Edited by Peter Anghelides

Big Finish, out now

A new set of novelisations of the first 14 episodes of Blake’s 7.

Marking the 45th anniversary of the broadcast of Orac, the final episode of Series A of Terry Nation’s space opera, Big Finish have done fans of Blake’s 7 proud with this collection of seven books, each adapting two episodes of the show, with the final volume bringing a Series B story into print for the first time ever. Editor Peter Anghelides has assembled a strong team of writers who bring not just a wealth of experience to the project, but also a fan sensibility – asking, and answering, questions that have intrigued viewers of the series since 1978 and with access to Nation’s own notes, suggesting possibilities previously unglimpsed. Add into that elements that have featured in Big Finish’s own continuation of the mythos, and you have a series of books that simply couldn’t have appeared contemporaneously in the same way that Trevor Hoyle’s original novels did.

I’m not going to spoil the many surprises within these volumes with a detailed review of each book – part of the pleasure is discovering the changes, whether it’s reordering scenes to make the books flow better, adding in characterisation that there simply wasn’t time for on screen, or creating new scenes that pick up on what seem to be discarded plotlines. On more than one occasion you’ll even get the feeling that what we’ve been watching for 45 or so years is an adaptation of these books!

Some interesting further queries about the series come to the fore through these – Paul Cornell’s first volume consistently uses surnames for the characters, and makes you wonder about a world in which we only ever heard of Restal and Stannis’ adventures; Jac Rayner’s retelling adds layers that further disguises the fact they’re based on scripts where Nation owed a certain… debt… shall we say to previous tales (Leslie Charteris’ The Inescapable Word, which was one of Nation’s first scripts for The Saint 12 years earlier; and the Star Trek tale Arena, and its own various roots respectively).

More than anything else, you’ll come away with an increased understanding of the disparate personalities that go to make up the original Seven, and how Terry Nation saw them – an annotated version would be fascinating to learn which portions of the changes are routes not taken in the 1970s, and which are the product of decades of fan discussion. They’re not cheap but for Blake’s 7 fans, they really are worth every penny.

Verdict: A thoroughly entertaining collection of novellas that expand our understanding of the characters and situations of the universe we first met in Blake’s 7’s first year (and a bit). Roll on the remaining episodes of Series B! 9/10

Paul Simpson

 Click here to order from Big Finish