Elida is forcefully confronted once again by her past. Isaac and Amae bond as they share a tight spot of danger.

It’s honestly difficult to know exactly how seriously Vagrant Queen wants to be taken from scene to scene, and against all odds, that’s kind of part of the show’s charm. Our heroes are on the run from very real threats and dealing with dangerous stuff at every turn, but things like last week’s karaoke battle for life tend to feel like all it really wants to do is take the piss out of the very tropes it mostly tends to be sticking to.

That said, here we are for episode 3 which is even more gloriously confused than the previous two instalments. Stopping off for fuel, the gang find themselves hijacked (again) by the guys who want to restore Elida to her rightful throne, and then they get taken to the secret base of the…Royalist Rebellion, I guess, where things go a little bit odd.

Although Elida still has no interest in taking up her title again, she does want to save her mother, and that much at least gives her common cause with her kidnappers-turned-allies. Agreeing to help them, but only if it’s done her way, she ends up taking former attendant Hath on a little side quest which is brief, serves little real purpose but does at least get to have some fun.

This leaves Isaac and Amae to get into trouble of their own, foraging for parts and ending up surrounded by a horde of creatures with no apparent means of escape until they enlist the unexpected help of sardonic new member of the team Winnie, the robot that Elida recovered for Amae last time out. Here the writers seem most determined to be almost meta, arranging a series of visual gags around just how jerky and slow their fairly cheap robot prop is. They’re getting away with it, for now.

It all fizzes along with much the same energy as previous episodes, by turns serious (if ludicrous) space opera and piss-taking nonsense set against a neon-bright backdrop. But damn it, it does work. It’s daft, but it’s so well aware of that daftness it’s able to use it well. I only hope that they resolve the whole ‘Queen’ bit quick and then just let the writers focus on Elida, Isaac, Amae and Winnie having adventures in space, because that’s where all the real fun is.

Verdict: Big, bold and daft as a brush. Its charms have yet to fade. 8/10

Greg D. Smith