WITH THREE SHOTS TO THE GUT, poor old Roj Blake is dead. Having, courtesy of the most spectacular of misunderstandings, just murdered the very man and former leader he’d long sought, Kerr Avon remains frozen to the spot. The rest of his ill-fated and largely less memorable crew are fatally picked off, one by one, by newly-arrived Federation gunmen.
Soon enough surrounded by his enemies, Avon flashes that knowing showbiz smile for the last time, before the screen goes to black to the sound of more shooting. A December Monday night on BBC One, 40 years ago. Blake’s 7 had just left our screens for good. Its climax was chaotic, brutal and unexpected. Science fiction on British TV hasn’t hit such heights since.
Downbeat about the show’s direction and the dramatic straitjacket that came with his heroic Blake, the Welsh RSC actor Gareth Thomas wanted out by the end of series two and seldom appeared thereafter. A Blakeless 7 seemingly posed a problem for its creator, TV veteran Terry Nation. There was, after all, hardly a conventional substitute heroic lead waiting in the wings, ready to take these intergalactic rebels to unlikely victory.
courageous type, ready to take up the fight where the other had left off? The alternative was altogether more intriguing and risky. Having spent two series endlessly sniping and scowling at Blake’s simplistic crusade against the evil totalitarian folk, that same crusade underpinning the whole premise of Nation’s show, Paul Darrow’s cynical computer genius Avon (“computer Avon to be kept in check?
