Wherein of course he comes back.
Episode seven brings to a close the first phase of the Fraserās failed time-travel experiment, a project Iām content to call āCullodegeddonā. Despite Claireās and Jamieās best and most unscrupulous efforts, history is still drawing them inexorably towards the doomed battle. We know how this story ends, not just because history demands that it ends this way, but because weāve already seen a distraught and defeated Claire lament her fate ā and all their fates ā in post-disappearance Inverness.
Now, however, having failed to stop the Jacobite rebellion by cutting off its funding, Claire and Jamie intend to defeat the curse of Culloden by winning the bloody thing ā or at least trying their damnedest.
Iām watching the show along with my partner now, having caught up with her at the fifth episode of this season. Long-term relationships are amazing things, arenāt they? A good union never loses the capacity to surprise you. For instance, after all these years of near Olympic-level arguing, this week Outlander allowed us to add āthe mechanics of time travelā to the long list of things weāve almost killed each other over.
āDonāt they realise that time is a closed loop and any effort to change the future is essentially futile?ā I asked, though perhaps not as eloquently as Iām phrasing it now.
āAre you stupid?ā raged my partner. āThe future ā i.e. 1940s Inverness ā is already in Claireās past, so whatever they do in their current present canāt change it, although thatās not to say that they wonāt create an entirely different future.ā
āYou mean an alternate time-line, like in Back to the Future 2 when Biff stole the Almanac as an old man and gave it to his younger self in 1955, who used it to get super rich and transform himself into a somehow slightly-less unpalatable version of Donald Trump?ā
āYeah, like that.ā
āPreposterous.ā
āIs not!ā
āIs!ā
āIs not!ā
āStar Trek rules apply.ā
āDO NOT!ā
āDO TOO!ā
āDONāT!ā
āDO!ā
āYOUāRE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER!ā
āā¦YOU BLOODY WELL TAKE THAT BACK!ā
Ronald D Moore
Although Outlander is based upon the books of Diana Gabaldon, conversations like this one remind me that sci-fi supremo Ronald D Moore is the man in the captainās chair. Having cut his teeth on Star Treks The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, and the modern-day reboot of Battlestar Galactica, heās the perfect choice to helm a show as otherworldly and ceaselessly peripatetic as Outlander.
Ronās resume speaks for itself. Heās spent a career exploring the ins and outs of time travel; juggling large casts; telling grounded stories in fantastical settings; chronicling the sagas of weary protagonists who just want to go home (or find a new home), and pinging, plucking and unpicking the intricately inter-woven web of science and spirituality. Heās dealt with the perils of power and command, the interlocking of politics and religiosity, factional in-fighting, uprisings, rebellions, stretched loyalties, and infinitely more shades of grey than fifty.
Deep Space 9
Tonally, Outlander shares Deep Space Nineās sense of humour, its belief in the strength and sanctity of the family unit (especially those families we construct from the friends and misfits around us) and a cautious optimism about the future. With Battlestar Galactica, it shares a grim and weary aura of danger and foreboding, a nihilistic streak a mile wide, and a sense that one must surrender to the journey, the chase, the pilgrimage, even if the destination isnāt always known (and sometimes especially when it is). With both shows it shares a sense of paranoia. Whom can we trust? Are the people around us who they say they are? Are we who we say we are? And, most strikingly, it shares a sense of prophecy and Godhood.
(Plus, is it just me who thinks of Klingons every time somebody says Lady Broch Tuarach? I keep expecting Claire to violently head-butt everyone to whom sheās introduced.)
In Deep Space Nine, Captain Benjamin Sisko was occasionally forced to lean into his (unasked for and unwanted) role as prophet/Emissary of the Bajoran people. Heād don the spiritual guise for utilitarian reasons or to dodge danger, and only when he felt there was no other option open to him. In a similar fashion, Claire occasionally throws on the invisible outer-wear of the white witch, mostly to save her life or the lives of those around her, but sometimes just to put the shits up someone for a laugh.
The scene in which the King of France compels Claire to embrace her role as La Dame Blanche and preside over the fates of diminutive dispenser Monsieur Raymond and wig-wearing bad-boy the Comte (or Diet Randall, as I like to call him) is tense and thrilling to watch. Catriona does sterling work here, in what comes over like a successful audition for Game of Thrones (hey, theyāre casting the prequel soon: you never know).
The King wants Claire to use her witchy powers to divine whether or not the two gentlemen have been dabbling in outlawed black magic, with the guilty party, or parties, doomed to be dragged off by the resident executioner, who is literally standing next to them. I have absolutely no doubt that ITV will turn this into a game show at some point after Brexit.
