Blake's 7 Reboot Outline: Part the First

Story

The basic plot, of course, doesn't need much alteration. The changes are more in the execution than in the outline. The constant beating of dead-horse sci-fi tropes must go for a start, together with the casual mind rape (as in inconsequential abuse of Cally's psychic abilities), the crazy schemes based on clones and, indeed, most of the crazy scheming in general. Also, aliens should be ambiguous if they show up at all.

So: here's how I'd start it all off. Please adjust you monitor for cinematic description.

Inside a damaged spacecraft, panels spark and green lights flare in the darkness. The skitter of repair drones can be heard above the soft murmuring of a half-dozen different voices, all talking over one another. The camera pulls back, through a maze of shadowed corridors until finally it emerges from one of the tears in the ship's hull. We see Deep Space Vessel 2 tumbling through space, eclipsing a distant sun. There is a flare –

And in another solar system, a battered space freighter races towards Jupiter, dodging frantically as a pair of Nova class Federation Pursuit Ships (old style) try to make it heave-to. In the cramped cockpit, Jenna Stannis works desperately to keep ahead of the authorities, eventually pulling off a daring and quite crazy manoeuvre that involves dumping the cargo of contraband she was trying to deliver. Unfortunately, before she can commit to an escape trajectory, a new style Starburst class Federation Pursuit Ship (your villain ship for this production) rises into her path and the captain orders Jenna to stand down or be destroyed. Cursing and hammering the controls in frustration, she does so and the view focuses on the Federation insignia emblazoned on the FPS' hull –

And we cut to a flag of the same being set alight. It's election day and Blake's party has just come close to victory – only for the authorities to incite riots between his supporters and Federation loyalists. London is in chaos as armoured policemen (think London bobby meets Judge Dredd) try and fail to enforce order. Ever on the look out for opportunities to improve their credit balance, Vila Restel and Olag Gan are taking advantage of the riots to commit a bit of larceny. It is through their dialogue that we learn the basic outline of what's going on – not that either of them cares about the politics. To them, the most important thing is that Villa cracks an office safe before the security services or the protesters reach them. They have to abandon the effort however when the building catches fire and they are forced to escape via the roof.

Across the skyline, smoke is rising. Troop carriers like heavy-duty helicopters roar overhead, disgorging soldiers to try and contain the escalating violence . . . by stamping anyone showing loyalty to Blake into the pavement. We follow them across the city towards the higher-end districts, where concrete blocks give way to soaring glass towers. In an otherwise empty office halfway up one of the more impressive skyscrapers, Kerr Avon is busy transferring hundreds of thousands of credits out of the Federation banking mainfame. The rioting is a distraction he could do without and he is trying to focus on his work. Another helicopter screeches past the window –

On board which, Commander Travis is directing operations to take Blake into 'protective custody'. He warns his troops that the Freedom Party are dangerous subversives and that they must be neutralised before they can escape. The helicopter angles towards another, taller tower which is already surrounded by aircraft.

Inside, Karl Varron is urging Roj Blake to hurry up and leave, but Blake is still reeling from just how far the Federation has gone to annul the election – they would rather London burn to the ground than risk the Freedom Party gaining a single foothold on power. Varron reminds Blake that they planned for this and that it is imperative they join up with the revolutionary cell that will be trying to secure the main broadcast centre. Blake finally snaps out of his shock, realising that they can use the situation to set off a world-wide uprising, exceeding all their previous hopes. They just need to get the word out . . .

Troops land on the roof and are fired upon by Freedom Party supporters. The heavily armed and armoured troopers massacre them and burst into Blake's office – to find it empty. Blake, Varron and their people are already running through a service duct beneath the city. Blake orders some of his armed followers to escort a group of non-combatants out of danger but shots ring out and they are gunned down. Travis and his men appear, barring the escape route out on to the Thames. It quickly descends into a confused fire-fight, with Blake being knocked down in the chaos. Varron is killed right in front of him and, in a panic, he grabs at a gun just as Travis catches up with him. The gun goes off, burning into Travi's left arm and setting half his face on fire, but he keeps coming, grabbing Blake's throat and driving him to the ground –

And in the present, Alpha-grade engineer Blake awakens to another dull, uneventful day under the constant scrutiny of the Federation secret services. A pair of bored operators watch the people's champion – kept in line through medication and memory alteration – go through his routine. Blake walks to a dull job through grey streets, where everyone avoids each other's eye (especially the eyes of the patrolling policemen), fixes his microwave for the umpteenth time, and watches a repeat of his post-election retirement speech, in which he renounces his allegiance to the Freedom Party and blames them for the violence. It has been two years since the election and Blake has been forgotten. But he has also stopped taking his pills and he's a good engineer. He knows how to make poor quality microwaves explode.

