After years of big announcements and little progress, it finally looks as if B7Enterprises, the company that currently holds the television rights to Terry Nation’s classic science fiction series Blake’s 7 are finally going to get a new television version off the ground. Last week they annonced that they have persuaded SKY Television to go into partnership with them. Is there finally going to be a new series of Blake’s 7 on the box or is this more hot air from B7E. I am not holding my breath, SKY made a much heralded announcement a few years ago that they were going to be producing a remake of the iconic sixties series The Prisoner and that came to nothing.  However it has to be said that The Prisoner is so much of its time, that any attempt to modernise it was bound to crash and burn.  A new version of Blake’s 7 would not have tham problem because B7 is not tied to any particular era.

If it does happen, I will be slightly saddened if the BBC has no connection with the new series.  After all, it was originally made by the BBC, using second had props and costumes from Doctor Who.  However, I really cannot see Aunty and Digger Murdoch’s minions getting all cosy and creating a co-production deal.

I am really hoping that if it does get off the ground, then the series will be a re-imaging of the orignal. After all, it worked so well with the new version of Battlestar Galactica.  B7E did produce an audio version for the SCI-FI channel in the USA, which was written by Ben Aaronovich, Marc Platt and Jaems Swallow, both Aaronovich and Platt are former Doctor Who script writers.  This audio was very interesting retake on the original idea, so I should imagine that any new television version would be the same.  Starting the story of Roj Blake’s fight against the repressive Terran Federation aboard a hijacked alien spacecraft with a bunch of convicted criminals from scratch.

I very much doubt  that the new version probably would not feature the original theme music  which was written  Dudley Simpson and I call The March of the Liberator. It dates from an era when all things SF in the media were trying to ape tha massive success of Star Wars, and to my mind nothing says Blake’s 7 more than the big synth-horn opening fanfare of the theme from the original BBC Series. If by some miracle, the original theme is used, I would love to see it recorded with real instruments, not the whole orchestra, just the brass section, the percusion section and a first class pipe organ.