British Sci-Fi Legend Blake’s 7 Is Getting the Blu-ray Treatment It Always Deserved

Blake’s 7 is 1 of British sci-fi’s greatest, astir subversive cult classics. From the caput of Doctor Who scribe Terry Nation—after he’d sent the federation into Dalekmania successful the ’60s—the 1978 amusement was wildly up of its time, with ideas arsenic bold arsenic its fund was threadbare. Imagine if classical Doctor Who had little wealth and much balls, and you get a unsmooth approximation of what Blake’s could be astatine its precise best. Now, astatine agelong last, the bid is getting a familiarly loving location merchandise treatment.

Today the BBC lifted the lid connected a brand-new Blu-ray remaster, Blake’s 7: The Collection. Styled successful the vein of the corporation’s lavish Blu-ray remasters of classical seasons of Doctor Who, the archetypal of Blake’s 4 bid volition merchandise aboriginal this year. Including a brand-new remastering of the series—available for the archetypal clip connected Blu-ray aft an infamously unsmooth location merchandise past connected VHS and DVD decades prior—complete with each caller applicable exemplary enactment for the show’s VFX sequences, the archetypal measurement of Blake’s 7: The Collection will see each 13 episodes from bid one, arsenic good arsenic caller interviews with surviving formed and crew, and a antecedently unreleased documentary planned for the show’s DVD release, The Making of Blake’s 7.

Set successful a aboriginal wherever overmuch of the postulation is ruled by the robust grip of Earth’s totalitarian government, the Federation, Blake’s 7 follows Gareth Thomas’ Roj Blake, a legendary absorption combatant who is captured by the Federation and has his caput wiped, leaving him an upstanding worker—until those suppressed memories reawaken erstwhile Blake witnesses a Federation information item gunning down a gathering of protestors. Caught and tried nether mendacious allegations, Blake is shipped to a distant situation planet, wherever helium meets an improbable radical of scoundrels and convicts, breaks out, and returns to a beingness of warring backmost against the Federation’s regularisation and its cunning designer (and wearer of galore perfectly wild and fabulous sci-fashion looks), Supreme Commander Servalan, played by the legendary Jacqueline Pearce.

The amusement lone gets amended arsenic it gets on—and adjacent survives Thomas’ exit, transitioning its pb quality to Blake’s second-in-command, Avon, played by Paul Darrow—climaxing successful an infamously bleak finale, but it’s a singular illustration of subject fabrication astatine its astir challengingly brutal, committed with the sincerity of cult British TV (and, again, the charm of its incredibly choky budget). While nary authoritative U.S. merchandise has been confirmed yet, fixed the BBC’s rollout of Doctor Who: The Collection connected some sides of the pond it wouldn’t beryllium excessively astonishing if Blake’s makes its mode crossed the Atlantic too—and with it the champion accidental successful years for caller audiences to observe an unsung great.

Blake’s 7: The Collection bid 1 releases successful the UK November 11.

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