The Sevencyclopaedia

By Neil Faulkner

Background

The decision to compile a (hopefully) comprehensive index of all people, places and pieces of hardware in the 52 episodes of Blake's 7 arose out of a growing personal dissatisfaction with my own, frequently erroneous, perceptions of what was said, done or indicated in the series. The only other index I had to hand was in the first edition of Tony Attwood's Programme Guide, which was useful up to a point but has some notable shortcomings. It undoubtedly contained some errors, a number of glaring omissions, and (probably for reasons of space) gave relatively few details and failed to indicate the episode from which many of its entries originated. It also contained a considerable amount of personal conjecture and additional material by the author, not all of which was clearly indicated as such. The Sevencyclopaedia began as an attempt to rectify those deficiencies, since then of course, a revised edition of the Program Guide has appeared, but the index therein still lacks the depth of detail given here.

With regard to the material included here, I have restricted myself strictly to the episodes as broadcast, and ignored any additional information which might be found in rehearsal scripts, interviews with Terry Nation and other members of the production crew and cast, the three novelisations by Trevor Hoyle, and the enormous body of original fiction produced by fans. Many assumptions regarding the series have their origins in BBC publicity material, which cited details never referred to in any episode. All of these external sources are lumped under the generic term 'fan lore'. No entries in this work are based on fan lore, though some aspects of it are mentioned under other relevant headings. You will not, therefore, find any entry in the main text for Atomic Wars, Second Calendar, West Europ dome or Zephron, since these are all aspects of 'fan lore' which, strictly speaking, fall outside the broadcast canon. There is an appendix at the end, for items of this nature.

I have also tried to restrict myself, as far as possible, to facts, and keep conjecture to a minimum. This is is not always possible, of course: there are a fair few glaring anomalies and contradictory statements scattered throughout the series, and like most fans I find it difficult to resist the temptation of explaining them away. I've tried to make sure that such speculations are clearly labelled as such. While I have concentrated on hard fact, there is a great deal that is merely implied, and so such qualifications as 'probably', 'apparently', 'presumably' and 'possibly' abound in the text. On the whole, I've tried not to take anything for granted. Such speculations should not, of course, be taken to be in any way authoritative.

The speculative process is particularly pertinent to the major characters, and in their case I have more or less firmly stuck to factual details or the more obvious traits and changes in character. To do otherwise would be potentially very dangerous - there are probably as many interpretations of Avon for instance, as there are Avon fans. In the case of the main characters, I have included what details I could glean of their past prior to entering the series, their known relatives, significant combats (a 'bodycount' is included for each character), how often they were captured and by whom, any times they rescued other people, notable injuries suffered, and other notable actions, together with any significant relationship they may have had with other regular characters and their more obvious attitudes, behavioural traits etc and how these changed through the course of the series. Some criteria had to be established for the purposes of compilation:

I have tried to cross-reference everything as completely as possible, and this inevitably leads to a lot of information appearing under more than one entry. As a general rule, all pertinent details are given under the most appropriate heading, with only the more relevant facts recounted elsewhere. A number of 'global' headings collate the basic details of a number of more detailed entries, and indicate where more details might be found. Such global headings include Aliens, Communications, Computers, Cruisers, Data storage media, Detectors, Drugs, Fashion, Food, Planets, Prosthetic devices, Rank, Spaceships, Vehicles and Weapons. Such entries often amount to little more than a list of things to look up elsewhere.

Completism has its inherent dangers, and some entries go a bit beyond any normal definition of common sense, but I worked on a principle of 'if in doubt, chuck it in'. Therefore you can find in these pages a reminder that Avon ate an apple on Sardos, that Krantor kept a pet cat, that Jarvik misquoted the Duke of Wellington and that the only person seen to blow a whistle was Hask in Traitor. Other entries give some indication of life in Blake's time, and whole areas of social and technological aspects of this often came from a few words, such as Vila's references to testing centres and gravestones, or Jenna's remarks on stasis beams. Some abbreviations have had to be adopted, largely for convenience's sake:

I have tried to be as thorough and a{"No Indent" off}ccurate as possible, but in a work of this kind omissions and errors are almost inevitable. Every time I rewatch an episode I seem to see or hear something new. Where necessary I have included quotations from relevant characters, and these are, to the best of my knowledge, word-for-word accurate. If, however, you find something I've missed out or got wrong, please let me know!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following references were consulted during the compilation of this work:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following references were consulted during the compilation of this work:

