When Character Counted

I recently finished watching the entire series of Blakes 7 on DVD. I'm not going to link it, this is the internet, you can google it just as easily.

It is British, "science fiction", and ran for four years from the late 70s. The show's creator, Terry Nation (Of "Doctor Who's "Daleks" fame) described the show as "Dirty Dozen in Space". It suffers from the lack of budget and technology we expect these days, but for character and dialogue and story, it surpasses anything that has been seen in the genre since. And in saying this I respectfully include Joss Whedon's Firefly & Serenity, which are the best of the rest. Occasionally those shows still smelt of the corn-cheese factory, but were loveable nonetheless.

But too loveable. You could see from the writing of Firefly's pilot that Captain Malcolm Reynolds was supposed to be a tough as nails SOB who cared only for himself, his ship, and his crew - and often his dialogue reflected that. But his actions were of the eponymous hero - like Roj Blake from Blakes 7. They would only hurt the deserving, eve though their actions caused many undeserving might get caught in the crossfire.

Unlike Mal, though, Blake had a calculating and rational offsider Ker Avon, who would cut to the chase. If innocents died anyway, any bother or moral torment over how they died was pointless and costly - the thing that mattered was winning. Time after time Avon sacrificed innocents for his greater good - for which Blake always provided a hazy moral compass... right till the end.

Paul Darrow, who played Avon, gives an excellent interview on the final disk of Season 4, where the show was culled. He says of a Blakes 7 revival, "Serenity - it has already been done." But he is too modest. In a time where so much TV wastes production values on banal scripts filled with exposition and bland scenes written as radio with pictures, not even the limitations of 70s sci-fi can depose Blakes as a pinnacle in television drama.

Other great TV dramas:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Mad Men
The Sopranos
The Insiders Guide to Happiness (& Love) (NZ)
Secret Life of Us (AUS)
Outrageous Fortune (NZ)