Talon’s mysterious rescuer tells her more about her heritage and destiny. Wythers sets out to find the person responsible for killing a Prime Order agent in the Outpost walls and see that justice is served.

The Outpost’s opening episode, it’s fair to say, did not impress. Save from the minor piece of intrigue as to the identity and motive of the mysterious stranger who sort-of rescued her from death at the hands of the Prime Order officer who helped murder her entire people, there really wasn’t anything about it that raised more than the merest of shrugs. So did episode 2 get any better? Well, no.

It doesn’t help for starters that our central heroine, Talon, spends the first half of the episode constantly fainting/falling asleep from her wounds. Why these didn’t kill her isn’t really explained, beyond that her rescuer – who turns out to be a Blacksmith of all things – did a bit of a botched job of sewing her back up. Then the show dips into that rich vein of ‘Obvious Fantasy Tropes’ again to pull out that most hackneyed of ideas – The Prophecy That Can Only Be About Our Hero/Heroine.

Seriously, one episode in, we have our mysterious rescuer doling out doggerel about destiny and prophecy but refusing to explain exactly who he is or why he believes it (even though both are screamingly obvious if you were awake for the pilot episode), and Talon – in perhaps the most relatable thing she does all episode – tells him she’s not interested and essentially walks away from him with a sneer.

Then there’s Wythers, who is perhaps the least believable ‘menacing villain’ type that I’ve seen in the last few years. Evidently the showrunners think that a sort of quasi-cockney accent combined with a facial scar are enough on their own to make a character intimidating. They are not. Garret Spears continues to wander around looking for all the world like Arthur Darvill when he was going through the Roman Centurion cosplay section of his Doctor Who tenure – and yes I meant to say Arthur Darvill, not Rory Williams, because Jake Stormoen’s performance, such as it is, is not one which in any way convinces that the actor is doing more than merely turning up and barely stopping himself from laughing openly at each and every line of dreadful dialogue he is required to deliver. Throw in Imogen Waterhouse’s imperious Gwynn striding around in a costume and with an attitude which seem to have been imported from another (more deliberately) comedic show altogether, and it all just becomes frankly too much to bear.

By the time the bad CGI demon pops into existence before being told to ‘go away’ (no, really) and doing so, you’re begging for a merciful end, but that gets delayed by what is perhaps the most improbably long and ridiculously over-staged execution/last words scene ever committed to celluloid. Somewhere, in the great theatre in the sky, there are thesps watching this unfold through tears of insensate rage. Polonius himself could not prevaricate more, nor miss the mark on his performance to any greater degree, than what’s on display here.

Verdict: Improbably enough, in its second instalment, The Outpost goes from merely laughably bad and cliché-ridden to actually bona fide awful. 1/10

Greg D. Smith