Welcome to "Betty's Guide to Blake's 7!"  This is a brief introduction to the show that I originally wrote up for Phoenix APA, and thought I would go ahead and share with the rest of the universe. 

I do have to include a major disclaimer here, which is that all opinions on this page are entirely my own, including all interpretations of the characters, their motivations, and their relationships.  I have to include that disclaimer because one of the great joys of this particular show is that it's open to such a wide variety of interpretations (primarily because so few of the characters are inclined to talk about themselves in anything like a direct and open way).

Warning: This page features an overview of the entire program, and mentions several important plot points, including things like character deaths. In my personal experience, knowing these particular things ahead of time does not necessarily do any damage to one's ability to enjoy the show, and most of the truly interesting surprises lie more in how things happen rather than in what happens. Your spoiler tolerance may vary, however, so read at your own risk.

For more information on Blake's 7, as well as all sorts of other fun stuff concerning the show, a good starting point is Judith Proctor's B7 site.

Contents:
The Premise    The Tone    The Characters    The Production Details

The Premise:

It's many centuries in the future (my best guess is about a millennium, actually, based on the few relative dates we're given), and most of the galaxy is ruled by the corrupt, oppressive, and imperialistic Terran Federation.  Roj Blake, leader of a peaceful resistance movement called the Freedom Party, is one of the few who dares to raise his voice in protest against the system.  So, naturally, after his followers are killed, he's captured, brainwashed, made to recant his "misguided beliefs" on TV, brainwashed again, implanted with false memories, drugged (like the rest of the populace), and kept around for a couple of years as a bright, shining example of a "reformed character" (or as a warning to the other resistors, depending on how you look at it).  Until some of his old rebel buddies get in touch with him, that is, and the whole slaughter-and-capture thing happens to him all over again... at which point his conditioning starts to break down and his memories begin to come back.

The Administration decides that it's too risky to try conditioning him again, and that simply having him executed would just make him a martyr.  Instead they attempt to discredit him in the eyes of the public by framing him for molesting children (and the lengths they go to to ensure an air-tight frame-up job are, frankly, downright stomach-turning).  Blake is tried, convicted, and sent off on a prison ship bound for the godforsaken penal colony of Cygnus Alpha.

On board the prison ship, he and several other prisoners (see "Characters" below) devise a bold escape attempt. Which fails miserably.  Fortunately they get a second chance when the prison transport encounters a derelict alien ship, the apparent victim of  a mysterious space battle.  Visions of a fortune in salvage dance in the crew's heads, but, alas, everyone they send over to investigate ends up dead somehow.  Then someone gets the bright idea of sending over the highly expendable troublemakers who engineered the escape attempt. Needless to say, Blake and co. manage to defeat the alien defenses and make off with the highly advanced alien ship, which they name the Liberator, and which Blake immediately commandeers for use in his fight against the Federation (over the protests of several of his new-found criminal colleagues, who would much rather use it to get rich or at least to run and hide really well).

So.  Can one highly determined man, dedicated to the cause of Freedom and equipped with the most advanced ship in the galaxy, forge a squabbling, ill-disciplined band of criminals into a fighting force capable of bringing down the evil tyranny that holds sway over the galaxy?

Not a chance in hell.  But Blake's going to give it a damned good try.

The Tone:

 It's said that when Gene Roddenberry pitched the original Star Trek to the network execs, he described his idea as "Wagon Train to the stars."  When Terry Nation pitched Blake's 7 to the BBC, he described it as "The Dirty Dozen in space."  Which should give you some idea of the difference between the two shows, right there.  There's not much doubt, actually, that B7 was created, at least in part, as a direct response to Star Trek.  While the fact that both series feature galactic governments known as "the Federation" might possibly have been coincidence, the additional fact that the B7 Federation's emblem looks remarkably like a Starfleet insignia rotated sideways is really sort of a giveaway...  But B7's universe is very much the dark flip side of the TOS universe (much more so, in my opinion, than Trek's own Mirror Universe ever was).  Where Star Trek's future is bright and optimistic, B7's is downright dystopian.  Where the Trek philosophy appears to assert a belief in the infinite perfectibility of mankind, B7 portrays human nature as almost infinitely corruptible.  In Star Trek, the good guys are always right and often even the bad guys turn out to be merely misunderstood.  In B7, the putative good guys are drawn in multiple shades of gray, and even Blake, who is as close to unambiguously heroic as the series ever gets, treads the disturbingly blurry line between freedom fighter and fanatic.  And if the bad guys are ever misunderstood, it's only because they're deliberately trying to gain your trust in order to get the opportunity to stick a knife in your back.

