Thursday, March 19, 2009

Blake's 7 - The London - Work in Progress

This is an older model that I plan to finish one day which is a CG replica, thought not 100% accurate to the shooting miniature, of The London from the early episodes of Blake's 7, it was the prison ship that was to take Blake, along with the other prisoners to Cygnus Alpha, during that journey the ship happens upon the abandoned Liberator and Blake, Avon and Jenna manage to jump ship.

The original ship was designed by Ian Scoones and built by Simon Atkinson. It's a very boxy design and is described in the episode as being a converted deep space freighter, we hear in the episode 'Spacefall' that the journey to Cygnus Alpha will take approximately 8 months ship time, yet it seems to be only a matter of days if not less in the actual episodes, from the size of the mess quarters etc... it looks like it would have been a very boring 8 months had it really taken that long.They also talk about things like how the doors might work and lock literally withing ear shot of the guards.

Matt Irvine mentions on the DVD Extra's that the ship was recycled for a Children's TV show called Space Vets, it would seem some changes were made as the box on the front tower seems bigger in the pictures I've seen of this model at exhibitions than it actually does in the episodes of Blake's 7, see bottom left pic above for the model as it is now. I prefer this so it's the version I've gone for in my build. I'll get around to finishing this eventually and have some good reference pics with the help of Niel Bushnell and some of the SF Modelling forums online.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah, yeah, that's the STUFF. Looks like it just came out of a practical model workshop. Love that stuff. Just love it.

Anonymous said...

looking good so far.
I love the small circular(air vents?)
on top- nice contrast

ross cuthbert said...

You've captured it beautifully! particularly the detail in the paneling, amazing. Must be very rewarding when you finally see it in action on the screen.

Niel Bushnell said...

Come on get it finished. I could have escaped from Cygnus Alpha by now!

SwithDrawn said...

Nice detailing!

Oh, thanks for stopping by my site. I'm really glad I ran the new spam filter plugin on my blog instead of just deleting the 600 mostly-spam comments. :P

Nelson Noel Luty said...

Andrew!! AMAIZING IS YOUR WORK,wOOOOOOUUUU I love your Scene.

Martin Klekner said...

I love your spaceship models. I still have lot to learn :-D

John Smith said...

Always loved that ship and the moody, eerie shots of it.