Michael Keating

A retrospective look at the making of The Sun Makers and the science behind it.

To celebrate its 40th Anniversary, this is the definitive set of interviews with six of the team of actors who brought Blake’s 7 to life … plus a bonus interview with SFX creator Mat Irvine! These seven documentaries are the best in-depth interviews with Gareth Thomas (Blake), Jan Chappell (Cally), Michael Keating (Vila), Jacqueline Pearce (Servalan), Stephen Greif (Travis), Peter Tuddenham (Zen, Orac & Slave) and Mat Irvine (SFX) ever undertaken. Presented by “voice of the Daleks” Nicholas Briggs.

In 1979 Clive Sinclair, British inventor of the pocket calculator, frustrated by the lack of home investment in his project,the electric car, also opposes former assistant Chris Curry's belief that he can successfully market a micro-chip for a home computer. A parting of the ways sees Curry, in partnership with the Austrian Hermann Hauser and using whizz kid Cambridge students, set up his own, rival firm to Sinclair Radionics, Acorn. Acorn beat Sinclair to a lucrative contract supplying the BBC with machines for a computer series. From here on it is a battle for supremacy to gain the upper hand in the domestic market.

Arthur is about to celebrate his 80th birthday and his family is gathering for a party. It is a time for celebration, but also for family tensions and a reassessment of how we all spend our lives.

A spaceship crashes approaching the planet Cephlon and when the crew of the Liberator answer the distress call they find their own lives endangered. Blake is caught in a desperate race against time to save the lives of the crew and also find the mysterious ORAC. Once in Blake's possession, ORAC predicts the future of Blake and his crew by showing them an image of the Liberator blown to atoms in space. Blake is powerless to alter their inevitable destruction, and when the Liberator is seized by a hostile force, a series of terrifying events sets the prophecy in motion.

Supreme Commander Servalan assigns the task to the deadly Travis-his orders simply to seek, locate and destroy Blake's 7! Travis and his Mutoid crew clash with Blake in a crucial struggle over the Federation's secret cypher machine and again in desperate hand-to-hand combat on a mysterious dead planet. Finally, they confront each other on a barren ice world as Blake attempts to rescue the resistance leader, Avalon. This time, however, Travis is expecting him, and a terrible trap awaits. . .

In the far future, freedom fighter Roj Blake, framed by the all-powerful but corrupt Galactic Federation, escapes his captors from his sentence to a harsh penal colony and, helped by a handful of fellow convicts and armed with a superbly-equipped alien spaceship, sets about restoring freedom to the galaxy.

The Intergalactic War is over. The Combined forces of Earth's galaxy have triumphed over the invasion force from Andromeda, but the price of victory has been high.

Gutrune's romance with newspaper editor Nick Verney is hampered by the fact that he is still in love with the wife from whom he is separated. She finds that in affairs of the heart, advice is the last thing she needs.

Far in the distant future, Earth has become uninhabitable, forcing Mankind to colonise first Mars and then Pluto. No longer the coldest planet in the solar system, Pluto is now warmed by artificial suns. The Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive to discover the exploitation of the Megropolis people by the ruling elite, lead by the Collector. Deep in the Undercity, a small group of revolutionaries plot to overthrow the company and the Doctor is forced to fight the oppression of the people using Fire against Fire...

Intended for school leavers, the promotional film shows the vast range and variety of jobs available within the British Civil Service, highlighting the ways in which civil servants help individuals, the community in general and Parliament.