What's more, in B7, the good guys do not always win.  In fact, while they do have their share of victories, they also fail frequently, repeatedly, and at times catastrophically... Until, in the end, the characters who haven't already been killed in the course of the series all go down together in a manner bearing absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to a blaze of glory.  Indeed, the entire series can quite reasonably be viewed as a sort of Shakespearean tragedy.  The final episode certainly outdoes Hamlet for sheer body count, and possibly even for emotional impact.

Within this bleak setting, the series was, of course, primarily intended to focus on science-fiction action-adventure: the first couple of seasons involved a lot of blowing up Federation bases and running from the bad guys; the third season featured much wandering around the galaxy and getting involved in various strange and dangerous situations; and the fourth season generally focused on various increasingly unsuccessful attempts to find new tools (weapons, allies, advanced technologies) with which to oppose the Federation.  But, although the stories themselves were generally quite good, the primary appeal of the show was always the characters, who were, for the most part, amazingly three-dimensional, complex, and interesting.  And the dialog was nothing short of brilliant: snappy, sarcastic and smart, it served as a redeeming feature for even the weakest episodes and made the strongest ones extraordinarily memorable.

Needless to say, it was a good thing that the writing was of such high quality, because there's no way the show could possibly have relied on its special effects to attract the viewers.  The total budget for the show sometimes seemed to be about $10, and they must have spent most of that on costumes, which tended to the flashy, eccentric and sometimes utterly outrageous.

The Characters:

The series underwent a large number of cast changes over the four years it ran, to the point where, by the final season, only two of the original characters remained, the others all having disappeared and/or been killed.  This frequently leads to confused viewers asking the question "Why is it called Blake's 7 when there aren't seven of them?"  In fact, depending on how you count it, there may have never actually been seven.  As someone once put it "it depends on how you count the machines and who's dead."  It was Blake himself who came up with the number, which he arrived at by by counting the ship's computer, Zen, as one of the crew (much to the disgust of Avon, who never approved of treating computers like people, even if he generally seemed to prefer them).

Roj Blake:

Most of Blake's history has already been outlined in the "Premise" section.  Blake was that rarest of things in the Blake's 7 universe: an idealist.  He truly believed that most people were basically decent, and that freedom and self-determination were very much worth fighting for.  He was also an incredible optimist, in that he seemed to honestly believe that he could topple the might of the Federation with little more than one alien ship and his own uncompromising determination.  But Blake was far from naïve or starry-eyed: he could be quite practical, intelligent, and even, when the situation really called for it, ruthless.  Blake's great strength was his force of personality; he was remarkably good at extracting cooperation and loyalty from even the most unlikely of followers (see "Kerr Avon").

Blake mysteriously disappeared at the end of the second season, after being forced to abandon ship in a battle against invading extragalactic aliens.  The remaining crew spent some time looking for him, but didn't actually manage to find him until the final episode... much to everyone's regret...

QUOTES:

Jenna: "At least you're still alive."
Blake: "No!  Not until free men can think and speak.  Not until power is back with the honest man."
("Space Fall")

Avon: "Staying with you requires a degree of stupidity of which I no longer feel capable."
Blake: "No, you’re just being modest."
("Breakdown")
 

Kerr Avon:

Avon was one of Blake's fellow prisoners on the ship bound for Cygnus Alpha, and one of the original three convicts who first boarded the Liberator.  A genius with computers, Avon had been arrested for attempting to electronically embezzle 5 million credits (or possibly 500 million, accounts differ) from the Federation Banking System.  When asked how he ended up getting caught, his reply was "I relied on other people."  (As it turns out, he didn't know the half of it, but that's rather a long story...)

Avon was quite brilliant.  He was also cynical, sarcastic, arrogant, untrusting, ruthless, greedy, and a big believer in looking out for Number One.  He claimed to have nothing but contempt for Blake's ideals (he once referred to Blake as a "great big bleeding heart"), and was extremely pessimistic about his chances of success.  And yet, somehow, he stayed and fought alongside Blake anyway, saving his life at every possible opportunity and ultimately even carrying on the fight after Blake had disappeared... Which has led to twenty years' worth of fan speculation on exactly what his motives were, and what was actually going on in his extremely complicated head.  (Blake and Avon had an extremely interesting relationship.  The phrase "love-hate," in my opinion, barely even begins to describe it.)

