When Blake’s 7 launched on BBC One in 1978, it barely resembled the sleek, prestige science fiction audiences now expect. The budget was tight, the sets sometimes wobbled and the production constraints were obvious. Yet nearly 50 years later, the series looks less like a curiosity of its era and more like a quietly revolutionary text – one that anticipated where television drama, and science fiction in particular, would eventually go. With a reboot now in development, Blake’s 7 is returning to a TV landscape it helped to shape – and its renewed relevance has little to do with nostalgia. Instead, it lies in how boldly the show embraced anti-heroes, moral ambiguity and brutal consequences at a time when genre television still preferred comforting certainty. Creator Terry Nation – also the inventor of that great Doctor Who menace, the Daleks – once described Blake’s 7 as “The Dirty Dozen in space”, and that framing proved crucial. This was never a story about noble explorers or spotless rebels. Series protagonist Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) begins as …