Friday, August 14, 2009

Bound to happen, yeah.


Do falcons growl? Well, Redwing does, anyway.

Even though the effects were a bit dated when it was first aired (by the standards of ILM) I love Blake's 7. The banner (and the 'fake' banner I did a while back) are pretty influenced by its last episode. If you've never seen the show, it's a British sci-fi adventure show with surprisingly grim overtones. The heroes are rebels fighting alone against a galactic empire, the evil Federation. (Making Star Trek fans go 'hey!') Well, the leader, Blake, is a rebel; the rest are mostly criminals fighting less for heroic idealism than their own goals or skins.

Blake's 7 may not be widely remembered here, but it may have been a little more influential than you think, in terms of casting: Blake, the leader of the rebels, disappears at the end of the second season, as the actor opted out of returning to the show. He would eventually return for what would be the final episode, "Blake," which ends with most of the cast gunned down, and the series lead, self-confessed psychopath Avon, surrounded by soldiers, and grinning. Fade to black, as guns fire.

Now, the producers had planned this ending out, so any of the actors who wanted out could be written off. Anyone who signed back on, their character would merely be wounded and would miraculously survive. Pretty clever, huh? Except the show wasn't renewed, making it a remarkably bleak series finale. Which may also have made the show more memorable, honestly...but try to imagine a show like say, Star Trek: The Next Generation continuing if Patrick Stewart quit after season two, or having everyone killed in the end.

There's a lot of remakes and "re-imagings" out there, and a lot of them are completely unneccessary, but Blake's 7? Ripe for it. A good producer could take it a long ways, and if the actors give you any guff? Shoot 'em.

In other news, I'm having computer trouble, so we're running this one early. I had to do a restore, and may have to reload some programs. My brother-in-law is making me a new computer out of some stuff he had lying around, and I'm looking forward to retiring my old one. If it behaves, it'll be retired to the old computer home, used as backup. If not, it'll be retired off a bridge...

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