After Blake disappeared, Avon more-or-less became the leader of the Liberator crew, but he didn't have Blake's people skills or his phenomenal luck, and things did not go well for him.  By the fourth season the stress and strain were definitely beginning to show...

QUOTES:

"Wealth is the only reality.  And the only way to obtain wealth is to take it away form somebody else.  Wake up, Blake!  You may not be tranquilized any longer, but you're still dreaming."
("Space Fall")

Vila: "When you get Zen working, ask him to prescribe something for a headache, will you?  I've got this shocking pain right behind the eyes."
Avon:  "Have you considered amputation?"
("Redemption")

 [Upon being asked to volunteer for a dangerous rescue mission]  "I am not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going."
("Horizon")
 

Jenna Stannis:

Jenna was a smuggler -- excuse me, "free trader" -- and apparently a rather famous one even before she got arrested and met Blake.  ("She's a big name," says Vila in the first episode.  "It's an honor to be locked up with her.")  Jenna, along with Blake and Avon, was one of the original three convicts to board the Liberator, and Zen, the ship's computer, took the name Liberator from her mind.  Jenna was an excellent pilot, and was no slouch at hand-to-hand combat or the use of her considerable feminine charm, either.  (Unfortunately, though, as the series went on, she was gradually given less and less to do.)  While Jenna shared some of Avon's cynical pragmatism -- he almost convinced her to ditch Blake and run off with the ship in the second episode, something for which I don't think she ever forgave him -- she did find herself very attracted to Blake's idealistic dreams... and apparently also to Blake himself, although he never particularly seems to have responded.

 Jenna, along with Blake, disappeared in a life capsule when the crew was forced to abandon ship in a battle with aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy.  She was not heard from again for the rest of the series, although Blake gave a report of her (suitably heroic) death in the final episode.

QUOTES:

 Jenna:  "Maybe some dreams are worth having."
 Avon: "You don't really believe that."
 Jenna: "No, but I'd like to."
("Space Fall")

 Jenna [after Zen has refused to answer a question from Avon]:  "I don't think he likes you, somehow."
 Avon: "I think I may have to reprogram this machine."
 Jenna: "That still won't make you likeable."
("Cygnus Alpha")
 

Vila Restal:

Vila was a professional thief, and an extremely good one.  He first met Blake in a prison cell, while attempting to steal his watch. He described himself as "compulsive," and added, "I've had my head adjusted by some of the best in the business.  But it just won't stay adjusted."   He was a fellow passenger on the prison ship with Blake, and was later rescued by him from the prison planet Cygnus Alpha.

Vila was a self-proclaimed coward, and generally attempted to avoid both danger and work whenever he could possibly get away with it.  He frequently acted the fool and was occasionally known to perpetrate some pretty serious screw-ups (indeed, the failure of Blake's initial escape attempt can probably be traced to Vila dropping his gun at the wrong moment), but he was, nevertheless, a lot smarter than he looked and was responsible for saving the day more than once (not that he ever got any credit for it).

Vila's hobbies included magic tricks, drinking, ogling pretty women, practical jokes, gambling, raiding the Liberator medical supplies for recreational use, and sleeping (frequently while on duty).  He and Avon had an interesting relationship that has been described as a "mutual disparagement society," and listening to the two of them trading insults could be very amusing, indeed.

Vila was a Delta, one of Earth's lower classes (by contrast, Blake, and probably the others, were upper-crust Alphas).  He claimed to have bought that classification to avoid being drafted into the military, but it is impossible to know whether this is true or not.

Vila has the distinction of being the only character to appear in all 52 episodes, which makes him quite a survivor.

QUOTES:

 "I hate personal violence.  Especially when I'm the person.
("The Way Back")

 "Other people's property comes naturally to me."
("The Way Back")

 "There isn't a lock I can't open-if I'm scared enough."
("Seek-Locate-Destroy")
 

Olag Gan:

Gan was also one of Blake's fellow prisoners, sentenced to Cygnus Alpha for killing a Federation trooper who'd murdered his girlfriend.  He had also been fitted with a "limiter": a brain implant that rendered him incapable of killing... a limitation that presented a decided handicap for someone in the rebel business.

