Sky-Fi: Sat crew to remake Blake’s 7
Thursday, April 24th, 2008Blake’s got a new face
It seems appropriate that science fiction has become one of the main ratings battlegrounds in the digital millennium - the award winning remake of Battlestar Galactica drew in thousands of subscribers for Sky when it launched on British screens back in 2004, Terminator off-shoot The Sarah Connor Chronicles pushed the fledgling Virgin 1 channel into prominence, and the hit series Heroes, broadcast both on the Sci-Fi channel and BBC2 sent ratings into the stratosphere.
Sky One have announced that they are to being development on scripts, which could well be based on the cult TV classic Blake’s 7, which originally ran on the BBC for five years, being revived for the 21st century.
The series, created by Doctor Who godfather Terry Nation, was notable for its strong cast of characters, including the vampish Siouxsie Sioux lookalike Servalan, and their ambiguous moral standpoints (sacrificing thousands of lives to save a million, that sort of thing). Events ended somewhat ambiguously, leaving room for a potential follow-up.
As with their successful Discworld adaptations, Sky One would be working on a pair of 60-minute episodes with an independent production company, in this case Blake’s 7 Productions, “a subsidiary of Blake’s 7 Media who owns the licence to the show.”
This announcement doesn’t mean that Blake’s 7 will be returning to British screens for sure – many sci-fi fans consider Farscapeto be its spiritual sequel – however Elaine Pyke, commissioning editor for drama at Sky One, Two and Three, said: “The time is ripe for a revival of a show that represents the best traditions of the genre, not to mention one of the best-loved and most successful dramas of all time.”
