Liberator - Blake's 7

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.

Yah. Both guys have their partisans and I seem to recall some nastiness over this, somewhere or other...it's not something we can really KNOW though, is it? I'll remain a fan of both gents and keep an open mind.
 
^Fascinating! So Space Models built the major models for Blake's 7. That's the same company that built the Eagles for Space 1999. Interesting that these tv FX crews farmed out the building of the major models for their shows. It goes back at least to Thunderbirds. Thunderbird 2 was built by a company called Master Models.
 
Actually it goes all the way back to Supercar! There are several photos from various Anderson shows on Master Models' current website. They also made the Zero-X miniatures for the Thunderbirds feature.

AP Films/Century21 had their own model shop at the studios, but would often farm out models when the workload was too high, particularly when a new series was ramping up. That's why many of the key hero models were made by these companies. Space Models was started up in the mid-sixties by several staff from Master Models, so many of the craft were made by the same people. The late Arthur 'Wag' Evans is credited with building the hero models of Stingray, Thunderbird 2 and 4, the puppet-scale Fab 1, and the three initial Eagles (44", 22", and 11") for Space:1999. He was still at the company in the early 90's, so might well have been involved with the Blake's 7 models.
 
Actually it goes all the way back to Supercar! There are several photos from various Anderson shows on Master Models' current website. They also made the Zero-X miniatures for the Thunderbirds feature.

AP Films/Century21 had their own model shop at the studios, but would often farm out models when the workload was too high, particularly when a new series was ramping up. That's why many of the key hero models were made by these companies. Space Models was started up in the mid-sixties by several staff from Master Models, so many of the craft were made by the same people. The late Arthur 'Wag' Evans is credited with building the hero models of Stingray, Thunderbird 2 and 4, the puppet-scale Fab 1, and the three initial Eagles (44", 22", and 11") for Space:1999. He was still at the company in the early 90's, so might well have been involved with the Blake's 7 models.

Supercar, eh?...I suspected as much.... thanks for the fab info. Arthur Evans is the man, clearly!
 
Spacecraft and some sci-fi model builds for BBC Visual Effects ( Where I worked for many years) tended to go out side depending on who the VFX designer was. However in the early/mid eighties when a fresh generation of guys like Mike Tucker, Paul McGuinness and Alan marshal joined the department they very much wanted to do this sort of work in-house and really run the model film shoots like a small movie. Thus you'll see that Red Dwarf and Dr Who featured quite elaborate model work from this period onwards. Its bizarre to think that Red Dwarf which was bascially a half hour sit-com, had model shots done on motion control rigs on up to 35mm film stock. To do that now would make most TV producers faint!

As far as I recall for the Liberator ( which was before my time at the department) the basic body was made by Space models and delivered with a simple paint finish. Martin Bower was then asked to really go to town on the hull to create an intricate paintjob which gave the model some sense of scale. It was actually built to a very small scale considering the 'real' vessel was meant to be many hundreds of feet long.



^Fascinating! So Space Models built the major models for Blake's 7. That's the same company that built the Eagles for Space 1999. Interesting that these tv FX crews farmed out the building of the major models for their shows. It goes back at least to Thunderbirds. Thunderbird 2 was built by a company called Master Models.
 
Which is the 'real' Liberator has been discussed by many people for some years, and it does seem that original parts are now in both. Published drawings by Martin claim that the front hull (from the solar panels forwards), plus 2 weapon pods/arms, plus all three brass weapon pod antenna are originals on his - but that can't be completely true because the hull area he mentions is at least half original on Mat's, which is even proved by a photo published by Martin!

The talk of parts being split between the two gentlemen does not make much sense to me and don't understand why it would happen. While we saw the model 'destroyed' in the final season 3 episode in truth only the one arm was broken off. The model was then glued back together again and displayed in complete (if rather poor, but better than it is now) form at later public events during the 80s, photographs of which have appeared on the internet. Then it appears to have been borrowed off Mat and disassembled to produce the model kit, which Mat explains on the B7 dvds as he sits holding the hull parts that have been returned to him.
(Of course one question is did Mat get all the original parts back at this time? - or some fake bits?)

What puzzles me is that Martin talks on his website about how over the years he had 'collected 2/3rds of the original parts from various sources'. This sounds ok if you believe that it had been blown up in the show, but as it was complete and being displayed then it makes no sense at all. Why would the model have been broken up into bits and then kept by different people.

Its all very strange and I guess the only way of finding the truth now is to dis-assemble both models - which ain't going to happen. But at the moment having seen Mat's several times I would say that his is the more original.
 
Gort and Alpha - thanks for two very absorbing posts!

I had a look at the Master Models site. 2001 fans might enjoy this photo of the Moon Bus, which they also made, under construction. I'd never seen it before. Film
 
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

original liberator on ebay wish i had cash
 
Which is the 'real' Liberator has been discussed by many people for some years, and it does seem that original parts are now in both. Published drawings by Martin claim that the front hull (from the solar panels forwards), plus 2 weapon pods/arms, plus all three brass weapon pod antenna are originals on his - but that can't be completely true because the hull area he mentions is at least half original on Mat's, which is even proved by a photo published by Martin!

The talk of parts being split between the two gentlemen does not make much sense to me and don't understand why it would happen. While we saw the model 'destroyed' in the final season 3 episode in truth only the one arm was broken off. The model was then glued back together again and displayed in complete (if rather poor, but better than it is now) form at later public events during the 80s, photographs of which have appeared on the internet. Then it appears to have been borrowed off Mat and disassembled to produce the model kit, which Mat explains on the B7 dvds as he sits holding the hull parts that have been returned to him.
(Of course one question is did Mat get all the original parts back at this time? - or some fake bits?)

What puzzles me is that Martin talks on his website about how over the years he had 'collected 2/3rds of the original parts from various sources'. This sounds ok if you believe that it had been blown up in the show, but as it was complete and being displayed then it makes no sense at all. Why would the model have been broken up into bits and then kept by different people.

Its all very strange and I guess the only way of finding the truth now is to dis-assemble both models - which ain't going to happen. But at the moment having seen Mat's several times I would say that his is the more original.

hi the original liberators on ebay read description wish i had the cash
 
Spacecraft and some sci-fi model builds for BBC Visual Effects ( Where I worked for many years) tended to go out side depending on who the VFX designer was. However in the early/mid eighties when a fresh generation of guys like Mike Tucker, Paul McGuinness and Alan marshal joined the department they very much wanted to do this sort of work in-house and really run the model film shoots like a small movie. Thus you'll see that Red Dwarf and Dr Who featured quite elaborate model work from this period onwards. Its bizarre to think that Red Dwarf which was bascially a half hour sit-com, had model shots done on motion control rigs on up to 35mm film stock. To do that now would make most TV producers faint!

As far as I recall for the Liberator ( which was before my time at the department) the basic body was made by Space models and delivered with a simple paint finish. Martin Bower was then asked to really go to town on the hull to create an intricate paintjob which gave the model some sense of scale. It was actually built to a very small scale considering the 'real' vessel was meant to be many hundreds of feet long.
hi the original liberators on ebay
 
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