Despite what the Federation may have thought, Gan did not seem to be a particularly violent person: although he was usually quite willing to use his huge size to intimidate people, he was generally very even-tempered, pleasant, self-effacing, and eager to do his humble best to aid in Blake's cause.  It is not, therefore, too surprising that he was the first regular character to be killed off, sacrificing his life for the others in a disastrous attempt to destroy the Federation's central computer complex.

QUOTES:

 "I'm not worth dying for."
("Pressure Point")
 

Cally:

 Cally was a native of the planet Auron.  The Auronar look fully human, and are quite probably descended from humans, but they are generally referred to as "aliens," anyway.  Like all Auronar of her generation, Cally was telepathic.  (This, apparently, is a side-effect of the cloning process the Auronar use to reproduce.)  While she could send telepathic messages to anyone within her (highly variable) range, she claimed not to be able to read the minds of non-telepaths, though she did sometimes appear to be able to sense emotions.

Cally was not one of the criminals Blake encountered on the prison ship, rather, she was the only one of Blake's group who had already chosen to join the rebellion on her own account.  Blake first encountered her on the planet Saurian Major, where he'd planned to blow up a Federation communications complex.  Cally had been part of a rebel group who'd had the same goal, but the rest of her team had all been killed by poison gas.  (Cally's alien physiology had saved her from the same fate.)  Cally was intending to attack the complex herself, killing until she was killed, but Blake convinced her that joining up with him was much preferable to a suicide mission, and, after helping to destroy the base, she joined him on the Liberator.

Cally was an exile from her own planet and people.  Initially she claimed that she could not go back to Auron because she had failed, though it was later revealed that she had been exiled from Auron for her rebel politics; the rulers of Auron (mistakenly) believed that only maintaining a carefully neutral political stance would protect them from the Federation.  Being isolated from other telepaths was extremely difficult and lonely for Cally, and, unfortunately, she encountered several alien intelligences over the course of the series who were able to exploit that weakness to take telepathic possession of her.

There were really two very different sides to Cally: the hardened guerilla-fighter side, and the nurturing, mystical side.  Unfortunately, as time went on she tended to display the latter much more often than the former, kicking far less Federation butt in favor of playing nursemaid to the rest of the crew, quoting old Auron proverbs, and frowning enigmatically while picking up vaguely mysterious telepathic vibes.

Cally was killed at the beginning of the fourth season, in a trap set by Servalan.

QUOTES:

 "May you die alone and silent!"
("Time Squad")

 Cally: "My people have a saying.  A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken."
 Avon: "Life expectancy must be fairly short among your people."
("Mission to Destiny")
 

Zen:

Zen was the ship's computer aboard the Liberator, built by the mysterious, computer-controlled alien society known as The System.  Much of Zen's background is mysterious: for instance, the nature of the space battle which rendered the ship derelict, and what happened to its original crew, are unknown, and Zen did not appear willing to volunteer the information.

Zen possessed telepathic defenses and an ability to merge minds with his pilot, but these were never seen again after the initial episode in which they appeared.

Zen did not have much in the way of a personality, especially when compared with the other computers on the show, but generally simply gave out requested or obviously useful information in a clear, helpful, and impersonal manner.  He (or, as Avon would nevertheless insist, it) did, however, appear to be a self-aware entity, and his dying words, in which he referred to himself in the first-person for the first time, were quite surprisingly poignant.

Despite his generally helpful nature, there were certain subjects which he simply refused to discuss, and a number of questions he steadfastly refused to answer.  Once, when directed to go against a programmed directive whose purpose he would or could not explain, he simply shut himself down (temporarily).  Gan once remarked that it was as if Zen himself had a limiter, "something that stops him from helping us too much."

Zen was destroyed, along with the Liberator, at the end of the third season, when Avon, in a hurry to investigate a possible contact with Blake, flew the ship through a bizarre "enzyme cloud" which proved disastrously corrosive to its hull.

