Blake’s 7
From wanderings in wikipedia, here is great quote from a review of Blake’s 7 in 1998 (it’s 20th anniversary):
Hanks praised the series’ ethos in comparison with Star Trek, saying that: “If you wanted to sum up the relative position of Britain and America in this century – the ebbing away of the pink areas of the map, the fading of national self-confidence as Uncle Sam proceeded to colonise the globe with fizzy drinks and Hollywood – you could do it like this: they had Star Trek, we had Blake’s 7… No “boldly going” here: instead, we got the boot stamping on a human face which George Orwell offered as a vision of humanity’s future in Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Hanks concluded that: “Blake’s 7 has acquired a credibility and popularity Terry Nation can never have expected… I think it’s to do with the sheer crappiness of the series and the crappiness it attributes to the universe: it is science-fiction for the disillusioned and ironic – and that is what makes it so very British.”
This show was soo crappy with special effects it generally made Doctor Who and Space 1999 look good. But it was black, and deep for a teenager, and probably did have more than little influence on Firefly in retrospect.
