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B7 Productions, the UK-based independent media production company, has announced the return of the cult television classic, Blake's 7 as a series of original audio dramas.

Taking full advantage of the cult status and enduring popularity of Blake's 7, B7 Productions has produced a series of original audio adventures based on the format and characters created by the late Terry Nation.

In what the producers promise to be a radical new re-interpretation, Derek Riddell (No Angels, Doctor Who) heads an all new cast as the eponymous rebel leader, Roj Blake. Colin Salmon (best known for his film roles in James Bond, Alien vs. Predator and Resident Evil), assumes the iconic role of Kerr Avon with Daniela Nardini (This Life) as the rebel's arch nemesis Supreme Commander Servalan.

Other cast members include Craig Kelly (Queer as Folk), Carrie Dobro (Babylon 5); Michael Praed (Robin of Sherwood), Doug Bradley (Hellraiser) and India Fisher (Doctor Who).

Blake's 7 will be produced as a series of all-new 36 x five-minute audio dramas. The episodes are first being streamed over the web and will then hopefully see a radio broadcast before being released as an extended CD.

There are twelve chapters to each story, which collectively constitutes a 60-minute episode. Over the three episodes – making up the trilogy – there's a major story-arc with several sub-strands.

Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt and James Swallow have written the audio plays and the Executive Producer is Simon Moorhead. We tracked down Audio Director Andrew Mark Sewell, who took a few moments out to talk about how he got involved in the new project.

"It's a rather long story, but the short version is that when I worked in BBC Drama back in the mid-1980s Blake's 7 producer/director Vere Lorimer became a firm friend and mentor. Curiously, when I was a freelance writer, one of my first interviews was with Vere discussing his time on the series. However, it wasn't till the late 1990s, when I was producing web shows for the BBC, that I met Paul Darrow.

"...the thought of possibly reviving one of the most ... seminal SF show's ever to be made for British television was simply too enticing.""In conversation he mentioned that Terry Nation, or rather his estate, since Terry had sadly died, still held the rights and that Terry had outlined to him the bare bones of the story he'd tell if ever he had a chance to write a sequel. Sadly it wasn't to be, but the thought of possibly reviving one of the most, if not the most, seminal SF show's ever to be made for British television was simply too enticing.

"However the journey to realising this ambition has been a long and often torturous one, littered with a series of obstacles that have tested everyone involved. The audio adventures have been a long time in coming and we hope that they herald something far more exciting to come."

Why did they decide to go with five-minute episodes, rather than longer ones? "It would probably be more accurate to describe them as chapters. Twelve chapters constitute a 60-minute episode and within each episode there are three to four distinct story strands, with an underlining story that drives the entire trilogy forward.

"...the format has worked to our favour in that it's upped the ante in terms of pace and dramatic tension.""The initial reason for structuring them like this was that we wanted the stories to be deliverable over a variety of formats and in discussions with mobile companies we were told that five-minutes were the optimum length. As it happens, irrespective of whether the audio adventures are offered in bite-sized chunks for download to mobile, the format has worked to our favour in that it's upped the ante in terms of pace and dramatic tension. It was a great discipline for the writers to work to and the dramas really don't let up."

Coping with that discipline was Lead Writer Ben Aaronovitch, a role he thoroughly enjoyed. "The lead writer is expected to develop and set the 'house' style for a particular series," said Aaronovitch. "Other writers can look at your scripts and get an idea of what's expected of them. However you don't want too much conformity, after all you don't hire writers like Marc and Jim and then ask them to turn out cookie cutter scripts. The role demands that you think about more than just your own story telling needs but I'm finding it enormously rewarding."

Setting stories in the B7 universe and including central characters like Blake and Avon must have required a high level of research? "We've been developing a detailed background to the Blake's 7 universe for over three years now," Aaronovitch said. "So as well as doing the obvious, watching the episodes, reading the transcripts etc, we mapped out the social, political and economic background of the entire Federation. We also looked for ways to make the treatment of space travel more, well, credible than in the 1970s when they were very breezy about such things as physics. So the short answer is lots and lots."

"...we have striven to bring the fabric of the stories more up to date with a more sophisticated approach to politics and technology."And out of that research came Aaronovitch's first few stories: "My episode roughly follows the course of the first three original episodes, following Blake's trial, recovering the Liberator and recruiting a crew. That said we have striven to bring the fabric of the stories more up to date with a more sophisticated approach to politics and technology.

With the research well underway, the next thing was to squeeze the action into five-minute chapters and take the lack of visuals into account – a task that is not as difficult as you may first assume. "All stories, whatever their length, break down into shorter sequences - so it really became a question of finding the beginning and ends of those sequences and making sure they were roughly the right length for each five minute chapter.

"For the visuals, normally as a scriptwriter you live by the simple dictum of show, don't tell - so there's your first problem right there. Once you've got used to showing things via dialog and sound effects you then have to find ways of moving your audience from scene to scene without visual clues. Finally you must come up with an infinite number of ways for your characters to state the bleeding obvious without seeming to state the bleeding obvious."

Fellow writer James Swallow also adapted to the lack of visuals with ease. "Audio is a great medium for storytelling," said Swallow, "especially for SF and fantasy where your special effects budget is limited only by the imagination of the listener. That's one of its greatest strengths, but it can also fall flat if the writing doesn't 'convince' the audience. It's a challenge making it work, without resorting to stagy writing and overly descriptive dialogue; the writer has to make the characters sound real but at the same time find a way to convey the pitch and moment of a story without the short-cuts that a visual element provides."

Swallow's episode comes at the end of the sequence: "The title of the third hour is 'Liberator', and that's made up of three stories. By the start of hour three, we've bedded in the main cast of characters and started to explore the mysteries of the Liberator. My stories deal with Blake and the crew "seizing the sword" so to speak, as they (and the Federation) come to understand just what great potential the ship represents. There's tension from within as Blake and Avon lock horns and from without as Servalan and Travis face this new threat; and all this comes together in an explosive climax."

How did Swallow find the overall experience of writing the episodes? "Great!" he said. "I love writing audio because precisely because of the challenges it brings; and I was enthused by the idea of taking on board a piece of classic Brit-SF like Blake's 7 and re-imagining it for a contemporary audience. I think it helped that I was working with talented, dedicated guys like Ben Aaronovich and Marc Platt. Both Ben and Marc did great work in the first two hours of the show, setting up the characters and the circumstances, and together we all brought different strengths to the project."

The new Blake's 7 stories will debut in spring 2007. A special 'extended' CD edition will be released for retail following broadcast.

For more information, check out the Blake's 7 website.

Source: Andrew Mark Sewell, Ben Aaronovich and James Swallow

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