History of Blake's 7 - Series One (1977-1978)

Series One (1977-1978)

The BBC chose David Maloney to produce Blake's 7 because of his experience with Doctor Who. Maloney approached Robert Holmes, who was script editing Doctor Who, as a script editor. Holmes declined but recommended Chris Boucher, who had previously written three Doctor Who scripts.

Early in 1977, Terry Nation was commissioned to write four more episodes for Series One and five episodes for Series Two. Nation was now contracted to write all thirteen episodes of the first series. The BBC had expanded Nation's writing commitment in order that Nation's high profile would help the promotion of the series. Providing a large amount of material in a short time would prove difficult for Nation. Admitting that he had agreed to write every episode out of “ego and supreme confidence”, Nation later recalled that he returned home following the commission and told his wife, “I think I've got myself into deep trouble!”. Nation informed Boucher that he would only be able to deliver the first draft of each script, telling Boucher, “...you can have rewrites or you can have the next episode: which do you want?”. As a result, while Nation created the plots, Boucher provided a great deal of input into the characters and dialogue. According to Boucher, “Terry came up with the characters, he came up with thirteen good stories, but he didn't come up with the dialogue. I remember saying, and I think it's pretty close to the truth, that for a long time, Paul Darrow never spoke a line that I hadn't written or altered to make the lines sharper”.

The strain of writing all thirteen episodes was starting to affect Nation. His tenth script – The Invaders, in which Gan would fight an alien duplicate of himself intent on taking over the Liberator – was abandoned and replaced by a script titled Brain Drain (later renamed Breakdown) which partially re-used some elements of The Invaders. Nation later recalled; "During those thirteen weeks, I ran entirely out of ideas, and I'd sit around and walk for days, saying, ‘There are no more ideas, that's it! I've shot it all and it's gone’". One episode badly affected by Nation's difficulties was Bounty; even after Boucher had rewritten it, director Pennant Roberts was required to lengthen the scenes to fill the fifty minute running time.