Outlander
Based on the books by Diana Gabaldon
Developed by Ronald D. Moore
Series I to V
MAJOR CHARACTERS
Catriona Balfe- Claire Randall
Sam Heughan – Jamie Fraser
Tobias Menzies – Frank Randall (season 1-4) Claire’s 20th century husband / Captain Black Jack Randall (series 1-3) Frank’s 18th century ancestor
Richard Rankin – Roger Wakefield (seasons 2 onward)
Sophia Skelton – Brianna ‘Bree’ Randall (season 2 onward), Claire’s daughter
WITH
Graham McTavish – Dougal McKenzie (seasons 1, 2)
Duncan Lacroix – Murtagh Fitzgibbon (series 1-5), Jamie’s godfather
Graham McTavish – Dougal McKenzie (seasons 1-2)
Andrew Gower- Charles Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie, seasons 2-3)
David Berry – Lord John Grey (season 3 onward)
John Bell – Ian Fraser Murray (season 3 onward)
Cesar Domboy – Claudel ‘Fergus’ Fraser (season 3 onward)
Edward Speleers – Stephen Bonnet (seasons 4-5)
Maria Doyle Kennedy- Jocasta McKenzie Cameron, Jamie’s aunt (season 4 onward)
Colin McFarlane- Ulysses, Jocasta’s manservant (season 4 onward)
Ned Dennehy – Lionel Brown (season 5)
CAMEOS
Frances de la Tour – Mother Hildegarde (series 2)
Simon Callow – Duke of Sandringham (series 1-2)
It’s not a review but another set of random thoughts on the series. It is addictive, and yes, over several months, we have ploughed through 67 episodes covering the five series. We only watched series one intensively. Mostly we watched one a night, hardly ever two. Often it was a case of ‘Is there a good film on Netflix?’ ‘Is there a series we’re watching on BBC iPlayer?’ No? We’ll watch Outlander.
Season 6 is due in March 2022 (8 episodes) and Season 7 (16 episodes) has been commissioned.
It started in 2014, though we only discovered it this year (2021).
The Skye Boat Song with new words opens every episode. You can get tired of it.
THERE ARE PLOT SPOILERS, but then there’s 67 hours of plot so they leave plenty to find new.
Thee are 1311 photos from the series on IMDB.
Series 1
The major plus is the basic premise of time travel. Claire was a World War Two nurse, who marries Frank Randall, who is some sort of MI5 type. They travel to Scotland and research his ancestors. Ancestry.com has nothing on this. Claire manages to walk through a time portal in some mystic stones (as one does) and finds herself in 1743. Accept it, it’s what happens.
Back in 1743 her husband’s ancestor turns out to be a notorious English redcoat (not in the Butlins sense) Captain Black Jack Randall. Both roles are played by Tobias Menzies. She is torn between the image of her husband from 1946 and his evil ancestor in 1743.
She falls in with Highlander Jacobites in sturdy murkily coloured kilts, who rescue her from rapacious redcoats led by Captain Jack, and falls in love with Jamie Fraser and they will eventually marry. The Jacobites are a dour and violent lot living in draughty and crumbling castles. They speak Gaelic with subtitles, and Jamie will continue to revert to sentences in Gaelic through the five series. She uses her medical expertise to become a healer. Of course she knows about the future and the Battle of Culloden (1745) followed by the Highland clearances, and works to prevent it.
Claire meets another time traveller, Geillis, who has set herself up as a wise woman. Geillis has come from twenty years later than Claire in the hippy era. Laoghaire, a servant who fancies Jamie, accuses them of witchcraft and both are sentenced to burn at the stake. They escape.
The Highlands in 1743 was a den of rapists and murderers. This is not anti-Scots as England, France, the Caribbean and America will turn out to be just the same in later series. There is a telling scene in Series 5, the last episode where the foul Lionel Brown tells Claire that he knows she’s different and from somewhere else ‘Because normal women are afraid of men.’ With good reason. In every series at least one major character gets raped at least once.
At the end of this one, Jamie gets horrifically tortured and raped by her husband’s ancestor, Jack Randall. This is at the end of series one, and we vowed to watch no more as the sadism was so extensive that we decided the director was a sick and sadistic bastard who went way over the top. It was gratuitous and far longer than the story needed it to be … it occupied most of an episode. There is a lot of gore throughout the series, as Claire conducts surgery frequently, and there are battles and fights, but those are relatively short. This was extended.
