With the Winnipeg in need of repairs, Elida and Isaac must gather together parts while Amae gets on with the work. But Wix has dangers of its own. Lazaro tests the limits of his new found power.

For a show that mostly relies on humour with its tongue shoved very firmly in its cheek, Vagrant Queen is fairly serious this week, committing to the rift between Elida and Isaac at the discovery of his betrayal and drawing it out to the end credits and beyond. In fairness, Isaac did lie to Elida and make her trust him (and risk and lose lives to rescue him when it turned out he didn’t really need rescuing) so ‘sorry’ was never really going to cut it.

Still, stranded on Wix with Lazaro long since gone, they need to work (grudgingly) together to gather together the parts scattered across the planet’s surface to fix their ship and get out of there. Only problem is, the native fauna of the planet are dangerous and not all that interested in helping, and as per usual, nobody was paying proper attention to Winnie-B’s safety briefing.

What that means from the point of view of our heroes is most of the episode spent getting out of another set of perilous circumstances on an alien planet. It also means that Isaac gets the chance to prove that for all that he did lie to her, he really does care about Elida, and is genuinely sorry for his part in her current misery. Also, he’s a pretty decent guy. We also see a softening of Amae’s attitude towards him, which is perhaps partly because she has always been the empathetic heart of the show and partly because knowing why he did what he did reassures her that he’s definitely not a rival for Elida’s affections.

Meanwhile, Lazaro turns out to have been played absolutely perfectly from the start. Because nothing is scarier than a completely over the top, camp as hell villain who also happens to have control of the ultimate power. That shiny new widget around his neck gives him the power to control anyone’s mind and he starts testing it out in fairly predictably awful ways on his own crew before making his way back to Arriopa to have it out with the Council of Admirals. As amusing as Lazaro may have been when he was just a simple frustrated evil middle manager with incompetent henchmen, he’s absolutely terrifying as the same guy but with the ability to immediately do whatever he wants to whoever he feels like.

As the episode draws to a close, a massive decision by Elida may signal the end of our band of friends, but there may be a little bump in the road that puts things on hold in that regard.

Verdict: Thoughtful and scary but still with its signature humour running underneath it all. Just keeps getting better. 9/10

Greg D. Smith