1998: HORIZON ISSUE 39 FROM THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY

From December 1998: the 39th issue of HORIZON, The magazine of THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY.

1998: HORIZON THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY NEWSLETTER ISSUE 38

From June 1998: a new look for the 38th issue of HORIZON, the fanzine-come-magazine published for the membership of THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY.

And - let's be honest - you can never have too much Jackie Pearce!

Maximum Power my darlings...

1997: HORIZON THE BLAKE'S SEVEN APPRECIATION SOCIETY ISSUE 37

From November 1997: HORIZON, the newsletter of THE BLAKE'S SEVEN APPRECIATION SOCIETY issue 37.

1996: HORIZON, NEWSLETTER OF THE BLAKE'S SEVEN APPRECIATION SOCIETY ISSUE 35

From December 1996: Another issue (number 35) of HORIZON, the official (and hefty) newsletter of THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY.

1995: HORIZON: THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 33

From November 1995: Issue 33 of HORIZON, THE BLAKE'S 7 APPRECIATION SOCIETY.

I suspect I'm not the only B7 fan who was 'reunited' with the show when the BBC started to release the show on tape in the early 1990s.  And I bet I'm not the only person who started off just buying one tape for nostalgia's sake... and then finding that I had to buy the whole lot as the addiction grew.

I also joined HORIZON (who had a useful plug on the back of every BBC tape, a move that probably helped deflect a ton of mail landing at BBC Woodlands wanting to know more about the show and the cast) around this time.  And rejoined several times over the next few years.  I don't honestly recall if this edition of the newsletter was one that I had at the time or one that I found later.  They don't surface in the wild very often.  As far as I know, copies were only ever available to members with - maybe - overstocks also sold at conventions.

The Horizon newsletters were, in my time, very hefty affairs stuffed full of letters, articles and updates (either news or reviews) of the cast's latest work.  Which seemed to involve a lot of trips to the theatre.

The club also offered members assorted limited-run merchandise like stills and t-shirts.

Spin-off publications included fiction-based fanzines (never my thing), a compilation of interviews (which i posted sometime previously) and a rather excellent Technical Manual with detailed plans and cross sections of assorted hardware and ships seen on the show.

I'm revisiting episodes of assorted Star Age SF shows at the moment (WAR OF THE WORLDS last night, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA earlier in the week) and rewatched a couple of long-unseen B7 S4 outings.  They have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, for looking a little rough around the edges and suffering from some overacting.  But I was impressed by 'Orbit' by Robert Holmes.  Not only does it include one of his trademark double acts but the performances towards the end of the episode, by Darrow and Keating, are first class.

Now... If only Network would get around to releasing Darrow's 1990 Thames series MAKING NEWS.

1995: THE BLAKE'S SEVEN CAST REUNITED

From 1995: The cast of BLAKE'S SEVEN (I have to say: still looking pretty dapper) reunited to promote something-or-the-other.  I think it was the BBC Video VHS releases.

This really nice still (nothing says space opera like a night club at three in the afternoon) was published on the back cover of one of the HORIZON FAN CLUB newsletters.

David Jackson (Gan, second from the left) sadly died in 2005, followed by Gareth Thomas (centre) in 2016.

The others are (left-to-right): Paul Darrow (Avon, Mobility Scooter advert); Jan Chhappell (Cally); Sally Knyvette (Jenna) and Michael Keating (Vila).

BLAKE'S SEVEN VHS VOLUME 1

From the Age of VHS: the first regularly-scheduled BBC VIDEO BLAKE'S SEVEN tape.

The BBC had previously dabbled with some hack-and-slash compilation tapes (initially prepared for the rental or overseas markets) but - I guess - the success of DOCTOR WHO and STAR TREK convinced them to get into the game with proper, (mostly*) uncut releases.
This was an expensive time to be a telefantasy fan in need of a regular fix.  The Beeb were churning out their telefantasy shows (which also - briefly - included THE TRIPODS, STAR COPS, THE SURVIVORS and others), CIC were TREKING (a lot), Lumiere were doing THE AVENGERS, Video Gems were doing THE NEW AVENGERS, MOONLIGHTING and others and WARNER HOME VIDEO were doing V: THE SERIES.  ITC entered the market with a big selection of old ATV and ITC shows including some, like SAPPHIRE AND STEEL, that had previously been assumed to be 'lost' (IE locked in the vaults) forever.  About the only studio not in the game was Universal (bound up in the CIC joint distribution deal with Paramount). And each tape was priced around the 11 quid mark.  Daft folks like me were spending a fortune and filling a lot of shelf space.