This is a great test of Claireās moral character, and itās fitting that, despite both her occasional impulsivity and entirely warranted hatred of the Comte, she comes up with a plan intended to save all of their lives. Her plan is to make both men sick with a doctored drink, hoping to prove their essential purity and thus innocence, and at the same time satisfy the Kingās love of theatrics.
Unfortunately, Claire yet again finds herself deceived by a mystical apothecary with whom sheās struck up a friendship. Monsieur Raymond sneaks some fatal poison into the Comteās drink (beautiful touch and brilliant call-back with the whole necklace thing there, Iāve got to say) and itās bye-bye for this seasonās big bad. For any of you who do watch Game of Thrones, this wonāt be the first time youāve witnessed a man of noble birth choking to death on a drink thatās been poisoned by an angry little guy.
Sorry, Comte, my fiendish friend. You had to go. You were getting too close to the truth of Jamieās highway-man high-jinks, and sooner or later ā after losing most if not all of your money to yet another small-pox scandal ā you were bound to snap and kill the Frasers, and we couldnāt have that. Plus, thereās only room for one irredeemable rogue in this show.
Thatās right.
Black Jackās back, baby.
The last time Claire and Jamie encountered Captain Randall was in a dark, dingy prison cell. This time around they meet him in the vast, immaculately-kept gardens of Versaille, surrounded by opulent explosions of bloom and colour under an endless blue sky. The contrast couldnāt be any starker. Black Jack is here both to convince his old pal the Duke of Sandringham to go easy on his brother (whom I was amazed to discover wasnāt Tobias Menziesā actual, real-life brother) and to fulfil his destiny as impregnator of Mary Hawkins (though he doesnāt know it yet and, mercifully, neither does she, the poor lamb).
Itās always nice to see the Duke of Sandringham, a sort of Boris Johnson for the 18th Century. On the surface heās a foppish, bumbling buffoon, full of praise, puffery and pointed remarks, an ideal choice to guest present Have I Got News For You, but thereā¦ just below the surface, just behind the mask, stands a cold and calculating figure, more ruthless and cunning than those who dismiss him with a snarky chuckle give him proper credit for. Itās also nice to see Captain Randall, if only because his presence means a whole bag of spanners in the works.
Jamie canāt kill him. Not yet. Not out in the open, in any case, as itās a capital offence to draw your weapon in the presence of the King (something that probably applies in a euphemistic sense, too). Itās also an offence to duel someone to the death, but thatās exactly the gauntlet that Jamie throws down to Black Jack. He accepts, but Claire certainly doesnāt.
I donāt know why Jamie doesnāt get this basic principle: keeping Black Jack alive long enough to sire a child with Mary Hawkins isnāt just about showing deference to Frank. Itās about preserving the time-line so that Claire will be in Inverness to touch the standing stones of Craigh na Dun in the first place. Quite simply, if thereās no Frank, then thereās no Claire and Jamie.
āFor Christās sake, Jamie Andrew, Claire has already touched the stones, so the decision to save Frank isnāt predicated upon any regard for their own future or present as aā¦ā
āARE YOU STILL GOING ON ABOUT THIS?ā
āIāLL GO ON ABOUT IT UNTIL IT SINKS IN!ā
āWHY DONāT YOU PULL YOUR HAIR OUT OF THE PLUGHOLES?ā
āWHY DONāT YOU PUT THE BUTTER BACK IN THE FRIDGE, YOU WASTEFUL IMBECILE?ā
āI WAS LYING WHEN I SAID I LIKED THAT DRESS!!ā
Just when you think that Black Jack Randall has scraped the very bottom of the barrel, he turns up with the drill machine from some 1960s sci-fi movie, punctures the bottom of the barrel and then proceeds to tunnel his way into the molten core of the earth, through to the other side of the planet, and on, out into the infinite void of space, drilling through suns and planets by the million-load on his merciless voyage through a suddenly helpless universe. Yes, thatās right. This run of episodes reveals that Black Jack has a predilection for raping children.
Tobias Menzies must have opened his scripts for this run of episodes and said, āOh thank you VERY much. What are you going to have me doing in next weekās script? Raping an entire family and then forcing their children to execute the family dog? And then raping it, too?ā
How cruel of Outlander to introduce a quirky, cheeky, winsome little character like Fergus, an adorable slice of comic relief, and then within the space of four episodes subject him to life-long psycho-sexual trauma. What is this, Eastenders? A Mike Leigh film?