This is the first ten minutes. Blake, still confused and muddled but driven by an urge to break free, escapes back to the tunnels where his friends were killed and is savagely arrested by the police. The Federation, panicked that he might be regaining his memory before they make him fade away into quiet senility, fabricate charges of paedophilia against him and exile him to Cygnus Alpha, a distant prison world. He is tried, convicted and placed aboard the prison ship London, along with Vila, Gan, Jenna and Avon.

En-route, however, the London encounters a gigantic and mysterious spaceship, abandoned and adrift . . .

As with the original, it makes sense that Blake, Avon and Jenna would go aboard. The hard-pressed crew of the London want to make a profit by salvaging DSV-2 but don't want to risk their own necks. I think the simplest solution is to have ship's defences kill the armed troopers while the prisoners are able to make it to the bridge and activate the control systems. They then flee, the London being too slow to stop them – the transport has no choice but to go on its way to Cygnus Alpha and pray that they can hush it all up.

DSV-2, after so long adrift, has gone more than a little crazy and it latches on to Blake and co as replacements for its dead crew. At first, it does everything it can to please them, but slowly they come to realise that it is dangerously obsessed with integrating them as components of itself. This first becomes an issue when they try and recruit crew from Cygnus Alpha: as soon as Vila, Gan and a mysterious woman named Cally board the shuttle, it automatically seals and lifts off, leaving a group of other prisoners to the mercy of the violent tribes that roam the planet's surface. The ship has gathered the six people it needs as crew and is not willing to expend energy on recovering more.

This conflict of ship and crew could serve as the meat of the second half of the introductory story – only when they force the ship to stop trying to 'repair' them (they lack the System implants so they must be faulty) and to be a little more 'zen' do they actually gain control of it. It is probably only once this is done that they actually get around to naming it 'Liberator'.

Following this, there is the matter of what one does with a massive alien battle cruiser. Blake is naturally eager to attack the Federation but the others are less convinced. He manages to get his way out of necessity, since they need raw materials to help repair the ship and their presence in Federation space does not go unnoticed, however Avon constantly fights against becoming a revolutionary and Jenna is not convinced that they can make a real difference. Only Gan is whole-heartedly behind the crusade (out of a desire for revenge on the people who murdered his partner), with Vila wanting nothing to do with it and Cally having her own agenda on behalf of her people.

Going forward, we see them encounter threats in the form of Commander Travis and his pursuit forces, the criminal might of the Terra Nostra and unscrupulous pirates and mercenaries such as the wicked Dorian. There are also potential allies in the form of deposed President Sarkoff of the dissident world Lindor and the 'Avalon network', a loose but growing collection of people opposing the Federation's attempts to control the outer colonies. In the background throughout are the machinations of Supreme Commander Servalan, the charming and ruthless head of the Federation Defence Forces who wants to secure the Liberator to advance her political career.

All this builds to a head when the Federation use Avalon's leader to lure Blake into a trap only for the Liberator's creators to arrive in order to reclaim their property . . .

Cue the Season 1 cliffhanger.

World

The Federation

The Federation probably started as a means of governing Earth's population while still supporting off-world colonies. However, endemic corruption has led to it becoming an oppressive power bloc, strangling the development of the colonies while ensuring control rests with a handful of privileged families.

Its primary method of control is not the jackboot but the internet: the politically owned media bombard the populace with the official lines on major matters and a thousand trivial stories everyday, drowning out horrific injustices with banal and meaningless chatter. Political apathy is maintained by carefully crafted smear campaigns that ensure the opposition always look slightly worse than the government. The very idea of social progress has been eroded by constant reinforcement of divides between the different 'grades' and tales of scary alien powers – such as the group-minded Aurona – are used to justify massive military spending. In reality, the military is used to control travel and communication between the colonies, restricting it to official channels. The approved version of events is that the other worlds are not self-sufficient enough to leave Earth's oversight.

Security is not provided by black-armoured stormtroopers but by police forces who nevertheless can imprison people for extended periods of time under emergency powers. On Earth at least, this creates the illusion of freedom and order on the streets, and leaves everyone is terrified of being effectively disappeared. On the colonies, the Federation is less subtle, frequently sending in 'peacekeeping' forces to augment local security services and installing military bases in the name of defending planets from ill-defined threats, be they alien or pirate. Warships designed to protect worlds from outsiders hang over their peoples' heads as obvious threats and pursuit ships harry free-traders in every civilised system.

