Blake’s 7 Reboot: What can we expect?

Any remake is a devil’s bargain for fans. I’m hoping there’s a flow chart of “things that made Blake’s 7 good” somewhere in Syfy HQ – one that’s aware of Babylon 5, Galactica and Firefly – one that’s not just the word AVON. Here’s what we know, what we can expect, and what I’m holding out for.

What we know

Blake’s 7 was the pinnacle of 20th century sci fi. Better written and directed than anything else on TV in the 70s, it was Galactica reboot 3 decades ahead of time: realistic, challenging, morally questionable. Here’s Squarise’s spoiler-free review.

Reboots have been rumoured for years, but this one seems to have legs. What do we know? Essentially, only this. Syfy channel is promising. Martin Campbell directed the two of the best Bonds in living memory – Goldeneye and Casino Royale. Joe Pokaski wrote some of Heroes: I can’t remember whether his episodes were good or not. (Let me be the first to request Katee Sackoff as Blake!)

What we can expect

Better special effects

It’s important to acknowledge that some things can be improved on the classic series. I also hope for more solidly written character arcs – instead of the audience inferring from hints. Cally’s alien heritage, for example, was made up on a week-by-week basis.

Emotion. Kissing.

Doctor Who is perhaps the archetypal rebooted show, having been regularly rebooted since 1963. Any era of Who is a product of its time before anything else. Garish and violent? It’s the 80s! Slow and stagey? Welcome to the 60s! Some Who fans decried RTD’s series as “ritalin addicted”, because most stories were 45 minutes long instead of 3 hours like some Classics. But it’s not for them. It’s a modern show for a modern era: fast and snappily edited, with actual character development.

“You’re a beautiful woman, probably.” – The Doctor c.1970s

So a new B7 will – stylistically at least – be far faster than it was. But already, I’m concerned. There’s a thin, fine line between “dark” plotting and “angsty”. Classic Blake was memorable for its sardonic gallows humour and strong characterisation. That characterisation was a triumph of the actors over their material. Like most 70s telly, there was no emotion in the script, no scenes where they talk about “how they feel”. But the actors injected feeling into their sparse, sarcastic script, and the result is pure genius. Now we have characters in emotionally intense situations, constantly not saying what is meant or felt. In doing so, they become (almost accidentally) emotionally complex, and create an atmosphere where no one can be trusted and all should be kept at a distance.

Take Blake. Gareth Thomas played Blake as a baddie – an obsessed terrorist with no regard for collateral damage. But Blake was scripted as a boy-scout hero. The magic of the character was Thomas finding the darkness in his script, and creating a man trying hard to be a hero, but ruthless, single-minded, not always likeable. And the same is true of Avon – Avon, who was written as a cowardly, traitorous, greedy. Darrow played him as the hero, giving this easily generic shit an inner nobility, a sense that he’d been hurt and badly to get to this point. Put together, they were magic – two characters who hated each other on paper, two actors trying to make sense of why they stayed together. And then the writers responded to what they saw the actors doing, providing character arcs in an era where they were unknown.

My fear is that when contemporary drama does “dark”, they do “angsty” instead. For which we must turn to Torchwood. A melodrama of crying, solving emotional crises at gunpoint because it’s dramatic, stupid character decisions, and plotting to propel the emotional story rather than plot for its own sake and organic emotional development. You know what I mean:

Christ, Cyberwoman was offensively bad television. Please: not this.

And then there’s the kissing. Like Who, it’s a given and a good idea that the new series get sexier. How they choose to do this, however, will be important. A bad way, for example, would be:

The year is 2136, Blake wakes up on one side of the bed.  He reaches for the other side. There’s nobody there. As reality sets in, this handsome ex-soldier sits up, and looks at a photo of his wife Rachel. Beautiful. Deceased.

Yawwwwwn. This is from the official release. I don’t want to be too critical of a two-line outline, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but I’m already a little depressed. Blake was essentially asexual. Perhaps this was a production decision: after all, Peter Davison was such a pretty Doctor that he was not allowed to touch his companions on screen, in case audiences got the wrong idea. But it made his primary motivation undiluted revolutionary fervor. Girls? (Boys?) Nope, I’ve got a regime to topple! For my money, this makes him far more interesting. Love’s really frickin’ dull, you know? It’s overdone, and dull. It’s a rare delight when a film like Muriel’s Wedding or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid makes friendship its prime relationship. In what we must now call Classic Blake’s, the prime relationship is the hate-obsessive-love rivalry of Blake and Avon. It’d be too much to expect this be front and centre of Blake’s 2013, and the clock is ticking until self-sufficient Jenna is reinvented as The Love Interest. But this is the wrong way to reinvent Blake, especially when this storyline is already used of another main character in classic B7. I’m intrigued, but pessimistic.

Politics

Glam killer-queen Servalan, aka Space Thatcher

In a sense, Blake’s 2013 has missed its moment. Battlestar Galactica was reinvented at the right time. Although I found it politically simplistic, the idea of taking an all-American hero story and turning it into a paranoid post-9/11 military fable was the right one. And as a Blake’s 7 fan, I was amused by critics who thought its “dark, gritty sci fi” was groundbreaking: we did that in the 70s! But is there anything new for Blake to say? We’re used to anti-heroes and surveillance states now; pessimistic British political drama is the nor; and Galactica took the initiative on contemporary dark sci-fi.

I argue yes, but it’s a big ask. For Blakes 2013 to be as edgy as its original and to trump Galactica, it needs to go somewhere America doesn’t want to. For where Galactica was about terrorists hiding in our midst, Blakes is about – well – terrorists. Blake’n'co are underground, trying to take down the government, pursued by special forces and the army, bombing military infrastructure and damaging food supplies so citizens will revolt. The difference between terrorist insurgency and legitimate freedom fighters is measured only by your own politics. Blake tortures people and plans to take out the computer at Star One that will plunge the entire Federation into chaos – wrecking weather systems, food supplies, safety measures over thousands of worlds and billions of people. Even Blake’s allies are concerned about his ruthlessness:

Cally, incidentally, was based on Palestinian airline hijacker Leila Khaled, and is the only other revolutionary character in Blake’s team – the rest are press-ganged ex-crooks. It’s telling that this character thinks Blake is going a bit too far.

Blake’s 7 is a classic because it asks these questions of its heroes. But it doesn’t go far enough. In an era where terrorism is again a buzzword, Blakes 2013 should go all out on this theme. To make itself relevant, and to make it stand out from a Galactica wannabie, it should explicitly describe its heroes as “terrorists”, and feature more episodes where Blake’s decisions are questioned in this way. If Freemantle goes all the way with this, it’ll have an instant classic on its hands.

 What I hope

 Remakes are the devil’s bargains for a fan. They offer a new way to get excited about their show, but at cost of seeing their heroes brought low by bad decisions. I’m excited at the prospect of a new generation of viewers; I’m trying to remember that, however bad the new series might be, the classics will always be on the shelf and untouched.

I believe a great remake can be made. If Freemantle can keep the original’s dark tone, witty script, great characters and challenging politics. If, if, if. I’m trying to be optimistic – but let’s face it. I’m a Blake’s 7 fan. We expect that if something can go wrong, it will…

Related posts:

1. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! Why Blake’s 7 is the best TV sci fi ever made