The following people have also, through their articles and letters of comment in the Horizon society newsletter, letterzines and elsewhere, provided much invaluable information/inspiration: Simon Ball, M.A. Billings for proving that Soolin Did Things, Brad Black, Sue Clerc, Micky DuPree, Paula Gross for spotting Jenna's ring, Rory Hull, Russ Massey, Ben Mott, Judith Proctor, Louise Rutter, Sondra Sweigman for identifying Ensor's bird (amongst other things) and for numerous other snippets, Ros Williams, and anyone else who unwittingly contributed.

Special acknowledgement is due to the eagle-eyed and (pernickety-brained) proof-readers: Judith Proctor (who queried just about everything, Andrew Williams and Richard Mattox. Thanks, I think ...

Editorial by Judith Proctor

In editing this monster, I have in the vast majority of cases used the spelling given in the revised edition of 'Blakes 7, The Programme Guide'. This is in acknowledgement of the work done by several fans who went back to the original scripts and determined the actual spelling of words such as 'Kahn'. It wasn't always an easy decision as some spellings eg. 'Kaarn' have become very widespread. In a few cases, particularly where scientific terms are involved, Neil and I have gone for spelling that is different from the Programme Guide, but which seems to make better sense. eg. 'nucloeplasmic absorbtion' rather than 'nuclear plasmic absorbtion'. I also refuse to believe that atmospheric beta particles are good for your health regardless of what the script may say - they are 'vita particles' in my book. (And you can hear it either way when Vila says it.) Lastly, we have adopted some spellings because the tape is audibly different from the spelling in the Programme Guide regardless of whether it was taken from a script of not. In the following cases, the spelling is deliberately different from that given in the Programme Guide: pamperanian, not papperalian fungi; Zolat-4, not Zolarg-4; Arnos-2, not Onus-2; Herriol, not Heeriol; Kainessos, not Kainossos (this one is guaranteed wrong in the Programme Guide as you can see the spelling on Blake's star chart in the episode).

The collection of episode transcripts compiled by fans and stored in the Lysator archives on the web were an invaluable aid in checking details of what actually happened in episodes. Thanks are due to the fans who put in the hard work compiling and checking these transcripts. While not 100% accurate, they certainly enabled me to clear up many queries without having to rewatch the episode in question.

I can honestly say that this has been an incredibly difficult zine to edit. Finding proof readers who had both enough free time and the necessary encyclopaedic knowledge of the series proved very difficult, although I must acknowledge the help of Richard Mattox and Andrew Williams. I ended up going through the entire document myself and chucking so many queries at Neil that I'm mildly surprised he's still speaking to me. There are occasional points where Neil and I still disagree, but these were usually over what to put in and what to leave out as opposed to disputing over the facts. I've usually given him the final word - he did write the beastie after all. You may assume any errors of fact are ones that slipped past both of us, and we'd love to have them pointed out to be corrected in any future editions. I would be very surprised indeed if we haven't got something wrong somewhere. Brownie points to those who found factual errors in the first printing. These have now been corrected. All feedback is welcome. Major thanks are due to my husband Richard. He hasn't the slightest interest in Blake's 7, but he not only puts up with photographs and fan art stuck on walls all over the house, he also helped out with the mammoth task of layout and spellchecking on this zine. Tasks such as checking paragraph indents and putting entries in a larger font are boring and repetitive and give me severe pain in my neck and shoulder after about half an hour. A lot of it was automated, but there are always cases that escape the global edits for one reason or another. Richard went through the whole darn lot and managed in a day what would have taken me several weeks. Spellchecking, in a document that has so many unique words, was another nightmare. (It isn't the wrong words that make the task impossible for me, it is the correct ones - hitting the 'ignore' key again and again can leave me in pain for days after.) For a non-fan, he became remarkably good at tracing obscure words that didn't have an entry in Attwood, but were often to be found by careful cross referencing. Not bad for a man who has difficulty telling Cally and Jenna apart!

The cover art is by Gavin Miller. Thank you, Gavin.

Since it has appeared on the Web, the Sevencyclopaedia has continued to gain new entries. Credit for the vast majority of these must go to Murray Smith who has dedicated many hours of video watching to check on minor details of costume, etc.


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