* From (faded) memory, the first episode has a small cut to remove a weapon that the BBFC had subsequently deemed too naughty for a PG VHS.  Or - possibly - any VHS.  It seems they were cool with the overall dark tone and subject matter of the first episode of what was supposed to be a family-friendly primetime space romp.    

1998: ZENITH, THE BLAKE'S SEVEN FANZINE ISSUE 1

From 1998: the first - and I believe only - issue of ZENITH, a glossy black & white BLAKE'S SEVEN fanzine which was sold through branches of Forbidden Planet.

I don't know much about the history of this one but I always assumed that this had somehow spun out of HORIZON, the B7 Fan Club, because the contents were similar to what had been appearing for years in their hefty newsletters.

I never spotted any more issues at the time and although copies of this issue occasionally surface in secondhand outlets (presumably because more copies were distributed originally) I've never seen any others.

It reminds me that circa the year 2000 I was working at a well-known London University.  My office PC screen saver or desk top had something SF-TV related which caught the eye of one of the visiting lecturers.  We'd chatted before but - as is so often the case - I'd never caught her name.  She asked me about what was on the screen... and then she revealed that she'd previously been a BBC Make-up artist who had worked on the show... As soon as she told me her name the penny dropped because she was still active in fandom!  I name no names here but it just goes to show that it's a small world after all.

BTW: Does anyone remember THE STRANGERERS?  The long-forgotten Sky One foray into telefantasy which generated some buzz at the time (particularly because the cast included some British genre vets) and then promptly vanished without trace from the collective race memory.

1979: STARBURST Issue 6 (Marvel UK)

From January 1979: STARBURST MAGAZINE issue 6... not the last time that BLAKE'S SEVEN would grace the cover of a MARVEL UK magazine... and more SUPERMAN too.  

MESSAGE FROM SPACE was, incidentally, a bonkers Japanese entry into the Star Age that put their, ahem, unique spin on the post-STAR WARS space combat genre.  The Toei release starred Vic Morrow (later to meet a grisly end on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE) amongst a cast of Japanese actors (which certainly makes for a pleasing change to see deep space populated by someone other than Westerners) and obligatory robots and aliens.  

The plot is hard to decipher and it's understanding why critics sniffed and audiences stayed away.  But it is available on R1 DVD and, although I can't recommend it, I do recommend you check it out...

1978: STARBURST Issue 4 (Marvel UK)

From 1978: The fourth issue of STARBURST magazine.

Although it barely rates a mention inside, this was the first issue to be published by MARVEL UK.

Head Office agreed to buy SB as well as the services of its editor/ publisher (Dez Skinn) as part of their plan to revitalize the struggling British branch (by shifting the day-to-day centre of power from New York to London and significantly bolstering the range).  

They clearly saw potential in a Marvel SF mag during the Star Age boom (although Marvel NY don't seem to have tried to distribute SB stateside in any quantities and didn't try and re-purpose the editorial material for a US edition) but passed on acquiring Skinn's HAMMER mag (then, after several name changes over two years, known as HALLS OF HAMMER), making the 23rd issue the finale (at least for a few years).

This was the first issue to appear with the new, standardized, cover design for the UK monthlies... part of Skinn's much-hyped 'Marvel Revolution'.  The new house style was adopted by all the UK monthlies and also used (surprisingly) on Marvel's US mags.  Presumably the thought process was that it would allow copies from both ends of Stan's empire to crisscross the Atlantic and be virtually indistinguishable (save for the spellings and the small print) to buyers and the trade.  The Green Goliath was, appropriately enough, the first cover star of the Marvel era.  

Skinn bowed out of Jadwin House (Marvel's new ramshackle British base) in 1980 but the Annex of Ideas continued to publish Starburst until they sold it (apparently for a song) to upstart Visual Imagination in 1988.  The last Marvel issue was 87.  

Marvel used SB to build a line of magazines: the one-shot TV HEROES tried to replicate the SB formula as a general TV magazine in 1979.  DOCTOR WHO (another Skinn launch) started to evolve into a magazine (partly because text is a lot cheaper to publish than comic strips) from 1980 onwards.  The DWM formula was replicated for BLAKE'S SEVEN MONTHLY in 1981.  CINEMA debuted as a one-shot in 1981 and returned (briefly) as a regular magazine the following year.  The all-but-forgotten MONSTER MONTHLY also scared up a brief run in 1982.  