QUOTES:

 Blake: "Zen, how does the teleport system work?"
 Avon: "Would its function be injurious to our species?  Have you the necessary data?"
 Zen: "Wisdom must be gathered.  It cannot be given."
 Avon: "Don't philosophize with me, you electronic moron.  Answer the question."
("Cygnus Alpha")
 

Given the high attrition rate among the regular Blake's 7 characters, it almost goes without saying that it was necessary to introduce new characters from time to time to take the place of the old ones.  Thus, at various points during the series, we were introduced to the following:

Orac:

Orac was a supercomputer, built by the eccentric genius Ensor, best known as the inventor of the Tarriel (or Tarial) cell, which, according to Avon, "led to a whole new generation of computers," and now exists in "every computer in the known worlds."  Ensor himself did not refer to Orac as a computer, preferring to describe it as a "brain."  Orac was, indeed, an extremely sophisticated machine.  He could draw information from any computer containing Tarriel cells, and (at least sometimes) had the ability to control other computers remotely.  He also had the ability to make predictions about the future, though we only saw him do that once (and, admittedly, it could be said that he cheated somewhat in order to make that particular future come about).

Orac's abilities were exceeded only by his ego.  The machine regarded himself as highly superior to the organics he was forced to work with (and to the other computers he was forced to work with, as well), and, although he always seemed to obey a direct order, at least eventually, he always deeply resented being taken away from his "researches" in order to help the crew with their "petty problems," and in general tended to be highly uncooperative and difficult to work with.

The story of how Blake and co. came into possession of Orac is rather a long one, and probably not worth repeating in detail.  Essentially, Ensor had planned to sell it to Servalan, who attempted to double-cross him.  The Liberator arrived to help, but not quite in time to prevent Ensor's death, which fortunately left Orac in Blake's hands rather than Servalan's.

Orac has the distinction of being the only one of the show's protagonists to have almost certainly survived the final episode, although exactly what did happen to him in the end is not known.

QUOTES:

 Orac: "My mental capacity is infinitely greater [than Ensor's]."
 Jenna: "Modest, isn't he?"
 Orac: "Modesty would be dishonesty."
("Orac")

"I am shutting down.  I have much to do.  You have engaged my circuits on your petty affairs for far too long."
("Redemption")

[Avon and the crew are investigating some interesting sensor footage which shows some ships blowing up.  Orac has been making cryptic remarks about it.]
Avon:  "So what you're trying to tell us, Orac, is that those ships did not blow up by themselves."
 Orac:  "I am not trying to tell you anything. I am simply not interested in attempting to compensate for your amazing lack of observation."
("Stardrive")
 

Dayna Mellanby:

Dayna was the daughter of Hal Mellanby, former anti-Federation rebel and weapons designer.  Hal's wife was killed by the Federation, and he was blinded by Federation interrogators (though he was largely able to compensate for his blindness by use of a sensor device), and he fled with the infant Dayna into an exile on the remote planet Sarran, where Dayna was raised, along with her adopted sister, Lauren.

Both Servalan and Avon crash-landed in life capsules on Sarran in the aftermath of the Andromedan war.  Servalan killed Dayna's father, and Lauren was killed by Sarran's natives shortly afterward.  Dayna, having no family left, and having sworn revenge on Servalan, joined Avon when he was able to re-board the Liberator.

Dayna was an expert in weapons design and explosives, and was sometimes decidedly over-enthusiastic about using them.  Despite her impressive fighting abilities and her occasionally somewhat alarming streak of bloodthirstiness, Dayna had a certain quality of innocence attributable to her extreme youth and her sheltered upbringing on Sarran.

QUOTES:

 Dayna: "I like the ancient weapons: the spear, the sword, the knife.  They demand more skill.  When you fight with them, conflict becomes personal.  More exciting."
 Avon: "More dangerous."
 Dayna: "Of course.  Without danger, there's no pleasure."
("Aftermath")

 Vila [talking about Servalan]: "Her idea of chivalry is never to shoot a blind man in the back."
 Dayna [sounding angry]: "That's very true, Vila."
 Vila: "Wonderful.  And for my next trick, I will swallow my other foot.  I completely forgot about your father."
 Dayna: "I expect Servalan has, too."
 Vila: "I'm sorry, Dayna."
 Dayna: "One of these days it will be my pleasure to remind her."
("Death-Watch")
 

Del Tarrant:

Tarrant was a pilot in the Federation space fleet who deserted from the Federation for unspecified reasons and became a mercenary and a smuggler.  He was involved in the Andromedan war, in which he lost his own ship and was picked up by a Federation craft, where he (somehow) came by a Federation uniform.  He escaped in a life pod from the Federation ship when it, too, was damaged and came to dock with the Liberator, which had been temporarily abandoned by her crew and was currently occupied by a Federation boarding party.  Tarrant played along for a while, pretending to be a Federation officer, but when Avon and Dayna returned to the ship, he took their side in ridding the ship of the Federation personnel, after which he was accepted on board as the Liberator's new pilot, to replace the still-missing Jenna.

