Blake's back?

This week, the network formerly known as SciFi announced it was developing a remake of the 1970s space opera “Blake’s 7.” A year ago or so, this would have meant nothing to me. But since then, as part of my periodic cultural catchup project, I watched the entire run of Terry Nation’s show.

Tentatively speaking, if handled well, this could be a good opportunity for a revamp. There was a lot to like about “Blake’s 7” — a dark tone, compromised heroes who failed as often as they succeeded, and most of all the character Kerr Avon, a gloriously sharp-tongued genius who kept insisting he was only in it for personal gain but somehow kept finding himself saving his shipmates and various innocents.

It was also burdened with incredibly cheesy special effects and writing of wildly varying quality. Its biggest sin was the showrunners’ apparent crush on villainess Servalan, who kept showing up in almost every episode. She wore off quickly, especially as the show jumped through hoops to continually let her escape to plot again. (This was so surprising given one of the strengths of the show was the ruthlessness it exhibited towards its main characters.)

The show had a good concept. Entrusted into the hands of good writers with a decent CGI budget, the weaknesses of the original could be purged and give the network formerly known as SciFi a new hit.

While I’m on the subject, I wanted to briefly talk about one of the most fascinating elements of “Blake’s 7” — its treatment of technology. Produced in the late 1970s, before the personal computer revolution took off, the show’s vision of how advanced technology would work in the future was delightfully analog. Avon, the computer genius, worked not by typing code but by making physical adjustments to huge banks of mainframe components. It ended up being wildly off — like so many past imaginations of the future. It’s been said that science fiction usually envisions the future by taking present technology and making it more so, rather than changing existing paradigms.