Blake's 7 finally available on Blu Ray - even in North America

Lanboy

Sr Member
Just a heads up, the BBC finally released Series 1 of Blake's 7 on Blu in the UK, Australia and North America. I don't think it was available even on DVD in North America. I've heard great things from Brits, and at four episodes in I'm definitely a fan. Highly recommended if you don't mind 1970's special effects.
 
It's a hard show to like. If you can get past the extremely low production values long enough you'll find actual stories, and pretty good ones. That's how I got into Doctor Who back in the 80's. It just takes patience and a willingness to see past the cheesy props and synth score. Glad to see it getting some love after so long.
 
Kinda interesting story about Blakes 7. It was bought in as a replacement for long running police procedural/soap opera, Z cars, a no budget early evening fixture on BBC 1. Problem was, it was allocated the same budget as Z cars. So you had a Space Opera with lots of SFX, spacecraft sets, and all that entails. It was in the preproduction stage when the producers saw Star Wars, and thought 'Oh ****, we're screwed!'

Nevertheless, it was very popular and ran for four series, and has one of the most legendary endings of any scifi show. The Blu Ray has new model shots overseen by Doctor Who model builder Mike Tucker and original SFX and model builder Matt Irvine. Haven't picked up a copy yet, the original DVD releases were pretty rough, i hope they've done a good job on this new set!
 
They've retransferred the film inserts in HD!
There's also an option with new effects, but when that happens I always go with original no matter how cheesy they are.
 
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