Avon described him best: "Tarrant is brave, young, handsome.  Those are three good reasons for anyone not to like him."  Indeed, Tarrant was much given to heroics and derring-do, surprisingly young for the amount of success he'd achieved in the Federation military, and apparently rather successful as a ladies' man.  He could occasionally be something of a jerk (especially to Vila, who regarded him as a bit of a bully), but he was certainly very loyal to his friends, and he had gained considerably in maturity by the fourth season.  He was also, needless to say, an extraordinarily good pilot.

Tarrant experienced a considerable amount of conflict with Avon at first, as they engaged in a rather odd sort of struggle for leadership of the Liberator and her crew.  They do seem to have worked things out eventually, though, and by the end of the third season Tarrant appeared, by and large, quite willing to accept Avon's command.

QUOTES:

[Talking to Avon]: "When you found me on the Liberator, it was quite a blow.  And every time you look at me, it hits you harder, doesn't it?  I'm faster than you and I'm sharper.  As far as it goes, I've made a success of my life.  But you?  The only big thing you ever tried to do you failed at.  The greatest computer swindle of all time... but you couldn't quite pull it off, could you?  If it hadn't been for Blake, you'd be rotting on Cygnus Alpha right now.  No, you failed, Avon.  But I win.  Not just at games, at life."
("Sarcophagus")

[Tarrant is at the helm of the crashing Scorpio, trying to keep control while the others abandon ship.]
Tarrant:  "It takes talent to fly a dead ship.  Look, there's nothing you can do.  You're not a good enough pilot."
Avon: "I can see that."
Tarrant: "So get the hell out of here, will you?  There's no point in both of us dying."
("Blake")
 

Slave:

Slave was the ship's computer on board the Scorpio, a Mark II Wanderer class planet hopper (basically a slightly souped-up freighter, and a major come-down after the Liberator).  Slave was built by the psychotic genius Dorian, who gave him a cringing, obsequious and apologetic personality.  Among other things, he had an annoying habit of apologizing profusely for interrupting the crew in order to inform them that, for instance, they were about to be under attack.

The former crew of the Liberator "inherited" Scorpio --and thus, Slave -- after killing Dorian, who had rescued them from the artificial planet Terminal, where they'd been stranded after the destruction of the Liberator, for nefarious purposes of his own.

 Slave invariably referred to Avon as "Master" and everyone else as "Sir" or "Madam."  Avon rather seemed to enjoy it.

QUOTES:

 Dorian: "Do you think it was the Liberator?"
 Slave: "Thought is beyond my humble capacities, Master."
 Dorian: "True."
("Rescue")
 

Soolin:

 Soolin was a native of the planet Gauda Prime, where her parents were farmers.  When she was a child, valuable minerals were discovered on GP (as the natives called it), on lands that legally belonged to the farmers.   Gauda Prime was then declared an Open Planet and the rule of law suspended... making it quite legal for  the mining companies to kill the farmers or drive them off their lands.  Soolin's parents refused to leave, and were murdered.  Soolin then devoted herself to learning to fight with a gun, apprenticing herself to one of the men who killed her family.  When she finally got to the point where she was a better fighter than he was, she killed him, along with all of the others responsible.

 Soolin became a hired gun, a bodyguard and a mercenary.  She was working for Dorian when the others first encountered her, but apparently considered that arrangement null and void when Dorian tried to feed her to his pet monster, along with the former Liberator crew.  She stayed on at Dorian's base after it was taken over by Avon and co., throwing in her lot with them in their fight against the Federation.  (It's not clear whether Avon was paying her for this or not.)

 Soolin's cool, cynical personality was in many ways quite similar to Avon's, though she seemed considerably more emotionally stable than he had become by this point in the series...

