Jacqueline Pearce returning to Blake's 7 audio dramas

Actress Jacqueline Pearce is set to reprise her iconic role of Servalan in several new Blake’s 7 audio dramas.

SFX reports that the actress will return to the world of Blake’s 7 to play Servalan in B7 Enterprises new audio series The Liberator Chronicles. Servalan will make her first appearance in the audio drama Wolf, written by Nigel Faris, on the second volume of The Liberator Chronicles which will be released later this year.

Jacqueline Pearce’s portrayal of Servalan won her a legion of fans and is still the character most associated with her. Servalan was originally intended as a one-off male character but the plans were changed and Pearce impressed producers with her performance and the character became a series regular. Servalan was power-hungry, devious, manipulative, greedy and murderous – she wasn’t beyond committing genocide to achieve her goals.

Jacqueline Pearce appeared in all four seasons of Blake’s 7 with her last appearance being in the penultimate episode in which her character survived. The series finale of Blake’s 7 memorable saw the rest of the regular cast, including Blake (Gareth Thomas) the original focus of the series, killed off in a gun battle. The final show was Avon (Paul Darrow) standing over the dead body of Blake with a gun in his hand surrounded by Federation troopers. As the credits rolled gun shots were heard and Avon supposedly died.

There have been several attempts to revive Blake’s 7 since its finale in 1981 with the most recent being by Sky. However, all the attempted revivals have, so far, amounted to nothing. In the late 1990s BBC Four produced two Blakes 7 radio plays which were generally not well received by fans.