Blake's 7 - Legacy

Legacy

Blake's 7's legacy to future television and film space opera was the use of moral ambiguity and dysfunctional main characters to create tension, and of long-term story arcs to aid cohesiveness. These devices can be seen in Babylon 5, Lexx, Andromeda, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Farscape, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly. These programmes contrast with the simple good-versus-evil dualism of Star Wars, or the 'feel-good' tone and unconnected episode structure of both early Star Trek and the series' main contemporary Doctor Who. Blake's 7 also influenced Hyperdrive and Aeon Flux. Television playwright Dennis Potter's final work Cold Lazarus was inspired by the show.

Blake's 7 remains highly regarded. A poll of United States science-fiction writers, fans and critics for John Javna's 1987 book The Best of Science Fiction placed the series 25th in popularity, despite then only having recently begun to be broadcast in the US. A similar poll in Britain conducted for SFX magazine in 1999 put Blake's 7 at 16th place, with the magazine commenting that "twenty years on, TV SF is still mapping the paths first explored by Terry Nation's baby". In 2005 SFX surveyed readers' top 50 British telefantasy shows of all time, and Blake's 7 was placed at number four behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. A similar poll conducted by TV Zone magazine in 2003 for the top 100 cult television programmes placed Blake's 7 11th.

Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen was inspired by Blake's 7 in naming his side-project Star One. Star One's album Space Metal features a song called "Intergalactic Space Crusaders" based on the series. The Orb's album The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld features a song called "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld", which is a reference to the episode Ultraworld.

In 2004 a 15-minute comedy film entitled Blake's Junction 7 debuted at several film festivals around the world. It was directed by Ben Gregor, written by Tim Plester, and starred Mackenzie Crook, Martin Freeman, Johnny Vegas, Mark Heap and Peter Tuddenham. This parody depicted the characters taking a break at the Newport Pagnell motorway service area. In 2006 the BBC produced a 30-minute documentary The Cult of... Blake's 7 that was first broadcast on 12 December on BBC Four, as part of a Science Fiction Britannia series.