Liberator - Blake's 7

AnsonJames

Sr Member
Hello all,

Aside from Martin Bowers website does anyone have any info or reference on the three foot studio model of the Liberator from Blake's 7?

I actually held it in my hands many, many years ago and took a great amount of pictures - all lost now I'm afraid...

Thanks -

Anson
 
I'm not sure but I think that the 3ft Liberator was pretty much thrashed for the Season 3 finale. THere are some pics of it here and it looks really sad.

Archie
 
I'm not sure but I think that the 3ft Liberator was pretty much thrashed for the Season 3 finale. THere are some pics of it here and it looks really sad.

Archie

Thanks for these!

I actually held this model many years ago - Tony James of Comet miniatures in London was lent it by Matt Irvine.
I believe Matt rescued it from a skip in the BBC.

At that point it was in even worse shape than in the photos in the link - it had brown filler smeared all over it which was left over from the last episode it was in.
One of the arms was attached with metal Dexion racking.

Of course I took loads of photos which I've completely lost over the 19 years since I took them - quite pissed of about this actually.

Any more pics and info would be greatly appreciated.

Anson
 
THREAD NECROMANCY!!

But for legit reasons, as I have a bit of a query after researching the Liberator models to help me build the Comet Miniatures kit I recently picked up from a local dealer for only £40.

What's confusing me is that Mat Irvine and Martin Bower, from what I've seen online *appear* to both be claiming their 'big' Liberator as the actual one.


*According to Mat, on the Comet instruction sheet, there was one big Libby, and then two smaller ones made by Martin.

*The Comet kit was released in 1989. Mat loaned them 'the' Liberator as reference

*On Martin's site, he claims to have scrounged up 2/3rds of the original model, he also says that Mat only had certain parts of the ship, would not let him have them and claimed that what he had was the original ship. Also, he doesn't have any photos of the ship before he 'restored' it

*Martin's Libby 'restoration' was completed in '93 (according to his site). But at the same time, Mat recorded a feature on the Blake's 7 models (which is available on YouTube) and showed off parts of his Libby. He confirms it was disassembled in the making of the Comet kit.

*Mat's Libby parts have ALWAYS had the weathering and red/brown paint that was applied to her for filming of the ship's demise in 'Terminal'. And whenever the full ship is seen on display it has that weathering and is visibly rather beaten up, even as recently as 2004 as can be seen here:

liberator.jpg


Mat's is clearly the genuine article...so is Martin passing off a scratchbuild as the real thing? Don't get me wrong, if it's a scratchbuild it's bloody impressive. I just wondered what the story was there...
 
I'd bet both of the them had "pieces" of the original, so both claim the originality.

Happens all the time.

Four or five people claim to have the Park Bench from Forrest Gump, including Tom Hanks.

Every one thought that Yellow R2 Dome that showed up on ebay a few years ago was bogus, yet it turned out to be THE R2 head that shot Mark his lightsaber in Buttercup Valley.

You just never know these days.
 
If I remember right, Bower repaired the model several times under contract. So he might have parts from that.

But I can see it either way. If someone had photos they could fake it either way, new or used.
 
Hi,

I read your comments with great interest. A friend of mine recently completed a studio-scale build of the Liberator spaceship (see attachments) and was lucky enough to get some advice from Martin Bower concerning construction, materials etc. He has also had the opportunity to view both of the models you refer to, and can confirm that elements of the original version were divided between Martin and Matt Irvine. The majority of Mr. Irvine's model consisted of fibreglass shells with only the main hull (without nose cone) and one of the melted engine spheres being original. The majority of the model was used by Martin for the rebuild which was later auctioned for charity.
 

Attachments

  • Liberator studio-scale Model 2 - Blakes 7.jpg
    Liberator studio-scale Model 2 - Blakes 7.jpg
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  • Liberator Studio-scale Model 3 - Blakes 7.jpg
    Liberator Studio-scale Model 3 - Blakes 7.jpg
    63.4 KB · Views: 2,032
Anyone in the U.K. remember Swap Shop with Noel Edmonds, way back in the day?
Irvine was on the show one Saturday morning showing off the big Libby, explaining how he built it.
 
Ahh Swap Shop.... Keith Chegwin, Lenny Henry... Ahh... The days of innocence. The commet miniatures model claims to be 1/5 scale. I'm guessing that's 1/5 of the smaller studio model. I have the commet one and it is tiny.
 
The Swap Shop bit is on the season 2 dvd. Mat definitely at that point laments that he only has the central hull cylinder, which he cradles somewhat forlornly...

The Liberator was a spectacular model - the first time the BBC managed a model to compete with ITV (Gerry Anderson)! I've often fantasised about how it could've looked filmed with ILM's motion control set-up...
 
THREAD NECROMANCY!!

But for legit reasons, as I have a bit of a query after researching the Liberator models to help me build the Comet Miniatures kit I recently picked up from a local dealer for only £40.

What's confusing me is that Mat Irvine and Martin Bower, from what I've seen online *appear* to both be claiming their 'big' Liberator as the actual one.


*According to Mat, on the Comet instruction sheet, there was one big Libby, and then two smaller ones made by Martin.

*The Comet kit was released in 1989. Mat loaned them 'the' Liberator as reference

*On Martin's site, he claims to have scrounged up 2/3rds of the original model, he also says that Mat only had certain parts of the ship, would not let him have them and claimed that what he had was the original ship. Also, he doesn't have any photos of the ship before he 'restored' it

*Martin's Libby 'restoration' was completed in '93 (according to his site). But at the same time, Mat recorded a feature on the Blake's 7 models (which is available on YouTube) and showed off parts of his Libby. He confirms it was disassembled in the making of the Comet kit.

*Mat's Libby parts have ALWAYS had the weathering and red/brown paint that was applied to her for filming of the ship's demise in 'Terminal'. And whenever the full ship is seen on display it has that weathering and is visibly rather beaten up, even as recently as 2004 as can be seen here:

liberator.jpg


Mat's is clearly the genuine article...so is Martin passing off a scratchbuild as the real thing? Don't get me wrong, if it's a scratchbuild it's bloody impressive. I just wondered what the story was there...

Need a spaceship model? Just glue two hairdryers together! (bottom right in the photo)
 
So...what explains the paint and general condition of Mat's model? If it's largely reconstructed from just an original hull core, with replacement major components, why the droop and grunged-up paint?

Love this ship. Someone kit it, bigger than Comet.
 
So...what explains the paint and general condition of Mat's model? If it's largely reconstructed from just an original hull core, with replacement major components, why the droop and grunged-up paint?

Love this ship. Someone kit it, bigger than Comet.

It's a question, to be sure... maybe he reconstructed it 30 years ago, and it's now knackered... and he used the grunge paint to match his hull core. Dunno. A mystery.
 
Ahh Swap Shop.... Keith Chegwin, Lenny Henry... Ahh... The days of innocence.

Wasn't it was Noel Edmonds and Keith Chegwin - Lenny Henry was on Tiswas I think????

Great days anyway :)

Blakes 7 was great and models and some costumes were also great.

Thread starter ansonjames where the hell are you buddy? I miss you not being round the RPF these days.
 
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