How Blake's 7 was massively ahead of its time when it first aired – and why it fits perfectly in the modern TV landscape

When Blake’s 7 launched on BBC One in 1978, it barely resembled the sleek, prestige science fiction audiences now expect. The budget was tight, the sets sometimes wobbled and the production constraints were obvious.

Yet nearly 50 years later, the series looks less like a curiosity of its era and more like a quietly revolutionary text – one that anticipated where television drama, and science fiction in particular, would eventually go.

With a reboot now in development, Blake’s 7 is returning to a TV landscape it helped to shape – and its renewed relevance has little to do with nostalgia. Instead, it lies in how boldly the show embraced anti-heroes, moral ambiguity and brutal consequences at a time when genre television still preferred comforting certainty.

Creator Terry Nation – also the inventor of that great Doctor Who menace, the Daleks – once described Blake's 7 as "The Dirty Dozen in space", and that framing proved crucial.

This was never a story about noble explorers or spotless rebels. Series protagonist Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) begins as an idealistic freedom fighter opposing a totalitarian Federation, but the series steadily dismantles his moral authority.

As his obsession deepens, Blake becomes reckless and absolutist, responsible for civilian deaths the show refused to excuse. Rather than improving, he deteriorates – an extraordinary narrative choice for late 1970s BBC drama.

Even more radical was Blake's second Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow), who remains one of the most uncompromising anti-heroes science fiction television has ever produced. Brilliant, sarcastic and emotionally detached, Avon regularly questions whether doing the "right thing" is worth the cost. Sometimes he decides it isn’t.

Crucially, Blake’s 7 never rushed to redeem him. Avon is allowed to be selfish, cowardly and cruel, punctuated by moments of reluctant heroism. Decades before Tony Soprano or Walter White, audiences were being asked to follow – and occasionally root for – someone morally corrosive at the heart of the story.

The rebellion itself offered no moral refuge. Unlike later space operas that romanticise resistance, Blake’s 7 presents insurgency as chaotic, under-resourced and frequently self-defeating.

The crew betray one another, abandon causes for personal reasons and argue over whether the Federation is even worth fighting. Victories are often temporary, reinforcing the idea that power structures do not collapse neatly.

This bleak worldview extended to its villains. Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce), the Federation’s most memorable antagonist, was politically intelligent, sexually confident and ruthlessly adaptable. She often outmanoeuvred the heroes rather than being defeated outright, surviving through charm and strategy rather than brute force. In an era of simplistic sci-fi antagonists, Servalan felt alarmingly modern.

Perhaps most infamous were the show’s deaths. From early departee Olag Gan (David Jackson) to eventually its title character, Blake’s 7 killed characters suddenly, unfairly and permanently. Major figures could be eliminated mid-story, without ceremony or catharsis, and the narrative moved on regardless.

This culminated in the now-legendary final episode, which ended in a brutal shootout and an ambiguous massacre that offered no reassurance that sacrifice would be rewarded or that the 'right side' would win.

These choices proved hugely influential. While not all later creators have cited Blake’s 7 directly, its DNA can be felt in series that embraced ensemble casts of compromised characters and long-term moral consequences, from Babylon 5 – whose creator J Michael Straczynski has acknowledged loving the show’s tone – to Deep Space Nine, Farscape, Firefly and The Expanse.

All share echoes of Blake’s 7’s central ideas: rebellion without romance, heroes without purity, and victories that come at devastating cost.

That lineage is now being acknowledged by the people bringing Blake’s 7 back. Director Peter Hoar – one of the creative minds behind the revival – has spoken about how the original series succeeded not because of money, but because "it meant something". Reflecting on its modest resources, he noted that audiences were willing to "compartmentalise and enjoy the ride knowing that the sets wobbled".

Hoar has also directly compared Blake’s 7 to Andor, arguing that the Star Wars spin-off succeeded "because of the integrity, wit and sophistication" of its storytelling, rather than spectacle.

It’s a telling comparison. Andor’s focus on moral compromise, political oppression and the personal cost of resistance feels less like a modern invention than a continuation of ideas Blake’s 7 was exploring decades earlier.

In today’s TV landscape – shaped by serialised storytelling, anti-heroes and moral grey zones – Blake’s 7 no longer feels ahead of its time. It feels perfectly at home. What once seemed bleak and confrontational has become the language of modern prestige drama.

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