Friday 22 March 2013

1983: BLAKES SEVEN: THE PROGRAMME GUIDE (Target Books)

Tony Attwood's BLAKES SEVEN: THE PROGRAMME GUIDE (no apostrophe.  Official) was an essential part of many a geek's library in the early 1980s.  First published by Target Books in 1983 (the cover scans below come from a latter edition, although I don't think there were any changes or amendments except - possibly - the cover price), this represented pretty-much the only serious guide to the show (Marvel's B7 monthly not withstanding).

The "fully illustrated" cover splash was shamelessly misleading.  The paperback was text-based with only a few centre pages of black & white photos on glossier paper.

Attwood's guide might seem superficial by today's demanding geek standards but - for the time - this was detailed stuff.  Conspicuously lacking were the behind-the-scenes accounts of production which we'd demand today.

I only started watching the show from the beginning of the third season (although, for some reason, I already owned the Corgi Liberator toy) so reading about event's in the first two seasons (and - indeed - this bloke called Blake.  Not to mention Travis) was intriguing stuff.  I only had a chance to see the show from the beginning when I acquired (at a cost that seems inconceivable now) the full release of VHS tapes (26 of 'em) in the nineties.  

Blake's Seven has benefitted from a number of subsequent books, of varying quality, although nothing has come close to reaching the quality of behind-the-scenes research in the two Marvel UK specials penned by Andrew Pixley and published in 1994-95.  Click here for the more.




No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...