Blake's 7??

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Hollywood Reporter announces a revival of Blake's 7.

Thanks to redbyrd_sgfic for pointing this out to me; I found it the next day on Sci Fi Wire, and if she hadn't warned me, there'd have been hummus all over my computer screen.

My instinct is to view this with great trepidation, but Redbyrd rightly points out that if it's bad, I don't have to watch. I'm just not very good at that (see how long it took me to quit BSG?). I start watching a show out of curiosity, and I get sucked in even when I have serious problems with it, complaining weekly--I watched too much ER this way in grad school, and BSG was an especially egregious case. I saw all of the new Bionic Woman; shouldn't have bothered with any of it.

Then again, pepper_field encourages me to think there might actually be more actors out there who could pull it off, even if Paul Darrow and Jacqueline Pearce are a tad old to be doing it now. After all, we've seen some fine actors on Doctor Who (often doing very silly things, but that's DW for you) and on Torchwood (also sometimes doing very silly things). If I could stand to watch MI-5/Spooks, I'd see others, but I don't like shows where they keep killing major characters, so I stopped watching that after a few episodes. ::fume:: In fact, there's so much good British tv and film I can't possibly keep up.

I'm also not sure B7 would be the same without shaky sets and some truly awe-inspiring late 70s/early 80s hair and costumes, but then, the revival of Doctor Who has made me quite happy!

Comments

[delphia2000.livejournal.com]

I've only heard a bit about Blakes7 and never saw any, so I'd probably be willing to give it a try. I'm like you tho...killing major characters pisses me off. (Which is why I will not watch any more of Joss's stuff.)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Blake's 7 is classic British SF. It's much harder-edged than Doctor Who; in the premiere, Blake is imprisoned on false charges of child molestation when he's really a political prisoner, and I understand many PBS stations that showed DW refused to show B7 because the hero was a "child molester". Almost all the other characters are criminals. Its dialogue ranged from really bad to brilliant, and some of the characters are quite memorable, despite costumes that sometimes looked like they'd been looted from a glam-rock band, occasional rubber-suited monsters--and a spaceship that was the bastard child of a microphone and a microphone stand. Great fun, if you ever can see it! It's not available on Region 1 DVD, so we got a region-free DVD player and have three seasons of DVDs and one of really poor-quality videotapes.

Don't get me started on killing off regulars--though I should admit that B7 might maybe have killed off a person or two, and I let it go because it worked (and because they didn't touch my favorites until the bitter end)....

[pepper-field.livejournal.com]

I do agree that there's huge potential for it going horribly wrong. The abandoned attempt to remake The Prisoner is a bit of a worry. Then again, at least whoever is choosing what to remake has good taste.

I really hope, like you mentioned on my LJ, that they pick some unknowns to do it. And that they limit the CGI. And that they recreate the awesomeness that was the Liberator, in all its round-corridored glory. And that they do it seriously, and not mess around trying to make it postmodern and self-referential (which is the one thing that continually bugs me about the current version of DW, because it throws me out of the story).

Oh, I have my fingers so tightly crossed. Also, now I need an icon.