By the mid-Eighties, M-UK was retrenching as an extension of toy maker's marketing departments and a genre magazine was starting to look out-of-place in the portfolio.  DWM endured thanks to still healthy sales (despite the declining fortunes of the show itself) and strong internal lobbying which saw the bigger benefit to the company of having a BBC-licensed title in the portfolio... and the access it gave them to BBC Enterprises.  Starburst however was deemed surplus to requirements... and flogged-off on the cheap.

Visual Imagination used their new acquisition as a springboard to grow a large range of genre mags throughout the nineties. 

1989: DWB Issue 66

From June 1989: Another scanned-at-random (sometimes its whatever happens to be at the top of the box) issue of DWB (number 66).

Clearly, in the intervening months since the last issue I posted, they'd finally switched from one-colour to full-colour covers... and the results look pretty classy.  

Their new, expanded, remit also allowed for welcome coverage of the BBC's initial (and fairly tentative... a full release of all 52 episodes followed a few years later) flurry of BLAKE'S SEVEN tapes.

DWB (unlike DWM who, for obvious reasons, had to wait until the Production Office had confirmed a story before running it) had a more free-spirited (and often JNT-bashing) approaching to reporting news... which occasionally meant they got it badly wrong.  Despite the Stop Press cover line, DOCTOR WHO season 27 turned out to be a long time coming...

1994: DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINE and BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

From 1994: a MARVEL UK House Ad/ Subscription driver for the BLAKE'S SEVEN and DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINES, two titles that seemed curiously behind-the-times.

Not only were both shows defunct but the idea of Poster Magazines also seemed like a Seventies throwback.  

This ad continued to appear in both titles (and other M-UK books) throughout the short runs of both magazines.

I've previously covered the B7 PM's here and here. 

1979: MARVEL UK STARBURST/ STAR WARS WEEKLY House Ad

 

From January 1979: Four icons of the Star Age... STARBURST MAGAZINE, STAR WARS WEEKLY, BLAKE'S SEVEN and DARTH VADER.  All courtesy of Marvel UK.

What more could any Star Warrior want?  

1994: SHAKEDOWN Advert (Doctor Who/ Blake's 7/ Dreamwatch Magazine)

From October 1994: a full-page advert from DREAMWATCH MAGAZINE for their direct-to-video (via a convention... which the magazine also hosted) science fiction drama SHAKEDOWN.

"General release" in this instance, of course, meant you could order the tape.

I think I've talked about this one-off before.  It's not great but it's a nice addition to the margins of the DOCTOR WHO universe (the Sontarans and the Rutans reprise their ongoing battle for supremacy... this time on board a space yacht that looks suspiciously like the innards of a WWII era battleship.  

The cast is an interesting combination of familiar faces from DOCTOR WHO and BLAKE'S SEVEN, although I doubt that anyone would claim they did their best work here.  The revealing behind-the-scenes documentary (which, I believe, was initially released as a separate tape) suggests that the tightly-scheduled shoot was somewhat fraught. 

Terrence Dicks adapted his own script, and added the Seventh Doctor, for the Virgin New Adventures range of novels.

1985: WIMPY ADVERT with BLAKE'S SEVEN'S PAUL DARROW (Video)

A rather unusual spin-off from BLAKE'S SEVEN: A 1985 British TV spot, featuring Paul Darrow, for the WIMPY (relatively) fast-food chain.

The implication here seems to be that, if you dine at Wimpy, you have to travel a long way to find a branch, you will suffer from growth deficiencies (and other physical deformities) and have a bit of bulging tummy.

Well done Mister Ad Man.

1995: BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE - PART TWO (Marvel UK)

These are the final three outings of MARVEL UK's BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE, published in the first half of 1995.

There was no announcement that the run was coming to an end but, judging from the multi-part history of DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE (published circa 2004-5, just before the TV show's triumphant return) the decision to par back Marvel's magazine department (which would have, it everything had gone to plan, encompassed DWM & spin-offs, the DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINE, the BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE, HAMMER HORROR MAGAZINE, regular outings for BIZARRE and PLAYBACK as well as the Clive Barker comic/ magazine hybrid) to just DWM came suddenly and without warning.

Unfortunately, the negatives for the candid behind-the-scenes fourth season snaps featured in Marvel's original BLAKE'S SEVEN magazine (published circa 1981-83) seem to have been lost (possibly destroyed in a house fire) in the intervening decade-or-so which is a shame as they deserved to have been reproduced again using better printing technology.

