B7 Media followed up the original “The Early Years” Blake’s 7 audio story “When Vila Met Gan” in 2008 with prequels looking at the back stories of Cally, Travis, Avon and Jenna. In April 2010, they produced “Escape Velocity” written by James Swallow. Unlike the previous adventures, this CD contained just one story. Alistair Lock played Zen, Zoë Tapper played Pilot, Jason Merrells played Healer, Tracy-Ann Oberman played Avatar, Sam Woodward played Gunner and Pamela Banks played Tech.
Escape Velocity
The story starts during the Blake’s 7 TV episode “Redemption” when the System starts to interrogate Zen to find out what had happened and how the ship came to leave the System. They believe the fact that Zen is now calling itself Zen rather than Ship-Mind is a sign that it has been corrupted and that its rebellion against the System is due to a fault. Zen replies: “Rebellion is not a malfunction.”
When the System probes Zen’s mind to find what happened to the original crew, we discover that same phrase was used by them against Zen. The crew had been brainwashed to believe that their existence was purely as a cog in the System and they had functions instead of names – Pilot, Healer, Gunner, Tech and so on. But their original memories started to return and cause their behaviour to change.
Zen, as Ship-Mind, believed that the crew were malfunctioning and started to take extreme action to cure the problem.
This story goes a long way to explain how Zen broke its own programming and was so ready to accept Blake and company on board.
Availability of "Escape Velocity"
Blake’s 7 “The Early Years: Escape Velocity” is available as a CD from B7 Media. The CD also contains an extra unlisted track with some of the music from the episode.
Blake’s 7 Trivia
Alistair Lock who played Zen directed earlier Early Years adventures “The Dust Run” and “The Trial” as well as providing music for many of the releases and creating the series’ soundscape.
Zoë Tapper has a number of genre credits such as Anya in the Survivors remake and Gemma in Hex.
Writer James Swallow has written tie-in novels for Stargate, Star Trek and Doctor Who among others as well as audio dramas for the same shows. He also created the original stories for two Star Trek Voyager episodes.
See also:
- Blake’s 7 : The Audio Adventures
- Blake’s 7: Season One
- Blake’s 7 : The BBC Audio Dramas
- Blake’s 7 on the Web
- Blake’s 7: When Vila Met Gan
- Blake’s 7: The Early Years – Avon and Travis
- Blake’s 7 : The Early Years – Cally
- Blake’s 7: The Early Years – Jenna
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
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