QUOTES:

 Dorian: "Soolin was taught by the best."
 Soolin: "Second best, actually."
 Dorian: "Oh, of course, you killed him, didn't you?"
("Rescue")

 Tarrant [to Soolin]: "You want to join us, is that it?"
 Dayna: "Why?"
 Soolin: "Why not?  Dorian's dead."
 Avon: "You give your allegiance easily?"
 Soolin: "I don't give my allegiance at all.  I sell my skill."
("Power")

Every space adventure series needs its villains, and Blake's 7 was certainly no exception.  The entire Federation, of course, was out to get Our Heroes (and there were plenty of others outside the Federation who would have been happy to turn them in for the bounties, as well), but two major figures kept popping up again and again to make their lives especially difficult:
 

Servalan:

 Supreme Commander Servalan was the head of the Federation military forces, but, impressive a post as that may be, it did not satisfy her ambition for long.  By the third season, she had managed to get herself elected President of the Terran Federation.  Alas (for her), she eventually fell out of favor (possibly because she'd been spending so much of her time chasing after the Liberator) and lost that exalted position.  Allowing the galaxy at large to believe that she was dead, she adopted a new identity as Commissioner Sleer, and slowly began scheming and manipulating her way into power again.

Servalan was utterly ruthless and insanely power-hungry, the sort of person who would think nothing of committing genocide twice before breakfast, if she thought it might make some aspect of her life marginally more convenient.  She had a fondness for pretty toy-boy staff members, and invariably went everywhere (including space battles and mucky subterranean tunnels) in flamboyant and highly impractical evening dress.

 Impressively, she actually had the style and self-confidence to pull this off.

As Supreme Commander, it fell to Servalan to deal with what one might call "the Blake problem."  Her continuing failure to do so caused her considerable frustration, and would have proved a serious political embarrassment, were she not able to blame the whole thing on Travis.  Servalan was actually more interested in capturing the Liberator than Blake himself, and she continued to pursue that end after Blake had disappeared.   Indeed, by the fourth season, she seems to have become rather obsessive, not about Blake (whom she believed to be dead, or so she claimed), nor about the Liberator, which had by then been destroyed, but simply in getting the better of Avon (and preferably increasing her own power while so doing).

Servalan and Avon developed an interesting (if rather twisted) relationship over the course of the final two seasons.  Avon claimed that he wanted to kill her personally, apparently blaming her for the destruction of the Liberator and the death of Cally, if nothing else, but he never did quite take an opportunity to do so...   And, despite everything, there was a good deal of sexual tension brewing between them.  (It was Tarrant that she actually slept with, as it happens, but that can be blamed on the telepathic vampire sand.  No, don't ask.)

QUOTES:

Servalan: "All these worlds could be yours, Avon; they're there for the taking.  You and I could build an empire greater and more powerful than the Federation ever was or ever could have been.  Now, Avon.  At this moment we can take history and shape it in our own image.  Think of it: absolute power.  There is nothing you can imagine that we couldn't do."
Avon: "I am thinking of it."
Servalan: "We can do it, Avon."
Avon: "I know we can."
Servalan: "We'll be answerable to no one.  Ours will be the only voice.  Imagination our only limit."
[They kiss.  Avon grabs her by the throat and pushes her to the ground.]
Avon: "Imagination my only limit?  I'd be dead in a week."
("Aftermath")

[Smarmy guest-character Leitz has discovered Servalan's real identity.]
Leitz: "And, of course, Practor recognized you as well.  That's why you killed him."  [He comes up behind her and fondles her.  She shows no displeasure.]
 Servalan: "What do you want, Leitz?"
 Leitz: "The Presidency."
 Servalan: "Anything is possible."
 Leitz: "After all, somebody has to take Practor's place.  You could use your influence, I'm sure.  And of course you'd know that your secret would be safe with me -- Servalan."
 Servalan: "I'm sure it would.  But I don't submit... to blackmail."
 Leitz: "There's always a first time.  And it's better than being executed."
 [She turns to face him and puts her arms up behind his neck.  They kiss.]
 Leitz: "After all, how many people've you killed to conceal your secret?"
 [She slips a crystalline dagger from her sleeve.]
 Servalan: "You mean now?"  [She jabs it into his neck.  He falls.]  "Twenty-six.  So far."
("Traitor")
 

Travis:

 Space Commander Travis served in the role of Blake's personal nemesis.  He was involved in the initial massacre of Blake's followers, before Blake's brainwashing, at which time Blake shot him.  Blake believed he'd killed Travis, but he'd merely wounded him gravely, causing him to lose an arm and an eye.  Travis had the eye replaced with a black eyepatch that covered a substantial portion of his face; he could have had it fixed with plastic surgery, but preferred to keep it that way, as a reminder of what Blake had done to him... and because he rather liked the look, apparently.  He did have the arm replaced with an artificial one, into which he had built an energy weapon called (rather ridiculously) a "lazeron destructor."

