With The Bones all dead, Talon has a new mission: find the mysterious ‘Book of Names’. But first she’s in quite the demand with everyone else. Gwynn is finally to be revealed to the soldiers as the rightful queen, as Calkussar and Spears try to kickstart their rebellion, and Dred is also on the trail of the Book of Names for his own reasons.

One of the issues with The Outpost (and there are a few) is that it plays out like something that was written in a rush and then never checked afterward. There are two main factors in this. The first is that there is altogether far too much going on at once, which means that when big things happen which should have resonance and impact, characters have to shrug them off three seconds later because the next subplot requires their attention. The second is that quite a lot of it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense when you really examine it.

Take the Smith (or the Old Wolf if you prefer). He’s one of the people, it turns out, who helped slaughter Talon’s entire people. She’s been on a revenge crusade to kill all the people who did this ever since episode one. Finding out he was one of them should not see her rushing to his side and calmly forgiving him as he lies dying (also – nobody in this bloody show dies until it’s absolutely narratively convenient, i.e. they’ve spewed out just enough exposition to move the plot along). The revelation that the man who has saved her life twice, and taught her about her destiny and heritage is also one of the men who took that heritage away should not be something the character can simply shrug off. But the show wants to do some more comedy interactions between her and Janzo, so she does.

Then there’s the revelation that Gwynn is really Princess Rosmund. So as it goes, Calkussar stood by and allowed the rest of her family to be murdered, substituted his own daughter in her place to also be executed, then brought her up as his daughter so that at some unspecified point in the future, he could use her to start an uprising against the Prime Order. That’s…not a plan. That’s a collection of ideas that likely sounded good at 2am when you were sat round talking about wanting to get concepts of destiny and honour and sacrifice in there, but in the cold light of editorial day, it should have got a lot of work.

Nonetheless, having assured herself that all the people who murdered her village are dead, Talon is now happy to go on a quest for something called the Book of Names, and by pure chance, not only can Janzo happen to read the dead language that will allow her to determine what this is and where it might be, but other people could also do with her having it, because as it turns out there’s another prophecy the Smith just had time to tell her about which, on reflection seems entirely contradictory to the first prophecy he insisted she fulfil… and so it goes on.

And there’s also Dred, riding along, doing evil stuff, ordering murders and apparently unable to do things himself that he needs doing for no apparent reason I can discern. So there’s that.

Oh and there’s also a part where Garret does a thing which I had jokingly said out loud to myself a minute before he should do because it was so ludicrous. So apparently the show has at the very least dragged me down to its own level of logic. May the gods have mercy on me.

Verdict: Not nearly as epic as it seems to believe it is, and still taking itself way too seriously to even be entertainingly funny. If this gets a second season, I will be amazed. 2/10

Greg D. Smith