Interception is nothing more than a minor escapade, but it's a reasonably entertaining one.
WRITTEN BY
No specific credit.
PLOT
Avon picks up a distress signal from a hijacked Federation prison ship. Upon realising that the ship contains a device that could make the Scorpio invincible, he flies the crew into the middle of the situation, with the Federation fleets about to arrive...
ANALYSIS
Probably the most notable aspect of Interception is that it's the first comic to end on a cliffhanger... or at least I think it's a cliffhanger. The "Macraton" lacks any kind of a backstory or context, and theoretically should make it easy as pie for Avon to defeat the Federation, so I would expect there to be a follow-up.
Aside from that, it's the usual kind of pulpy fluff we've gotten used to. Guldark and his men add a lot of entertainment value, there's a good amount of tension from the possibility of Federation reinforcements any second. Ships get blown up, people get shot. All the good stuff.
I have a few complaints though: for one, the space battle is somewhat confusing. It wasn't very clear what was happening, and the Scorpio apparently took massive damage off-panel, so it felt like I missed a bunch of the action. And also, given that Guldak's crew turn on Avon almost immediately, it feels like the time spent talking to them was completely wasted.
CHARACTERS
Avon is his reliably unreliable self, now prone to putting himself and the crew in frequent danger in the name of achieving greater security as he always did in Series D. In that regard, the comic captures his persona perfectly.
Vila, for whatever reason, suddenly loves to grin like the Joker all the time, which is very unnerving.
Guldak(who bears a hilarious resemblance to Hulk Hogan), I can easily see as a character from the TV show with his barbarian appearance and very obvious BBC English dialogue. "We've thrown off the yoke of the accursed Federation!!"
NOTES
*This story was published in the Blake's 7 Marvel Monthly issue 5.
*The Scorpio apparently has "emergency stations", which the crew can man in times of crisis.
*If Guldak and his people can't even understand firearms, how could they possibly control the ship?
*Hilariously, Guldak's men mistake Avon for a Federation officer purely on the basis of him wearing black.
*Orac refers to Avon as "master" as he did in Autona... Planet Of Lies!. In that case, I believed the writer mixed up his dialogue with Slave's, but in this, Slave is not present. Within the show, Orac only called Avon that in Headhunter, sarcastically.
*The Matracon device is very similar to the Tantalus device used by Captain Kirk in the mirror universe to displace his opponents.
*Dayna's "percussion charges" should, by definition, not destroy the Federation ship. Percussion bombs are basically another word for flash-bangs.
BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE
"If it's madness to want to have the equipment to guarantee survival... then I am mad."
CONCLUSION
This... isn't it, right? There's more? Right? ... Riiight?
*If Guldak and his people can't even understand firearms, how could they possibly control the ship?
*Hilariously, Guldak's men mistake Avon for a Federation officer purely on the basis of him wearing black.
*Orac refers to Avon as "master" as he did in Autona... Planet Of Lies!. In that case, I believed the writer mixed up his dialogue with Slave's, but in this, Slave is not present. Within the show, Orac only called Avon that in Headhunter, sarcastically.
*The Matracon device is very similar to the Tantalus device used by Captain Kirk in the mirror universe to displace his opponents.
*Dayna's "percussion charges" should, by definition, not destroy the Federation ship. Percussion bombs are basically another word for flash-bangs.
"If it's madness to want to have the equipment to guarantee survival... then I am mad."
CONCLUSION
This... isn't it, right? There's more? Right? ... Riiight?
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