Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Big Finish - Blake's 7 - Warship

This is a spoiler for what is to come later this year on the British Invaders podcast but Big Finish has just released their first full cast audio adventure for Blake's 7.
Warship by Peter Anghelides, directed by Ken Bentley.


I remember watching Blake's 7 when it first came out and enjoying it. I don't think I ever saw the last series as that was broadcast while I was at university with no TV, and I haven't gone back and looked at it since. I was vaguely aware that there was a mysterious gap between the second and third series when the crew of the Liberator led the defence against an invading alien fleet. When the third series started the Liberator was severely damaged and some of the crew had disappeared including Blake himself. This story fills that gap and explains what happened to Blake and the rest of the crew.

It's a single CD story and zips along fairly quickly. In fact it resembles a single 50 minute episode of the original television show which is entirely appropriate. Most of the original cast are there and most of them do a very good job of reproducing their younger voices. In particular Paul Darrow still sounds like Avon and Michael Keating doesn't seem to have aged at all. Jacqueline Pearce's Servalan does sound older and I know that Pearce has been unwell recently. I hope she recovers completely and is able to make more of these full cast audios. Servalan remains one of my favourite all time villains and I would love to hear more of her clashes with Blake and Avon in the future.

Alastair Lock has done a fantastic job with the sound design and got to use loads of the original sound effects from the BBC archive. He also does the voices of Zen and Orac and reproduces Peter Tuddenham's performances perfectly.

I really enjoyed Warship and if you were a fan of the original show you really should pop over to BigFinish.com and check it out. It gets a standard by 4 star rating from me.

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