- David Richardson, producer of the new Blake's 7 audio adventures - Photo from Big Finish Productions
After the disappointment last year of Sky cancelling the planned new Blake’s 7 television show, many fans of the classic science fiction series thought that could be the end of the road for the show, first broadcast in the late 1970s. That was until Big Finish Productions, famous for its Doctor Who audio adventures, announced on 4 July 2011 that a series of new audiobooks and novels were going to be released in 2012.
The company has signed a licence with B7 Enterprises, that produced some of its own audio adventures in recent years, to launch in spring 2012 what will be known as Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles on CD and performed by the original stars of the show with two boxsets released each year. There will also be launches of full-length hardback Blake’s 7 novels.
The team at Big Finish comprises executive producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs with the audio series produced by David Richardson and the books edited by Xanna Eve Chown.
Why Blake’s 7?
“We are huge fans of Blake’s 7,” said David Richardson in an exclusive interview with Suite 101. “We have had the Doctor Who licence for over a decade and we all felt Blake’s 7 was something else we wanted to do. We are all of that generation, so we watched the show when we were young and it was one of the loves of our lives.”
Richardson has been with Big Finish for the past four years and has worked on the Doctor Who Companion Chronicles and Lost Stories and is currently producer of the Tom Baker Doctor Who stories that will be coming out on audio next years. Despite this, he remembers his first experience with Blake’s 7 audio.
“I am a Blake’s 7 fan going back to the very first episode in 1978 and I remember how special it was,” he said. “When it came on air, I wanted to watch it again but we didn’t have video recorders in those days so I used to tape it on audio cassettes.”
The New Audio Adventures
Richardson was keen to point out that the new adventures will capture the feel of the original show.
“We want to keep and expand upon the character dynamics that Terry Nation created,” he said. “These were an eclectic group of characters that had to be together to survive in those circumstances and that brought some tremendous dynamics that you didn’t find in other shows. Most of the characters fired off each other and we want to carry on with that.”
The new shows will be set during the timeline of the original TV series but they will be new stories rather re-imaginings of existing stories. The first boxset will tell three stories set within the first series between the television episodes “Project Avalon” and “Breakdown”. The second boxset will be during the second TV series, but exactly where has not yet been decided. What has excited fans is the news that some of the original stars will be back in their original roles.
“We won’t announce the stars yet,” said Richardson. “We will save that. But the fans will be very pleased with whom we have on board.”
Richardson was more forthcoming about the writers and the three for the first boxset will be Simon Guerrier, who wrote the audio adventure Blake's 7 The Early Years – Jenna, Nigel Fairs and Peter Anghelides.
“We have Simon Guerrier, who has written for B7 Enterprises and Doctor Who audio,” said Richardson. “Then there is Nigel, whom I have worked with a lot on Doctor Who and is a huge Blake’s 7 fan. And there is Peter, who again I have worked with on Doctor Who and has written novels for Doctor Who and Torchwood. He was also a Blake’s 7 fan writer in the early days and edited his own fanzine – Frontier Worlds – which I used to buy myself. We will be working with other writers for subsequent boxsets.”
Blake’s 7 Novels
The novels will be in hardback and available for download as e-books. Some fans have already expressed concerns that this may make them a little expensive.
“We wanted hardback to make them a nice quality product,” said Richardson. “We will do an e-book version as well, and they will be original fiction. These will be brand new stories. I can’t say whom the writers will be just yet but they are very good people.”
Some fans, who have tried their hands at Blake’s 7 fan fiction, are hoping this may give them the opportunity to go professional, but Richardson said they would have to wait.
“That might happen further down the line,” he said. “Now we are starting the range off and we want experienced people. We need to get this done and finished by February, so we want experienced heads. There can be a learning curve on these and I want us to hit the ground running. Down the line? I’ll have to think about it later. Now I just want to get past the first hurdle. Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 fandom has turned out some amazingly talented people and I am sure we will use people who have come out of fandom.”
Like the audio boxsets, there will be two 60,000-word novels out each year, meaning there will be something new in the Blake’s 7 universe every three months.
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