In any case, Fergus could never be as unlucky as our time-crossed lovers. The pairings of Romeo and Juliet, Heloise and Abelard, and Laurel and Hardy combined have got nothing on Claire and Jamie in the disaster-stakes. Rape, murder, peril, pursuit, miscarriage, death, loss, and thatās only within the first fragile year of their union.
I suppose, though, that a life lived without incident is a privilege thatās always been extended to the richer and more powerful among us, whatever the era. The heartache and misery at the core of Jamieās and Claireās relationship is perhaps something of a daily occurrence for people in poverty the world over, even now in 2018. Outlander, then, is at root a story about what happens when two relatively privileged people ā one a well-to-do lady of good breeding, the other an estate-owning Lord ā are forced through cruel circumstance to live the lives of fugitives, peasants and vagabonds.
To be fair, the bulk of their misfortunes spring directly from the evil agency of Black Jack Randall, whose rape of young Fergus in this clutch of episodes leads Jamie to break his vow to Claire, duel with Black Jack (he stabs him in the cock! What hope for Frank now?), and land himself in prison. And, of course, Black Jackās behaviour indirectly brings about the loss of the coupleās unborn child.
Whatever your station in life, losing a baby is among the most wretched and harrowing things you can experience as a human being, magnified a million-fold for the mother whoās carried that incipient life in her belly: felt it wriggle and tickle and grow. If Sam Heughan deserved plaudits for his brave and visceral performance in the previous yearās āTo Ransom a Manās Soulā then Caitriona Balfe deserves equal credit here for her unflinching, haunting, honest and heart-breaking evocation of a woman locked in the grief, anguish and turmoil of miscarriage. I welled up when Claire was cradling her still-born child. And, irreligious though I am, Mother Hildegardeās defiance of protocol to baptise Claireās baby so the little one could have a proper burial, was incredibly touching. The aftermath: her discovery of Jamieās real reasons for breaking his vow, how she deals with Fergusās guilt and shame, and how she expresses the full gamut of her feelings to Jamie, including her hatred, is all deliciously (if uncomfortably) rich, and earnest, and raw.
Though the ordeal clearly destroyed pieces of Claireās soul, some of which might never grow back, sheās too strong a woman to be felled by even this most unspeakable of tragedies. She allows herself to submit to the Kingās sexual advances in order to secure Jamieās freedom from the Bastille. The Kingās performance might very well be what we Scots would term ātwo pumps and a squirtā, but itās a horrible liberty for any man to take, regardless of how big his wig or his wallet is. I think, though, that after losing Faith (they probably shouldnāt call their next kid āHopeā), Claire was numb to the Kingās fumbles. Her body was a husk, an empty vessel. What more damage could one lousy little prick possibly inflict on the site of such sorrow and horror?
Kudos for the ālie back and think of Englandā line.
And so itās farewell France, toodle-pip Paris, au revoir you randy raconteurs and rapacious rapists, but dinnae fash, cause weāre awaā back tay the faitherland, ken? Back to Bonnie Scotland and its limping lairds, sleekit soldiers and bekilted cuā¦ cuā¦ stodiansā¦ ofā¦ honour. Alliteration can sure be dangerous sometimes.
I shall miss the pomp and ceremony of the French court, and the many flouncing ponces of Paris. Iāll miss how all the tough guys talk like Niles Crane from Frasier. Iāll miss seeing Claire dressed like a cross between Mary Poppins and Missy from Doctor Who, with big, poofed out dresses that look like they were designed to smuggle dwarves across enemy lines. And Iāll miss Jamieās trademark Wee Wullie Winkie dressing gown.
Look out, heelands, here we come.
A few final disjointedĀ thoughts:
- I think the Duke of Sandringham speaks for us all when he sums him up Bonnie Prince Charlie thusly: āHeās an utter arse.ā Also, Iāve finally worked out who BPC sounds like: the aliens from Galaxy Quest.
- I really enjoyed how Murtagh responded to learning the full truth of Claireās origins: by punching Jamie in the face. Not because he didnāt believe the story, because he did, but because JamieĀ hadnāt trusted him or loved him enough to be honest with him from the start. HowĀ classically masculine. No festering grudges, no enduring rancour, just THWACK. Now, letās go get breakfast.
- Future-child, eh? Interesting.
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Why I want to binge-watch Outlander
Jamieās Outlander Binge ā Season 1, Eps 1 ā 4
Jamieās Outlander Binge ā Season 1, Eps 5 ā 8
Jamieās Outlander Binge ā Season 1, Eps 9 ā 12
Jamieās Outlander Binge ā Season 1, Eps 13 ā 16
