The first episode of The CW’s new fantasy series The Outpost (premiering Tuesday, July 10 at 9PM) opens with the story already in progress, seemingly doing away with the requisite origin for a protagonist on a quest in a mystical, mythical world. But that somewhat unconventional beginning is soon undermined by a lengthy flashback sequence, and the rest of the episode (the only one made available for review) indulges in just about every fantasy cliché there is, all put together on what looks like a budget maybe a thousandth of what HBO spends on Game of Thrones.

Of course Talon (Jessica Green) is on a quest, and of course she’s the last survivor of an ancient race, and of course she has secret abilities that may indicate that she’s some sort of, let’s say, chosen one. She’s introduced in the kind of rowdy tavern that exists alongside every road in every fantasy setting, where she’s soon thrust into the middle of a massive fight, all while trying to glean information from a tattoo artist who may be able to tell her who killed her family and all the other Blackbloods, who are basically just elves whose ears have two pointy bits instead of just one.

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In the midst of the melee, the tattooist lets Talon know that he gave seven men the distinctive mark that she noticed on her clan’s killers, and he’s in the process of naming them (he gets to two) when he’s killed mid-sentence by an arrow through the heart, like something out of a Monty Python sketch. Fleeing from her pursuers, Talon ventures across a forbidden wasteland to the title location, which looks like a generic-brand Winterfell and where she encounters a literal knight in shining armor, the handsome Captain Garrett Spears (Jake Stormoen), with whom she exchanges many smoldering looks.

To get to the Outpost, Talon must fight off some bargain-basement versions of White Walkers and escape a horde of zombies called “plaguelings,” all in an effort to evade soldiers from the Prime Order—ensuring that The Outpost has ripped off multiple popular genre properties before its heroine even gets to the show’s primary location. Once there, Talon sets up shop in yet another rowdy tavern, where she conveniently comes across one of the men she’s been searching for.

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The entire plot of the first episode is a series of clichés and contrivances, like a poorly constructed Dungeons & Dragons adventure, brought to life, with the production values (and chintzy faux-Celtic soundtrack) of a Renaissance fair. “Sounds like a name a 14-year-old chose,” Talon scoffs at Garrett when he reveals that he named himself Spears upon first enlisting as a member of the Night’s Watch (er, Covenant), and that dismissal could apply to every awkwardly named character, organization and location in this laughable show, which takes itself far too seriously to have any campy entertainment value.

Although the producers (including executive producer Dean Devlin) clearly want to evoke Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or other fantasy classics, The Outpost more closely resembles one of the low-budget syndicated fantasy dramas of the ’90s, stuff like BeastMaster or Conan the Adventurer that aired on local stations on Saturday afternoons when audiences were dozing on their couches. Creators Jason Faller and Kynan Griffin previously worked on numerous low-budget fantasy movies largely funded via Kickstarter, and this is barely a step above that.

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The sets are flimsy, the characters are generic, the costumes look like they came from a high school drama club’s storage room, and the acting is passable at best. The kid actors in Talon’s extended flashback are especially painful to watch, with their stilted delivery of lines in some made-up Blackblood language that sounds like it was created by actual kids.

Green tries hard to give Talon some layers, with her badass attitude hiding deep trauma, but the character is just a collection of stock fantasy-hero elements, and the introduction of a potential love triangle toward the end of the episode, including a clumsy reveal of Talon’s rival for Garrett’s affections, is especially tiresome. The episode ends with a character scrawling out a message in his own blood as he lays dying, but even that isn’t enough to drum up even the slightest interest in tuning in again.

There was a time when audiences (and especially genre fans) would be so starved for something to watch during the summer that a cheapo production like this would at least be a welcome alternative to reruns and game shows, but with no shortage of fantasy and sci-fi shows on TV throughout the year (if anything, there are too many of them to keep track of), it’s hard to imagine The Outpost qualifying as even background viewing for fantasy fans. A third or fourth run-through of Game of Thrones in its entirety (or even a marathon of YouTube clips from BeastMaster or Conan the Adventurer) would be vastly preferable to sitting through even one episode of The Outpost.