Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series that was created by Terry Nation and produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).[1] Four series were produced between 2 January 1978 and 21 December 1981,[2] all of which have been released on VHS and Region 2 DVD. From September 2021 to June 2022, Forces TV began airing repeats of all 52 episodes of Blake's 7 for the first time; this was followed by a weekly re-run on GBTV from January 2022.
Blake is introduced to Kerr Avon, who used his technical prowess to nearly get away with stealing five million credits from the Federation banking system. Knowing he has a good pilot (Jenna), a lockpick expert (Vila) and now a computer specialist (Avon), Blake devises a plan to hijack the London. He also gains the help of a physically imposing man, Olag Gan, who agrees to be his strong arm. When the London enters a battle between unidentified ships, Blake unleashes his mutiny plan but fails to take over. Later, the London comes upon an abandoned unidentified vessel and the first officer, Sub-Commander Raiker, persuades the captain to capture it for a salvage reward. Losing some of his men to lethal traps on the ship, Raiker sends Blake, Jenna and Avon in. Blake disables the trap and Jenna is able to control the ship, allowing their escape.
Blake decides to destroy a Federation communications complex at Saurian Major as the first major strike against the Federation. Along the way, a distress call leads the Liberator to an escape pod with cryonically frozen beings aboard. Arriving at the Saurian complex, Blake teleports down with Avon and Vila and searches for other resistance fighters to help him take out the installation. They meet an Auron woman named Cally whom Blake convinces to help them. Back on the Liberator, Gan and Jenna deal with the thawed beings who turn out to be dangerous killers conditioned to protect the genetic stock aboard their pod. On the planet, Blake and his team successfully infiltrate the complex where Avon overrides the safety protocols of a reactor; seconds before the explosion an injured Gan teleports the team to safety. Blake rescues Jenna, and they dispose of the pod in deep space. Cally accepts Blake's offer to join the Liberator crew.
Under psychic control, Cally sabotages the Liberator to bring it to an uncharted world, where it becomes trapped in a cloud of strange web-like strands encompassing the planet. Jenna is momentarily possessed and relays a message from the inhabitants of the planet, a group of people known as "The Lost", descendants of Cally's home planet Auron. Blake teleports down to meet The Lost who offer a means to escape the web, but require energy cells from the Liberator as payment. Blake gives them the cells, but discovers The Lost will use the energy to destroy another race of creatures known as Decimas whom The Lost created through genetic engineering. Not wanting to be party to genocide, Blake tries to stop them and to free his ship. Eventually the Decimas invade the complex and destroy their creators. In the midst of the confusion, Blake and Avon succeed in activating a fungicide beam which creates a clear passage through the web, enabling them to escape ahead of the oncoming Federation Pursuit Ships.
Blake and his crew infiltrate a Federation base on the planet Centero to steal a decryption cipher. During their escape, Cally is separated from them and loses her teleport bracelet during a struggle. The others learn she is missing only after returning to the Liberator. As news of Blake's exploits begin to spread, Federation Supreme Commander Servalan, under pressure from the Federation High Council, appoints Space Commander Travis to eliminate the fugitives, although this is met with disapproval by her colleagues. Travis, however, takes personal pleasure in accepting the assignment as he had lost both an eye and an arm (having replaced the latter with a cybernetic limb) during the original confrontation to capture Blake on Earth. When Travis finds Cally alive, he uses her as bait in a trap for Blake. Blake initiates a hit-and-run attack to rescue Cally, during which he manages to damage Travis' cybernetic hand before escaping; Travis vows revenge.
The Liberator encounters the freighter Ortega drifting in uncontrolled circles in space. After boarding, Blake, Avon and Cally find most of the crew unconscious, one of the crew murdered, and the flight control systems deliberately smashed. When the survivors awaken, their leader Dr. Kendall explains their important mission to deliver a valuable energy substance called the neutrotope to their home world of Destiny, to halt a fungal contamination in the food supply. Blake decides to deliver the neutrotope himself with the Liberator, while Avon and Cally remain to help repair the Ortega and identify who is behind the murder and sabotage.