1994: BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE - PART ONE (Marvel UK)

The BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE was one of those MARVEL UK launches which looked doomed to failure as soon as it hit the shelves.

It's true that the TV show was undergoing a revival of sorts thanks to BBC VIDEO releasing the entire 52 episode run on VHS (2 episodes at a time and £10.99 per tape!) and a BBC TWO rerun which spluttered to a halt after the first season.  But, an antiquated format and a niche series never looked like a winner.  And, sure enough, it wasn't.

As I've posted before, VISUAL IMAGINATION (publishers of all number of magazines, most of which were guaranteed to include THE X-FILES) were doing good business with their licensed STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION POSTER MAGAZINE around this time (a license that Marvel UK had pissed away circa 1990) and maybe M-UK saw this and its companion, the DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINE, as a viable rival.

I've never been a great fan of poster magazines.  They always tended to be expensive, short on content (which, of course, was rendered unreadable anyway if you actually put them on the wall) and prone to falling apart if you ever dared to look at them more than once.

The main draw here (except for the chance to have Servelan on your wall) was the original short fiction printed on the reverse.  I read somewhere (the rather excellent Telos Merchandise Guide I think) that the work had originally been commissioned for a scrapped B7 annual so maybe the whole intention of the magazine was to recoup that investment before the New York head office found out.

The run lasted an ironic seven issues before vanishing (the subscription advert appeared in all seven issues suggesting the decision came as something of a surprise, probably as M-UK sliced away at its magazine department) beginning in late 1994.  The cover dates go a little wonky on the first three issues, suggesting a production or distribution hiccup somewhere along the line.

I'll post the final three issues soon.

Maximum Power!

- To Be Continued - 

1994: BLAKE'S SEVEN and DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINES (Marvel UK)

This is a House Ad for two rather ill-fated 1994-95 additions to the MARVEL UK line: BLAKE'S SEVEN POSTER MAGAZINE and DOCTOR WHO POSTER MAGAZINE.

I never really understood the appeal of these two seventies throwbacks... or who exactly they were going to appeal too.  It's hard to imagine that the target audience for poster mags (surely pre-teen boys or - in the case of popular music combos - pre-teen girls) would have the remotest interest in either of these long-defunct TV shows and older fans - however loyal - would be unlikely to adorn their home with giant glossy pictures of Paul Darrow.

The very nature of poster mags is that text features (printed on the reverse side of the main attraction) tend to be a little scant in detail and - sure enough - the same was true here.  Although the B7 one did at least indulge in some original short fiction by authors fandom, at least, had heard of.

Somewhere around this time, Visual Imagination clocked up a substantial run of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION Poster Mags and its possible that Marvel UK fancied a piece of the action.

Sure enough, these soon succumbed to retrenching within the M-UK operation although this subscription advert, which filled one 'page' of each issue, continued to appear right until the end of the run.

1992: BLAKE'S SEVEN FAN ART from HORIZON

This is a really nice piece of BLAKE'S SEVEN fan art scanned from the back cover of the December 1992 edition of the always weighty HORIZON FAN CLUB newsletter (more of a magazine really).

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a credit for the piece anywhere in the magazine although there is a signature (which I can't decipher) bottom-right.

The newsletter itself was a 100-page black & white (with glossy colour cover) A4 letterbox-buster only available to club members.  There's more fan-pleasing stuff in one issue of the newsletter than all the eighties Marvel magazines combined.

The show was going through something of a renaissance at the time thanks to the BBC VIDEO releases (£10.99 for a tape with two episodes... what were we thinking?!?) which included a plug for the club on every sleeve.  It was those VHS tapes that reacquainted me with the show (and drained my wallet) and led me to sign-up for the club.

I've got more B7 posts planned for the future.

1980: BLAKE'S SEVEN VFX in STARBURST MAGAZINE (Marvel UK)

Continuing my occasional series of behind-the-scenes articles on the special effects of TV shows that begin with the letter "B", here's a nice article, from the 20th issue of Marvel UK's STARBURST, covering the SFX of BLAKE'S SEVEN.

It's a show with a (sometimes deserved) reputation for ropey visuals which - I think - makes this piece even more interesting as it shows these things weren't always just thrown together at the last moment.

The BBC Visual Effects Unit is long-since defunct, the victim of changing technology and the multiple restructuring within the Beeb.