The SWARM

a group of radical writers comprising

Helen Steele

Robert Wilson

Sion Arrowsmith

Matthew Reid

Caroline Miller


Blake's Seven

This last while, we've been working on a continuation for Blake's Seven. It's set somethingteen years after `Blake', with the idea that the surviving characters could realisitically be played by the original actors and actresses.

The action is set around a new ship with a new crew, but they are, nonetheless, caught up in the currents of a history of which they know little and understand less. The few still surviving from that time play their cards very close to their chests.

As a highly politicised group of writers, we have always felt that Blake's Seven's strengths lay in its portrayal of intrigue at a personal and social level, as in episodes like `The Way Back', `Gambit', `Rumours of Death' and `Traitor', rather than its rubbery aliens in `The Web', `Redemption', `Ultraworld' and `Animals'. Hence we intend to follow the trend of the later two seasons and concentrate mainly on Blake's Seven as space thriller, avoiding telepathic pet rocks (indeed telepathic anything), headless robots and ill-advised genetic experiments wherever possible.

Since we intend to retain a number of the characters from the original series, we ought to have some kind of explanation for the end of `Blake' and an account of its immediate aftermath. We hope to expose our theory in the course of the new scripts.

Thus far, we have written the first two episodes of our putative new season...

The first, Enforcer, tells of a woman with a unique opportunity to pursue a vendetta...

The second, Silver City, examines a situation where present circumstance, past loyalty and commercial reality all come into conflict...

Work has started on the third episode, Aristo, in which a slightly too remarkable coincidence brings together old and new...


Marlon Pentangle

Marlon Pentangle is an undercover agent, working to eliminate assorted perfidious secret organisations from within. Cabals and conspiracies are a whole bunch of no fun for the rest of us. This is why we aim to assist and promote his efforts by persuading responsible adults to join as many secret societies as they can, in order to subvert them.

We find that most secret societies, being secret, require some form of symbolic and mildly abnormal behavioural trait so that their members can recognise each other. Hence we suggest that anyone wishing to assist Mr Pentangle should make a practice of imitating abnormal behavioural traits, wherever these may be observed, for the purpose of gaining admittance to such a society under false pretenses.

`Marlon Pentangle' is, of course, a pseudonym. If his real identity were known, his work (and indeed his life) would be in jeopardy. We would similarly advise anyone seeking to infiltrate secret societies to be less than open about doing so. You will know a fellow Pentangle agent when you meet one...


This webpage is maintained by Caroline Miller who can be emailed by clicking the following:
Caroline Miller <ctm@bast.demon.co.uk>