Space Commander Travis and his three Federation warships have tracked the Liberator to an uncharted planet where Blake, Jenna, and Gan are investigating the surface. After the three explore the ruins of an ancient civilisation, they hurriedly return to the Liberator as Travis closes in to attack. With the Liberator low on energy reserves, Blake decides not to run but to face his enemy head-on. Suddenly, a powerful being named Sinofar, who is intolerant of war, cripples the ships and sends Blake and Jenna back to the planet. There they are forced to fight Travis and his "mutoid" pilot in mortal combat so they will learn the meaning of death.
Space Commander Travis has captured a resistance leader named Avalon, and holds her captive in a Federation lab located underground on a frigid planet. Avalon had earlier contacted Blake to take her to a newly constructed resistance base, and Blake is determined to rescue her. After pulling off the rescue, Blake discovers he has instead saved an android clone of Avalon, which is programmed to kill everyone aboard the Liberator by releasing a deadly, fast-acting virus.
A behavioural "limiter" implant in Gan's brain malfunctions and he violently threatens the lives of the crew. Once he is captured and sedated, Blake rushes to get him to a nearby medical facility called XK-72, but the route takes the Liberator through a dangerous gravity vortex. The suicidal manoeuvre causes the argumentative Avon to declare that he is quitting Blake's team for good. Once at the medical facility, a surgeon named Kayn and his aide teleport to the Liberator to operate on Gan, but Kayn delays the procedure when he becomes suspicious of Blake. Meanwhile, Avon stays behind on the station to negotiate with the staff for sanctuary, but soon discovers that someone has already alerted the Federation to Blake's arrival, and gunships are on the way.
Blake locates President Sarkoff, the deposed leader of the planet Lindor, which is on the verge of civil war. If war breaks out, the Federation will send in "peacekeeping" forces and easily annex it. While Blake urges the president to take back his leadership, the Liberator answers a distress call from another ship; it turns out to be from a notorious bounty hunter, Tarvin, a former colleague of Jenna, who hijacks the Liberator and tries to cash in on the 13 million credit reward on the crew's heads.
Note: Sarkoff's residence is the Waterloo Tower in Quex Park, Birchington, Kent.
After the Liberator crew witnesses a small ship explode above the planet Cephlon, Avon, Vila, Gan and Jenna teleport down to the surface to locate two jettisoned escape capsules. In the process, Jenna is abducted by the planet's Neanderthal-like natives and the others search for her. On the Liberator, a mortally injured survivor, Ensor, is brought aboard, but he holds Cally at gunpoint and forces Blake to take him to the planet Aristo, where his father awaits urgent medical supplies. Blake learns that Ensor's father is the creator of a device called "Orac", which is something the Federation wants very badly. Once Ensor dies from his injuries, Blake turns the Liberator around and races back to rescue his friends. Back on Cephlon, Avon, Vila and Gan discover an ancient stasis capsule ship called Deliverance and a mysterious woman named Meegat, who tells Avon that it is his destiny to launch the ship into space.
Season 2 aired on BBC1, Tuesdays, mostly 7:20 p.m., 9 January 1979 to 3 April 1979. Producer: David Maloney. It averaged 7.14 million viewers on original airing in the UK, with an average chart position of 79, a drop of over two million viewers on that of Series A.
Blake and the crew become obsessed with Orac's prediction of the destruction of the Liberator. However, there are more pressing matters when the ship comes under attack by its alien creators, "The System", who want their property back. After fleeing, Liberator's control systems shut down; Blake heads to engineering to fix the problem but is attacked by a "living" wire cable with a mind of its own. Meanwhile, Liberator is remote-piloted to The System's space station and the crew are taken prisoner. With Orac's help, the crew escapes The System who send out another attack ship which looks exactly like the Liberator; Blake now wonders which Liberator Orac had predicted seeing destroyed.
The crew arrives at Space City where Blake seeks contact with the criminal organisation Terra Nostra as possible resistance allies, but their leader Largo may have loyalty to the enemy. Meanwhile, an alien entity takes possession of Orac through his dimensional logic circuits and disrupts Cally's empathic powers, driving her to madness. Blake and his crew then rush to the desert planet Zondar to seek the heavily guarded source of the drug known as "Shadow", which is the basis of Terra Nostra's power and the only help for Cally.