1970s
In the early 1970s, after a long absence, Nation returned to writing Dalek serials for Doctor Who, and this renewed contact led to a BBC commission for him to create a new science fiction drama series. First broadcast in 1975, Survivors was a post-apocalyptic tale of the few remaining humans, the population having been devastated by a plague. The show was well received, but Nation's vision for it conflicted with that of producer Terence Dudley, and the other two seasons were produced without his involvement. In a British High Court of Justice case in the mid-1970s, which was abandoned by both sides due to escalating costs, writer Brian Clemens claimed that he had told Nation the concept for Survivors in the late 1960s and had registered the idea with the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 1965. Nation strenuously denied this.
His next BBC creation, Blake's 7, had fewer problems. The show told the story of a group of criminals and political prisoners on the run from the sinister Terran Federation in a stolen alien space ship of unknown origins. It ran for four seasons from 1978 to 1981, gaining a world wide following especially in the United Kingdom. Nation wrote the entire first season of the series. His input decreased over the run, the overall direction eventually being controlled by script editor Chris Boucher, with Nation not writing at all for the fourth and final season. After its conclusion, he attempted unsuccessfully to find funding for a fifth season later in the 1980s.
In 1976 he wrote a children's novel for his daughter Rebecca (after whom he named the character of Rebec in Planet of the Daleks): Rebecca's World: Journey to the Forbidden Planet, as well as a novel based on the show Survivors.
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