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.
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