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Blakes Legacy: Betrayal
Written by John Isles

Download - 15.6mb, MP3 "Production Notes by John Isles" A klaxon blares, emergency lights flash. Our heroes go down in a hail of Federation bullets... Avon stands over the body of Blake as he is surrounded by Federation troopers. He smiles, then we hear three gunshots over the closing titles... This is how Blake's 7 ended on television - but what happened next? In May 1998 executive producer, Jonathan Miles started talking about the possibility of doing our very own Blake's 7 spin-off. He wasn't much of fan, he'd only recently seen a few episodes on UKTV Gold as it was running before the Doctor Who omnibus at the time. I immediately offered my services to develop a series. My reasons for this were: 1 - I'd always wanted an opportunity to develop/create my own series. 2 - I was a fan of Blake's 7 and had joined the Official Fan Club, Horizon - through them I'd been exposed to some excellent (and some bad) fan-fiction telling stories set after the climatic TV episode Blake. Apart from the fan-fiction two professional releases had really impressed me and showed that Blake's 7 could work on audio - Magic Bullet’s productions The Mark of Kane and The Logic of Empire (and to some extent the quasi-documentary Travis: The Final Act). The obvious thing these professional releases had in their favour was that they featured actors from the TV series reprising their roles. We had no chance... or did we? I began to develop the series (along with Kevin Hiley acting as script editor). It needed a name, very quickly I came up with Blake's Legacy. My aim after that was to come up a core set of characters - due to our limited group of actors it was decided there would be three leads. They were the idealistic, young, up-coming Federation Space Captain, Seth Varrell. Then there had to be a slightly shifty character that you weren't sure of his motives or actions, enter Federation Scientist Calder Brynn. To round off the trio there was Annys Varrell, a Mutoid (a brainwashed, cyborg trooper used by the Federation). I wanted a female character, but wanted to make her more interesting. Now, admittedly, a character that had no emotions could be a problem - but I intended to try and regain some of her humanity - keeping her around also reminded Varrell of why he eventually betrays the Federation. (Incidentally, I came up with the idea of using a Mutoid in this fashion and then about six months later I heard about Seven of Nine turning up in Star Trek: Voyager!) The basic set-up of the Blake's 7 universe that Kevin and I developed was set out in a 5000 word writers guide. Set ten years after Blake, the Federation was slowly re-building itself from the war with Andromeda in the Season Two cliffhanger, Star One. Servalan was back as President - but we didn't intend to feature her. Our new heroes had to have a ship, we had an experimental ship, The Vanguard built and developed from the remains of The Scorpio, including a teleport that would have been introduced later in the series. One thing the heroes also needed was a computer to argue with - Mule was going to be a Clint Eastwood-type stubborn kind of computer. Sadly Mule never got to have his day as he didn't debut until the unfinished second episode. Of course every hero must have a villain, ours was Space Major Mendez - a close friend of Varrell's to begin with. We had plans to avoid him being another Travis with his "I'll get you Blake" rant at the end of each episode. The script took nearly nine months to develop (it almost did feel like giving birth!). I feel the time was justified as it was one of my early attempts to try and bring depth to my characters. I think I half-succeeded and hopefully my more recent work has benefited from this. Blake's Legacy: Betrayal was recorded in the Summer of 1999 and it was finished by the end of the year. The second story, Counterstrike was recorded around the same time. However afterwards a technical fault was discovered with the recordings - meaning that only half the material was of any use. Sadly, due to real-life JM&KH Productions began winding down it's production and episode two was never completed - the trailer for it rather optimistically appeared on the CD with Betrayal. Overall, I was pleased with the level of acting in this one. We were improving. The cast's performances brought life to my script. My only regret is that we never got to finish the series - we had six stories mapped out following a story-arc (they were all the rage in 1998) which would have culminated in... no, I might re-use the ideas one day. Anyway, the time is now right, after all this time, to bring to a bigger audience JM&KH Production's contribution to the world of Terry Nation's Blake's 7. Ahead, Standard by ten. John Isles, Producer, August 2005 Contact Us Latest News Links Film Reviews Site Credits Profiles Green Room