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When I was in high school, I remember seeing mentions of Blake's 7 in magazines, but it was never aired here until some years later on PBS. Even then, I missed many episodes, due to scheduling conflicts and my own laziness, where programming my VCR was concerned. Recently, I got to watch the whole series and while the special effects and sets are as bad as I remembered, the writing was even better than I remembered. The story is pretty basic, as these things go. You have an oppressive government, drugging the people into complacency. You have a resistance movement that has been brutally suppressed. A resistance leader who was tortured into betraying his cause, then made to forget he'd ever been a resistance leader in the first place. Roj Blake is that leader. In the first episode, Blake has been convinced to forego food and drink for a couple of days, to purge his body of the drugs that keep his fellow citizens in their place. He meets with a resistance group and witnesses their executions at the hands of the black-clad soldiers of the Terran Federation. Blake is captured, and put on trial for molesting children, but manages to create a glimmer of doubt about his guilt in the mind of his defense counsel. While attempting to verify Blake's story, he goes outside the domed city to the place Blake described the meeting taking place and finds the bodies of the resistance members. He and his wife are murdered and Blake is convicted and sentenced to deportation to the prison planet, Cygnus Alpha. On the prison transport, he meets four others who begin working on a plan to take over the ship. Their attempt is eventually thwarted, but they get a second chance when the prison transport encounters a drifting alien ship. The prisoners are put on board, after a small prize crew has been mysteriously killed by something on the alien ship. Blake and the others are able to survive the defense mechanism employed by the ship and bring it under their control. Along the way, I began to notice similarities between Blake's 7 and a couple of other series I enjoy, Farscape and Firefly. Here are a few: In one form or another, all three shows have crews that are fugitives. Blake's 7 and Farscape both feature short-haired ruthless brunettes, who manage to elevate themselves to positions of supreme power over the course of the series.
Liberator, Moya and Serenity, usually named without definite article [the] in front of their names and Liberator and Serenity have glowing tails...even Moia glows in starburst. Fashions by Himmler.
Captain Hero
So, as sometimes happens when there's book or TV show I like, I think about doing my own take on the characters, the ships, etc. So here they are... The good guys...
 Kerr Avon, Jenna Stannis, Roj Blake, Cally, Olag Gan and Vila Restal.
The bad guys...
 Space Commander Travis and Supreme Commander, later President, Servalan.
The ship...
The computer...
 Liberator and Orac are often the MacGuffin in various episodes, Servalan wants both of them. I thought I'd go with a little more "alien" in my design of Liberator. I figure the Terran Federation ships would look more mechanical, plating and pipes, etc. In the series, Orac is this really annoying plastic contraption that makes this little dying animal sound when you pull his control pack. For my version, Orac is mobile, but his control pack is more of a remote control, and he follows whoever carries it at a distance of no more than 10 feet. I never liked the hand weapons supplied with Liberator, so I designed something a little more along the lines of an old style pistol, whereas the Federation side arms have a more utilitarian, submachine gun look. Avon carries a piece, but it's not out in the open, like the others. In my variation, Avon never takes off his gloves and rarely takes off his shades. Gan goes unarmed, because the behavior modification chip in his head limits the amount of violence he can dish out. They're all seen wearing the Liberator teleport/comm bracelets.
See more of my stuff at . . .
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