The rulers of the Federation are entitled, decadent oligarchs obsessed with personal power and glory. Accruing wealth is not really an issue for them: they already monopolise all the major industries and contracts are traded for political favours. There are occasional shifts in government but these are largely the result of infighting within the ruling party and bring no real change. By and large, this goes unopposed because the people see it as inevitable. The threat Blake posed stemmed from his ability to break through the apathy: he was wealthy and well-connected enough to turn the state's own tricks against it and thus tap into the undercurrents of discontent that the Federation usually keeps stamped down.

The grading system began as a means of tracking people's social utility and was not designed as a means of permanently categorising people. Like everything else, it has petrified over time and now Federation citizens are graded at birth. The Alpha-grades are actually subservient to the elite (the 'high Alphas') and form the bulk of the administrative and technical sectors, as well as the officer class in the military. The Betas are a step down, less affluent and less able to advance their personal positions. The Gammas are the menials, the people who actually ensure that the cities don't drown in their own filth while being treated like dirt themselves. The Deltas are the space-born, worldless and classed as drifters and migrants. And so on, right down to the Mus, the criminals and military deserters subjected to genetic manipulation and 're-purposed' as shock troopers. Turned into animalistic berserkers, they are held in stasis awaiting deployment during times of war. Or when a colony world starts becoming too aggressive in its attempts to leave the Federation.

The important thing is that this is not a simple evil empire. The Federation remains intact because, at every level, there are people who just want to keep their heads down and live as good a life as possible. Advancement is still possible, especially on a long-term, familial basis: a Beta's children can become Alphas, if he or she works hard enough. People go out of their way to avoid drawing attention to themselves for fear of being noticed by those in power. Generally speaking, though, the Federation prefers to be seen as the best option and as actively protecting its citizens. The mass media bombardment is intended to paint it in the best possible light, on the understanding that no one will actually believe that it is perfect, so the alternatives must be made to seem worse. And this has been extremely effective.

In addition to this, the ruling elites cultivate various criminal enterprises to better their positions and keep control of the lower classes. This is exemplified by the Terra Nostra and its trade in the viciously addictive drug Shadow. The cartels and addicts this trade creates stymie anyone trying to start a mass movement among the Gammas and Deltas, while also providing an excuse for draconian security measures. The Federation's obsession with keeping a grip on power is all consuming and this makes it extremely resistant to the kind of change Blake champions.

Ultimately, however, the Federation is inward looking. Its military is stretched across known space in an effort to control the colonies and traffic between them, leaving it vulnerable to external threats. Of course, few people believe there are any external threats beyond those the spin doctors conjure up and are far more concerned with subversive elements trying to effect revolution from within.

Aesthetically – very much a used future. The elite live in sumptuous palaces but the cities outside are grubby and worn down. Pollution is rampant, leaving Earth's atmosphere poisonous in places and meaning that large sections of the cities are sealed in. The buildings are a mix of utilitarian grey boxes and steel and glass spires. Spaceships are cramped, usually with sterile white interiors. Clothes vary from plain overalls for the Gammas through very formal military regalia to elegant and often over-the-top Elizabethan-esque costumes worn by the high Alpha elite. You can usually tell what grade someone is by how they can afford to dress.

The Aurona

An isolated and isolationist world, Auron is far from the monstrous, conquering mental gestalt that the Federation paints it. Expanding its population through cloning created a race of telepaths, able to communicate instantly over vast distances. This has enabled the Aurona to succeed on a far greater scale than any other human-populated planet, spreading through several adjacent solar systems and prospering in just the kind of self-sufficient manner that the Federation is afraid of.

The Aurona themselves are largely peaceful. They have an advanced standing military but they have no desire for open war with a neighbouring power. They are also very socially unified, with the mental links serving as a conduit for extremely strong peer pressures. Difference and dissent are not officially discouraged but it is hard to maintain individuality in the face of so many voices in your head judging your actions.

Those who do try to live their own lives apart tend to be shunned and mistrusted as 'close minded'. Similarly, non-clone humans are seen as untrustworthy and alien, capable of great cruelty and violence due to natural a lack of empathy for others. The belligerent actions of the Federation do little to disprove this notion.

