both new and old Doctor Who. Yes, the scripts were not-terribly-good, especially the one with the spiders and the totally-not-Donald-Trump villain, but that's an entirely different issue.

Blink proved that they can do good scripts, but that was more than 10 years ago and they've not managed to do it consistently. It may be rose-tinted glasses, but I think they had a much better handle on their script editing around the Douglas Adams era, even after Adams left, and haven't managed to get it together with this in the new Who era. I remember seeing repeats of some of the Space Ark episodes a few years ago and thinking they had aged surprisingly well for something made about 35 years before I saw them.

Still - Liberator > TARDIS > Enterprise. Change my mind...

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Production-wise there’s no reason why Blakes 7 should be an excessively expensive show to make live action. A couple of decent standing sets, CGI is cheap and commonplace. Quality animation wouldn’t be that much cheaper - it might even cost more.

As everyone has said, what it needs is quality writing and a clutch of good British character actors.

BTW - it’s grammatically wrong but there is no apostrophe in the title. Blakes 7 not Blake’s 7.
 
The other thing I'd avoid is the glam rock tribute band look. It's the one thing that makes me cringe today - I can cope with sets that look like they'll collapse if you look at them wrong, I can cope with mildly wooden plots, but those costumes... Mamma Mia! anyone?
 
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