Warship

Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC. Four 13-episode series were broadcast on BBC1 between 1978 and 1981. It was created by Terry Nation, who also created the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. The script editor was Chris Boucher. The main character, at least initially, was Roj Blake, played by Gareth Thomas. The series was inspired by various fictional media, including Robin Hood, Star Trek, Passage to Marseille, The Dirty Dozen, Brave New World and classic Western stories, as well as real-world political conflicts in South America and Israel.

Blake's 7 was popular from its first broadcast, watched by approximately 10 million in the UK and shown in 25 other countries. Although many tropes of space opera are present, such as spaceships, robots, galactic empires and aliens, its budget was inadequate for its interstellar theme.

In this audio drama, an alien fleet stands poised to invade Federation space. The only vessel available to hold it back is the Liberator, commanded by Roj Blake and his crew. As an intergalactic war breaks out, old enemies become allies, and friends will become separated. And Blake will be forced to leave behind all that matters to him...

The story here fills in the action after season two's epic finale “Star One”. With a deadly alien fleet poised to unleash destruction across the Federation, the only thing standing in its way is the Liberator, but the crew has plenty of other problems on their hands – including an attack from alien limpet-mines, and the dangerous attentions of Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce).

Warship captures the correct mix of edgy characterisation and charmingly dated sci-fi, fitting seamlessly with the style of the original series while also giving the cast plenty to do. Paul Darrow once again steals the show as the brainy and amoral Avon, but while this is certainly a must-buy for fans, it's also extremely talky, and the multi-stranded story struggles to cohere at times. There's an unavoidable sense of “joining the narrative dots” to Warship , but despite its flaws there's still plenty of nostalgic, old-fashioned SF entertainment to be found here.

To his credit, Anghelides doesn't just provide a filler between seasons. While it is a logical sequel or companion to second series finale Star One, he introduces enough new, fresh elements into the narrative to make it engaging and exciting while still keeping the writing tight. Warship has all the hallmarks of a studiobound B7 episode (the major setpiece being the Liberator itself), with the action played out mainly between the core characters. Anghelides, though, doesn't shy away from giving the story a celestial, expansive feel and his climax is of such Hollywood blockbuster-style proportions that it would have been well beyond the scope of a TV episode. (Well, the climax could – and probably would - have been attempted on TV but the result would have been decidedly shaky on a 1970s budget!

Fans of all the characters won't be disappointed – there are great scenes for each of them, with some classic Blake/Avon and Avon/Vila moments. Alastair Lock steps into Peter Tuddenham's shoes for both Zen and Orac and there's an important, if not huge, role for Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan, giving one final stand-off between her and Blake.

The accompanying documentary is also interesting, particularly as it gives some of the history of the Big Finish work on the franchise, and it's good to hear the actors' views on the revival of their characters after so long. Let's hope that we can have some more of these full-cast stories soon.