Peter Viney's Blog

Based on the books by Diana Gabaldon
Developed by Ronald D. Moore

SEE ALSO “OUTLANDER” for Series 1 to V.

MAJOR CHARACTERS

Catriona Balfe- Claire Randall aka Mistress Fraser
Sam Heughan – Jamie Fraser
Richard Rankin – Roger Wakefield, Claire’s son-in-law
Sophia Skelton – Brianna ‘Bree’ Randall, Claire’s daughter
John Bell – Ian Fraser Murray
Cesar Domboy – Claudel ‘Fergus’ Fraser
Lauren Lyle – Marsali
Caitlin O’Ryan – Lizzie
Mark Lewis Jones – Tom Christie
Jessica Reynolds – Malva Christie
Alexander Vlahos – Allan Christie
Chris Larkin – Richard Brown
Glen Gould – Chief Bird
Hugh Ross – Mr Bug
Sarah Collier- Mrs Bug
David Berry- Lord John Grey
Paul Gorman – both the Beardsley twins
Braeden Clarke – Kahereton
Morgan Holmstrom – Wahionhaweh, Ian’s wife

This one was switched from Amazon Prime to Starzplay. We have Amazon, Netflix, DisneyPlus, now we’re expected to add Starzplay, Paramount. Too many subscriptions for us, so we waited for the Blu-ray. At least then you can watch it when the subscription doubles or they go offline. We also have a friend desperate to see it.

Let’s avoid too many plot spoilers. I’ll give the gist but avoid the key punch lines / ends of situations. It has eight episodes rather than 16 (series one) or 12-13 (Series 2 – 5). This was due to a combination of Catriona Balfe’s real life pregnancy and the pandemic. Series VII will be a full sixteen.

If you haven’t seen it, start at Series One. For those who don’t want to, the basis is Claire (Catriona Balfe), a nurse, travels back from the 1940s to the early 1740s after stepping between some standing stones in Scotland. (This may be why they’ve fenced off Stonehenge). She meets and falls in love with Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). See the main OUTLANDER 1-5 article (LINKED). After many adventures, and Claire going back to modern USA for many years where she becomes a doctor, we get to America in the 1770s, just before the revolution, where they are joined by Bree, their daughter, and her historian husband Roger, both from the 20th century.

WARNING: It’s highly addictive viewing,. Many people rewatch it several times. we were strict at one episode a night for episodes 1 to 6, but we had to watch both 7 and 8 in one evening. The story was too tense by then to wait a day.

The history is very carefully realised on screen.

ROUGH PLOT OF SERIES 6

The Frasers now have completed their fine house in North Carolina.

We start with a flashback to Jamie in Ardsmuir Prison a few years after Culloden. Jamie’s the leader of the Catholic Highlanders. Tom Christie leads the Protestant / Puritan group of prisoners – who had also fought on the Scottish side (though many Protestants fought with the English against the Highland rebellion). Tom and Jamie were enemies who reluctantly had to work together (there are some references to becoming Freemasons, which never get developed).

Tom Christie turns up over twenty years later, in “now” (1775?) in Fraser’s Ridge, taking the offered land grant with a band of his Puritan followers. Tom had had his wife burned as a witch and has a sexy daughter, Malva and a stroppy son, Allan.  

Allan is played by Alexander Vlahos who had a lead role as the Duke of Orleans in Versailles. Indications are that he’s booked for Series VII, so this is a low key entry to a major role. After Versailles he’s very used to performing on beds without clothes, though he doesn’t get to display the talent in this series. 

Reluctantly, Jamie welcomes them, and they start building a church, as you do before you build a house.

We’re on the cusp of the American War of Independence. Claire, Bree and Roger, all being from the 20^th century, know it’s coming. Jamie’s being pushed to support the Crown and declines to become an Indian Agent.

The odious Richard Brown, brother of Lionel, who led the gang rape in Season 5, has formed a vigilante Committee for Public Safety and has applied to become the Indian Agent. Jamie realizes that he must take the job to fend Brown off, and meets the Cherokee with Ian. This will lead on to a major thread. Ian recalls his years with the Mohawks and we flash back to his marriage to a Mohawk.

After two miscarriages, that fails and the Mohawk turn him out. in the Cherokee camp, Ian meets the visiting Kahereton, the Mohawk man who had then married his former wife. Trouble. Then Claire reveals foreknowledge on the fate of the Cherokee right up to the Trail of Tears. Inexplicably they decide to tell the Cherokee Chief Bird about it (I wouldn’t have done) and supply him with muskets. By Culloden they’d worked out that time travel can affect individuals, but there are too many threads leading to major events, so you can’t change them.

Back at Fraser’s Ridge, tension builds. Fergus has become a drunk, what with being in charge of the whisky still, ignoring Marsali, his wife and child. Fergus is attracted to the young widow, Lizzie. He’s not the only one either. Marsali is about to give birth.

