Blake's 7

When Paul Darrow recently died, I decided to revisit the series, Blake's 7, one of the first SF TV series to have a grand narrative

The Set-up: 

Roj Blake is invited to a meeting of political dissidents undermining the Federation. They tell him that he used to a major rebel against the Federation, but he's had his memories erased. He struggles with this and goes off on his own, only to witness, helplessly as Federation troops massacre the twenty defenseless dissidents.

Blake is caught and made to look like a child molester. His defense lawyer doesn't believe Blake's claim until he looks at the records himself. Meanwhile, Blake is shipped off to a penal colony. En route, the Federation guards get greedy when they find an empty ship, full of alien technology. After a few guards die under mysterious circumstances, they send a few prisoners aboard to claim the ship, rescue or find out what happened to the guards, so as not to lose further, vital crew.

The Good

What's working is this disparate crew--misfits, forced to align in order to circumvent the Federation. Some of them are true criminals. It's hard to know who to trust and how far.

They also have this alien technology they have to learn to use.

The best may be the suggested narrative arc in the first season when Terry Nation was writing. He did create narrative threads that were better used later (e.g. telepathy), but we had a sense that this would be a big tale.

Tanith Lee wrote a few episodes, including a somewhat odd tale called, "The Sand."

The very last episode of the series ends in the same way as a famed Western movie less than a decade old at the time. It's interesting and disappointing at the same time.

The Bad 

After season one, any pretense of a grand narrative is abandoned except "Federation bad, we good." The viewer is best advised to watch season one as what-might-have-been, and then watch the rest as tales of a never-ending space opera--watch less for arcs than episodes although some pretense is made toward continuity. The end of season four makes an interesting finale but a somewhat sloppy way to tie off loose ends. The series actually seems to build toward the opposite thematic conclusion, but it's still interesting.

The characters that were forced together still stick together although based on their original characters, they should have abandoned one another long before. Their character natures are abandoned for episodic plots.

The writers have no sense of gravity in particular, physics in general.

Comparisons

This reminded me of the promise of the first season of Orphan Black, which when it got hugely popular, it had come up with more and more absurd ways to further the plot. Milk milk milk the dead cow. Murdered by its own success. Blake's 7, however, abandons any idea of a grand plot. Was it ever intended to be a grand plot? It's hard to say.

Apparently a new Blake's 7 is in the works, according to IMDb, but hopefully it doesn't fall for the same trap as its predecessor--a victim of success.