A reboot of the 1970's British Space Opera cult classic "Blakes Seven" is officially in development. Blakes Seven was set in  a dystopian future, in which a band of rebels opposed the totalitarian Terran Federation. It ran for four seasons each of thirteen fifty-minute episodes. Initially conceived as "the dirty dozen in space" if has much the same feel of a small group of flawed heroes opposition a huge, powerful and tyrannical state as the much more recent Star Wars project, Andor. There were some brilliant acting performances, particularly from Gareth Thomas as the eponymous hero Roj Blake, an idealist who leads the crusade against the evil Federation for the first two seasons, Paul Darrow as Kerr Avon, an apparently cynical and coldly rational computer genius who takes over from Blake as leader of the rebels for the third and fourth seasons, and Jacqueline Pearce as Supreme Commander (later President) Servalan, the show's main antagonist. According to De...

This video is a fascinating account of the production of the ITV television version of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. It also brings out some of the real historical events and characters which iknspired both the books and the TV series. The Horatio Hornblower books were, of course, one of the inspirations for David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, as David Weber has made quite clear. One thing which struck me on watching this video was that the duel at the climax of the fourth Honorverse novel, "Field of dishonour" has some significant similarities, although the plot is not identical, to the ITV version rather than Forester's original version of the duel in "The Even Chance." The video ends with a comparison between the Hornblower books ad TV series, and the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell and the TV series made of those books. The comparison is well done but misses one significant trick. C.S. Forester, the author of the Hornblower novels, ...

Christmas is not celebrated in the galaxy far far away, though "Life day" has some similarities. For anyone reading this who does celebrate Christmas, today is "Twelfth Night" which is the last day of Christmas 2025/6. So remember to take all your Christmas decorations down!