Travis had a reputation for ruthlessness, even among the traditionally ruthless Space Command, especially after he presided over the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians on the planet(s) Auros and/or Zircaster.  (It's unclear whether these were two separate incidents on different planets, or one incident on a planet which was referred to by two different names.)

 Servalan placed Travis in charge of hunting down Blake and the Liberator, a task he took to with great relish, becoming totally obsessed with wreaking his personal revenge on Blake.

Repeated failures (on both Travis' and Servalan's part) to bring down Blake, however, required someone to pay the price...  And so Servalan had the inquiry into the civilian massacre incident(s) reopened, leading to Travis being court-martialed and sentenced to execution.  Travis escaped, however, and proceeded to continue hunting down Blake on his own, an endeavor in which Servalan supported him... unofficially, of course.

The strain of his continual failure to destroy Blake and of  being turned upon by the military organization to which he'd always been so loyal seems to have had a profound effect on Travis, and by the end of the second season he was displaying distinct signs of mental instability.  Eventually, he allied himself with aliens from the Andromeda galaxy whose goals included the virtual destruction of humanity.  One can only speculate that this was, for Travis, the ultimate form of revenge: against Blake, against Servalan, and against the galaxy in general.  Quite a comedown for a man who, by his own lights, at least, had once been an extraordinarily good and loyal officer.

Travis was killed by Avon in his attempt to prepare the way for the alien invaders (although Avon may have been more immediately motivated by the fact that Travis was trying to kill Blake at the time).

 (Note:  The actor who played Travis was replaced at the beginning of the second season, leading to a rather strange sort of situation.  The actor who was brought in as a replacement brought an entirely different look, sound, and feel to the character, to the point that it does rather stretch suspension of disbelief to accept that the two are meant to be the same man, eyepatch or no eyepatch...)

QUOTES:

Travis [talking to himself, after the first time Blake gets away from him]: "Run, Blake.  Run. As far and as fast as you like. I'll find you. You can't hide from me. I am your death, Blake."
("Seek-Locate-Destroy")

Travis [making a speech at his court-martial]: "A field officer, like myself, is frequently required to make fast, unconsidered decisions. You were all field officers, you know that's true. Time to think is a luxury battle seldom affords you. You react instinctively. Your actions, your decisions, all instinct, nothing more. But, an officer's instincts are the product of his training. The more thorough the training, the more predictable the instinct, the better the officer. And I am a good officer. I have been in the service all my adult life. I'm totally dedicated to my duty and highly trained in how to perform it. On Zircaster I, I reacted as I was trained to react. I was an instrument of the service. So if I'm guilty of murder, of mass murder, then so are all of you!"
("Trial")

The Production Details:

Blake's 7 was a production of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and ran on the BBC for four years, from 1978 to 1982. (Coincidentally, it debuted on the same day as the British release of Star Wars.)  It was created and produced by Terry Nation, best known for introducing the Daleks to Doctor Who.  Nation also wrote a great many episodes of the show, including the entirety of the first season.  Special mention should also be made of Chris Boucher, who served as script editor for the series, and penned many of its best and most memorable episodes (and who is usually credited by fans for coming up with all the best lines of dialog, whether in his own scripts or those he edited for others).

The Cast:

Roj Blake: Gareth Thomas (Seasons 1-2, plus a couple of "guest appearances" later on)
Kerr Avon:  Paul Darrow (Seasons 1-4)
Jenna Stannis: Sally Knyvette (Seasons 1-2)
Vila Restal: Michael Keating (Seasons 1-4)
Olag Gan: David Jackson (Seasons 1-2)
Cally: Jan Chappell (Seasons 1-3)
Zen: Peter Tuddenham (Seasons 1-3)
Orac: Peter Tuddenham (Seasons 2-4)
Dayna Mellanby: Josette Simon (Seasons 3-4)
Del Tarrant: Steven Pacey (Seasons 3-4)
Soolin: Glynis Barber (Season 4)
Slave: Peter Tuddenham (Season 4)
Servalan: Jacqueline Pearce (Seasons 1-4)
Travis: Stephen Greif (Season 1), Brian Croucher (Season 2)