Technologically, the Auron are probably slighly more advanced than the Federation, if only because they have been forced to improve the efficiency of their ships and machines. The advantage is very small however and they lack the larger-scale R & D projects the Federation can afford.

Aesthetically, they are less varied than the Federation, with much of their cities having a prefabricated look. The various 'families' probably end up wearing similar clothing, but this is likely only noticeable when they gather in large numbers. Their military gear is less showy than the Federation's, being practical ahead of intimidating.

The System

Originally created as a justice machine on a distant colony that had long since lost all contact with Earth, the computer intelligence known as the System steadily grew into something much greater. At some point it was decided that, rather than determining guilt after the fact, the complex mental connections the System was capable of making could serve as a means of preventing crimes before they were committed. To this end, every man, woman and child on the planet was given an implant that could prevent them from performing certain actions that were judged harmful.

The result is an idyllic society in which crime and suffering have been virtually eliminated. People quite simply cannot harm one another and are steered away from doing anything wrong by the override chips. In all other respects, they are completely free to do whatever they wish and the advanced technology that has resulted from the System's ceaseless attempts to improve itself ensure that their lives are rich and contented.

The System is housed in a vast network of interlinked facilities and in augmented humans who have been selected to become its physical representations. The cybernetic upgrades to these 'nodes' go far beyond the normal medical improvements offered to the population at large and expand their cognitive abilities exponentially. They can interface directly with the technological infrastructure and this has become the norm for all System operations, with the humans working as components in the larger machinery. The technology itself is not organic but is built on a crystalline basis capable of growing and naturally repairing damage inflicted upon it. Large-scale constructs are tended by worker drones as well as humans and it is not uncommon to see nodes working in the middle of vast swarms of robots.

The primary goal of the System is to perfect itself and its world. Creating powerful deep space cruisers and sending them out to explore is one means by which it seeks improvement. Another is to employ so-called speculators: people who lack the normal control implants and who are free to explore their own ideas, as well as offering an external perspective on the System's choices. These individuals are trained from birth in many scientific, technological and philosophical disciplines and their input is added to the System's own observations and conclusions.

Unimaginably vast and complex, the System is composed of millions of individual human and machine intelligences, interlinked and constantly evaluating each other. Groups of intelligences are delegated to operate starships, space stations and other off-planet facilities but maintain control links back to the homeworld. Constant communication is central to its processing and the System cannot truly be split up into segments. The System, its world and its people act as a unified whole, with everyone and everything performing a function in service to the totality.

The aesthetic of the System homeworld is a blend of parkland and i-City: soaring white towers rising from rolling fields. It is perhaps a little too clean and brilliant, but it is not sterile and it is actually rather artistic – after all, the System can calculate the design that will be most pleasing for its people. By contrast, its spaceships and secure facilities tend towards sharp, angular geometry – function before form. Having said that, there are still comfortable touches, such as the couches on bridges of their DSVs. The System is not the Borg Collective and it strives both to bring out the best in every individual human under its influence and to keep them happy.

Philosophy

As the outline of these three societies might indicate, I would make Blake's 7 centre firstly on the question of what it means to be 'free'. The Federation, the Aurona and the System all represent different ways in which freedom is controlled, with very obviously different outcomes. In the Federation, it is possible to have great freedom, provided you have enough wealth and power. The elite can get away with anything, at the cost of trapping everyone below them in lives of drudgery. The Aurona are much more socially equal but their telepathy emphasises the pressures of public opinion on both important and trivial matters. Even though they are free from systematic oppression, they cannot escape what their friends and relatives think and want. The System eliminates injustice by preventing its people from doing wrong, with 'wrong' being judged based on the great weight of data that it can process. This stems from the thought experiment, if there was a chip in your head that prevented you from committing an immoral act, would you still be morally responsible for acting morally? The people who created the System have offloaded moral responsibility on to an omniscient computer, sacrificing freedom as it might superficially be designed for a perfect world.

Three viewpoints then: power is freedom; freedom without personal freedom; freedom from the freedom to do harm. And Blake, who advocates 'freedom' as the highest good, something worth fighting, killing and dying over, is faced with these three conflicting world views and rejects them all. The question then becomes, what is freedom and why is it good? Because while it's easy to argue for freedom from oppression by the Federation, it is harder to question the System's results and harder still to argue that one can ever be free from the kinds of social pressures exaggerated in the Aurona.

Answering or dismissing this, of course, leaves a second core question: how far would you go to be free? This is, in practical, less philosophical terms, the central issue. And it is best expressed through the characters and their differing responses.

[To be continued]