Wanderlust (1982) Review

Wanderlust is pretty goofy, but there's enough plot twists to keep one's interest.

WRITTEN BY

No specific credit.

PLOT

Avon schemes to steal containers of a valuable resource called braxomite in order to secure a consistent power supply for Xenon Base. Little do the crew know, however, that for once Avon has allied with the Federation...

ANALYSIS

I think conceptually, Wanderlust works quite well. There's a heavy emphasis on action-adventure stuff(shootouts + space battles), some really good intrigue to keep the reader guessing and the crew are working here as pirates, which is my favourite role for them. So the setup is very strong.

Execution-wise, there's a few blunders. The writing doesn't do a great job of clearly defining where everybody is at the given time and what they're doing, so the heist felt a bit vague and murky to me, in a "oh! I guess our side is winning" way. The dialogue, a few snappy oneliners aside, is also quite weak and exposition-heavy. It shouldn't be this complicated.

But on the whole, I can't complain too much, because I did get a good Blake's 7 vibe out of it, which is all you can really ask for with these short stories.

CHARACTERS

Whoever was writing clearly paid close attention to Paul Darrow. The cold, icy stares, the inappropriate smiles and the shadiness is all here. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of him casually accepting a job from Servalan, but I like that an effort is made to emphasise the similarities between the two.

Tarrant is oddly soft in this one. Maybe I'm thinking back to all the bickering he did with Avon in Series C, but here, he just goes along with basically anything the former says with a shrug. Tarrant's such a teddy bear that even Vila seems more combative!

I love that Soolin was described as nodding along to Dayna twice in a row. At least she gets a moment to gun down some troops... offscreen.

NOTES

*This story was published in the Blake's 7 Marvel Monthly issue 6.

*Are we supposed to assume that the mysterious Federation flier leaving Xenon was Servalan herself? There's no follow-up on that and Avon had no contacts amongst the renegade fleet, so it had to be. Which is a plot hole on so many levels(why would they trust one another, how did Servalan contact Avon, why wouldn't she destroy them?).

*I really love that the crew basically just need a battery for their base. It's the kind of scrounging-for-resources type plot that would never have happened during the Liberator years.

*Braxomite joins the long list of fictional ultra-important resources that we'll never mention again. Which was a meme even in the 1960s. Corbomite, anyone?

*Maybe I'm just being stupid, but couldn't Xenon Base be powered by the hydro-plant from Headhunter? Or by solar power? Avon should be able to rig something like that up.

*What's with the random caps-locked descriptives? "BATTLE CRUISERS" "HOLOCAUST". Is it to fill in for the dramatic absence of Dudley Simpson's score?

INFORMATION!

*Avon informs Castor that Sleer is actually Servalan, which he discovered in Traitor.

*In order to replace another Wanderer-class ship in the renegade fleet, the crew employ the Matracon device that they stole in the comic Interception. Yes, they actually followed up on that!

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE

VILA: "Federation battle cruisers!"
AVON: "Correct, Vila. 10 out of 10 for recognition."

CONCLUSION

Frivolous fun.