Claire’s doctoring has led to developing her own supply of ether. She’s also treating an old lady with cannabis flowers smoked in a pipe.

When Marsali gives birth, Fergus is horrified, because the child is unusual. Strangely, both disappear from the last couple of episodes and are running a print shop elsewhere.

Malva, defying her Puritan dad, wants to learn medicine from Claire. Tom has need of an operation on his hand and Claire performs it in spite of Tom’s misgivings … afflictions are God-given, you see. Claire is getting addicted to ether and under its influence keeps seeing the ghost of Lionel Brown (thus giving the actor another series). She should have self-prescribed the cannabis flowers instead, but they didn’t follow that up ether either. There is a case of amoebic dysentery that spreads and devastates the area. Clair treats people and falls ill herself, though NOT with dysentery as they might have interfered with the bonking scenes. She hallucinates.

Roger has been recruited by Tom Christie to say a few prayers at a funeral (good side story there) and it inspires Roger to recall his dad as a minister in modern Scotland and he decides to go and get ordained, taking Bree along. Roger and Bree, being the other time travellers from the 20^th century discuss the impending events frequently.

Malva is a sexy young girl. Roger catches her at it in the church … the empty church, I hasten to add. Then Ian gets off with her briefly. In a key scene Malva watches one of the several Jamie / Claire sex sessions surreptitiously, thus seeing details of Jamie’s intimate scars and marks or possibly the size and shape of his appendage (Is this why he needs a mid-calf length kilt?).

Malva gets pregnant and accuses Jamie, noting his intimate markings when she admits all in church. The Christie Christians are outraged. She then tells them about Claire and the ether (dying and coming back to life, as they think of it) which means that yet again Claire is accused of witchcraft.

Malva is found … argh plot spoilers … but OK, dead, just near the house. Claire does a Caesarean with a penknife, but the baby dies. The Christie Christians become convinced that Claire murdered Malva from jealousy.

Meanwhile, the rescued Beardsley twins are involved in a triad and the pregnant girl loves both equally and arranges to marry them ‘by handfast’ separately. There’s a lot of pregnancy in this series. That comes from all the bonking in the earlier series.

Back comes Richard Brown and his men who lay siege to the house. They want to take Claire to Salisbury (I assume not the one in Wiltshire) to be tried for murder. Jamie says he will go with her under Tom Christie’s offered protection. The judge has left Salisbury, and they must trek on to Wilmington, merely another ten days on the road.  They get separated. The ending is a dramatic cliff hanger.

COMMENTS

No one goes through the standing stones to time travel this season. There is only one flash forward to the 20^th century, when Claire remembers a diner, and that is a few seconds only.

There are two substantial flashbacks … Jamie and Tom Christie in Ardsmuir Prison, and Ian living among the Mohawks.

There is a “significant” piece. Claire hears a man, a prisoner in Wilmington, singing the tune of Colonel Bogey (aka Hitler has only got one ball) famed for its Bridge Over The River Kwai sequence. It was composed in 1914. Not only that, but the credits to episode 5  roll to an instrumental reprise of the tune. This will become important in Series VII, I’m sure. We have met another time traveller. 

This is so noteworthy that it was the first thing that came up when I typed ‘Colonel Bogey Out…’ into Google. So, Newsweek (that’s how important Outlander is)  informs us that he looks like Wendigo Donner, who had kidnapped Claire in Season Five:

Wendigo was a part of the “Montauk Five,” a group of five men and Native American activists who traveled back from 1968 to the 18th century to persuade Native American tribes to ally with the British in the war to change the course of history. Desperate to return to their present-day, Bree (Sophie Skelton) explained they needed to have a gemstone to travel through time.

Newsweek

I didn’t remember that at all. Claire was robbed in Wilmington and lost a gemstone. She heard the tune in Wilmington. She’s in Wilmington as the final credits role on the series. The care in the story is indicated because earlier in the episode, Roger has been singing a modern song to their child.

Sex. The bonking count is less. Claire’s surgical operation blood-letting is a bit less, for the squeamish.  No one gets raped in series VI. While this is a relief, episode 8 is greatly marred by two long bonks (Bree / Roger and yet again Claire / Jamie) when we are desperate to know what’s happening on the trek to Wilmington with the evil Browns, so that the double bonk fest is an EXTREMELY annoying distraction. Been there, seen it so many times over the six series.

In an online video trailer, made post series VI, Jessica Reynolds who plays Malva is talking about Series VII. This means that as she’s dead in Series VI, there will be major flashbacks revealing how she got up the spout / a bun in the oven and killed etc when we get to Series VII. Similarly Alexander Vlahos is in the trailer, so is going to be a major character in Series VII. We noted that he won’t let anyone else carry the newborn baby’s coffin. Enough said. I have my theory.