Okay, I’m just going to dive in since it’s solely you and me here, and if I think this is the only time I’m going to embarrass myself, I have several more thinks coming and possibly daily.<\/p>\n
But in the first three seasons of Blake’s 7, back in 1978 when I promise you I was minus 30, the characters had a certain type of gun. To some people then, they looked like toothpicks, and to others now they look like children’s toys. But to me then and even to me right now, they look great and I want one.<\/p>\n
Somehow around then, I mean right back then, I got a Blake’s 7 teleport bracelet — if you know, you know — and while not screen-used, I have this memory that it was made by the same people who did the ones on the show, and at the same time. That bracelet has been on every desk of mine ever since.<\/p>\n
But somewhere between 1978 and 2025, somewhere closer to my being embarrassingly young, Blake was cancelled. I can’t remember now whether I sent a letter asking to buy the prop guns or just wrote it, but I know I wrote it. It’s long gone, hopefully into a bin instead of a postbox, but I can still see it. I must’ve been in my early teens, maybe middle teens, but my handwriting then looked like it was that of a four-year-old.<\/p>\n
So very many things have changed about me over this time, but one is that my handwriting is still that profoundly shockingly bad, and the other is that I want one of these toothpick child’s toy Blake’s 7 guns.<\/p>\n
And as of last Tuesday, I’ve got one. <\/p>\n
A UK firm called Mooncrest Models<\/a> makes these and countless other prop replicas from TV shows. I say countless, I mean I’ve not bothered to count. But they made this and they made it very well. I’ve seen replicas that were immediately, obviously wrong and to my mind quite ugly. And I’ve held one of the original screen-used guns from the show: special effects creator Mat Irvine once let me see one up close. So I know what feels right as well as looks right, and this does.<\/p>\n Well, it doesn’t light up the way the show’s ones did. And it doesn’t come with the holster, the cabling and the external battery of the original.<\/p>\n But I have spent days zapping people through my office window and don’t appear able to stop. I’ve also now ordered a stand from Mooncrest Models, so shortly my Blake’s 7 gun will be mounted alongside my Blake’s 7 teleport bracelet.<\/p>\n It’s taken 47 years. But two items a writer came up with and a design team created and actors used are now on my desk at so very long last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, I’m just going to dive in since it’s solely you and me here, and if I think this is … Continue reading