History of Blake's 7

Group of villains being escorted onto a rocket ship (transported) which goes astray and lands on an alien planet, where inhabitants are planning to invade and destroy Earth.

The proposed characters for the series were: Rog (later changed to Roj) Blake, Vila Restal, Jenna Stannis, Kerr Avon, Olag Gan, Arco Trent, Tone Selman and Brell Klein.

Admitting that he had agreed to write every episode out of "ego and supreme confidence", Nation later recalled that he returned home following the commission and told his wife, "I think I've got myself into deep trouble!

"[7] One episode badly affected by Nation's difficulties was Bounty; even after Boucher had rewritten it, director Pennant Roberts was required to lengthen the scenes to fill the fifty-minute running time.

The last of these centred on Travis attacking the Liberator while Jenna was captured by primitives living on a planet ravaged by a biological weapon released by the Federation.

While watching Jackson on stage at the Royal Court Theatre, Maloney and Vere Lorrimer noted Jan Chappell, who would be cast as Cally.

Aware that Star Wars would be released in cinemas across the United Kingdom around the same time as the planned television debut of Blake's 7, Scoones spent the budget he had been allocated for the entire series on Space Fall, the first episode to be recorded but the second to be broadcast.

[1] The series' animated title sequence was created by Bob Blagden, and was based partially on suggestions given by Nation in his draft pilot script.

Nation had envisaged a vast computer that would print out pictures of each of the characters; these would be deposited in a tray marked "Enemies of the State" before the appearance of the title caption.

It would compete against the popular soap opera Coronation Street and sitcoms A Sharp Intake of Breath and Miss Jones and Son on the rival ITV network.

[15] A commissioned Audience Research Report on the first series had indicated that Avon was the most popular character followed by Blake, Jenna, Vila, Cally and Gan.

[15] Vere Lorrimer was unavailable for the recording of Star One, so David Maloney replaced him but was not credited because of rules forbidding producers to direct their own programmes.

The difficulties experienced with the script-writing of Series Three meant that the story arc was largely abandoned, although there are references to Avon's search for Federation torturer 'Shrinker' in episodes prior to their encounter in Rumours of Death.

[19] Remembering his audition, Pacey said, "...reading the character breakdown, and it said, 'Del Tarrant is thirty-five years old-' and I thought, 'This is a bit silly, I'm only twenty-one'.

[20] To replace Jenna, Nation created Dayna Mellanby, a skilled combat expert partly based on the character of Miranda from Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

[19] Nation "...thought it would be interesting to have a girl who was aggressive, to have somebody who would kill first and ask questions later, and it was nice to give what are generally masculine attitudes to a woman".

New to the series were Ben Steed, a short story writer who had also written for Coronation Street, and Crown Court; Tanith Lee, a successful fantasy novelist; James Follet, who had written science fiction serials for radio, notably Earthsearch; Trevor Hoyle, who had published two novelisations of Terry Nation's Series One scripts and John Fletcher.

This script was prompted by a request by Michael Keating, who later recalled, "...my daughter, who was about five or six at the time, thought Vila was stupid; Chris Boucher said, 'I'll write you a story where you get the girl'".

Coverage of the Winter Olympics meant that the episode Children of Auron was shown on a Tuesday; the series returned to its regular time the following week.

[24] Producing the new series presented significant challenges since several of the cast and crew were engaged in other projects and the Liberator sets had been destroyed during the recording of Terminal.

Avon becomes increasingly self-centred and paranoid: in Stardrive he showed few reservations about causing the death of a scientist in order to escape Federation pursuit ships; and in Orbit he threatened to do the same to Vila.

[8] The first proposal for the series' conclusion, titled Attack, involved Blake returning to lead an assault on the Federation on Earth, finally defeating them.

Influenced by the films Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch,[8] Boucher decided that concluding the series in a shoot-out would provide a more memorable ending.

[29] Chris Boucher, writing the opening episode, Rescue, created the Scorpio, describing it as "a fairly small and undistinguished looking cargo ship, moderately scruffy and beaten up".

[24] The first six scripts were commissioned from writers familiar with the series – Ben Steed, Robert Holmes, James Follet, Allan Prior and Roger Parkes.

[32] Scripts that were commissioned but abandoned were Ragnarok by former Doctor Who producer Graham Williams and Man of Iron by Paul Darrow, about an attempt by Servalan to regain power using androids created by the scientist Algor on the planet Epsilon.

[24] A scene of Vila crying while hiding from Avon, whom he believes is intent on killing him, was removed from the final edit of the episode Orbit as it was felt to be too strong for a family programme.

[33] The final series of Blake's 7 began transmission on Monday 28 September 1981, competing with Coronation Street, game show Bullseye and sitcom Never the Twain (replaced mid-series by Astronauts).

[32] The apparent massacre at the end of the final episode provoked a strong reaction from many viewers, who were upset to see their heroes meet a grisly fate.

[33] Chris Boucher believed that the date on which the final episode was broadcast – 21 December 1981 – was unfortunate, and has since described himself as "the man who killed Father Christmas".