We remained held by the original premise of a woman from 1946 living in 1743 and the large degree of historical authenticity. For example, tartans are not uniform and had no clan affiliation. That was an invention of Sir Walter Scott for King George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in the 1820s. Kilts were mid-calf or longer, not a fetching just below the knee.
In the end, Claire and Jamie set off for France. She is pregnant.
Series 2
We left it a couple of weeks before deciding we would try series 2. This is the sumptuous one with a fortune spent on costumes and sets. It’s also interesting as history. Claire and Jamie are out to stop the Jacobite Rebellion. They know Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie is seeking finance for the invasion from King Louis XV. Jamie has to get in his confidence. This is the real Charlie, not the one on the lids of tins of shortbread, swathed in the Royal Stuart tartan invented a hundred years later. This is the one who lives in Rome, speaks French before English, knows not a word of Gaelic (Gaelic appears a lot in series, so perhaps ‘knows not a grunt of Gaelic’). He has annoying repetitive vocal mannerisms, and is terminally wet but pompous. He has never been to Scotland. It crushes many myths with reality. The Jacobite Rebellion and Culloden had nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Scottish independence.’ Charlie’s aim was to take the British throne with a Catholic rebellion. The Old Catholic Highlanders were merely a tool, or pawn in the game.
The machinations revolve around The Duke of Sandringham (Simon Fallow) who may or may not be supporting the Jacobites.
In series two and three, they reference ‘The British army’ at which I sat up and thought, ‘No! The ENGLISH army,’ but their research was correct. Lowland Protestant Scots were in the ‘British’ army fighting the Catholic Highlanders.
In Paris, Claire volunteers to work nursing at a hospice, and is looked after by the Mother Superior (played by the great Frances de la Tour). She also has to submit to sex with Louis XV to save Jamie, which fortunately takes only a few seconds. These French lovers were not all they were cracked up to be. I’d count it as rape, but a friend got quite angry and said it was consensual. It would be a court case The Sun would enjoy reporting.
Ah, now we get into the “Back to the Future” / basic sci-fi time travel rules. Which we all already know. Jack Randall turns up in Paris as an attache at the British embassy. Jamie has to have revenge, but if he does and kills Jack, then surely Frank in 1946 will never have existed. So Jamie has to agree not to kill Jack until Jack has fathered a child, to which end, they try to marry him off with Mary Hawkins (who gets raped by aristocratic footpads, ensuring Frank’s line of ancestry, though because he is identical to Jack, we know who the footpad was). There is a duel and Jamie skewers Frank’s privates but does not kill him.
Claire and Jamie’s child dies at birth. They return to Scotland with a young French pickpocket (whose services they have employed). They name him Fergus and they adopt him.
There is a great deal of this sort of shot
The Jacobites win the Battle of Prestopans. They realize Culloden is inevitable and that you cannot change a major historical event, and Claire is pregnant again. This is not surprising in that Claire and Jamie do an inordinate amount of naked bonking through all five series. So Jamie wants Claire to go back to the safety of the 20th century. He has to stay with his clan and fight at Culloden even though he knows they will lose.
Time travel rule 2. The two worlds of 1743-5 and 1946-8 have been running parallel, so when she comes back, the same number of days have passed. Frank has been searching for her. They move to America where Frank has a university job.
(This is easily the best of the five series)
Series 3
Jamie has had his eventual revenge. He survives the battle of Culloden. In prison, the governor, Lord John Grey befriends him over chess. Jamie is freed as an indentured servant on an English estate. The aristocrat is unable to sire a child, and Jamie is manipulated into doing the work for him, having a son who he looks after, but does not tell the secret.
As they are in Boston, Claire enrols in medical school. She finds great misogyny and racism (her co-student is black).
She qualifies as a surgeon. Twenty years have passed in the 20th century. Brianna, Claire and Jamie’s daughter has been brought up by Frank. Frank has died. Claire and Brianna go back to Scotland, to the same rectory with bed and breakfast. The son of the vicar, Roger, is a historian. He finds notes indicating that Jamie survived Culloden.
Claire decides to return … it will be 1768. Remember time passes at the same rate in both time zones. Jamie is a printer in Edinburgh. He is married to her nemesis (who accused her of witchcraft back in 1742 or 1743) Laoghaire. They need to buy her off and seek treasure to do so.
Jamie’s nephew Ian is captured by pirates and taken off to the Caribbean. He has ended up there with the escaped Geillis who is a major witchy woman and who has designs on his body. They learn more about time portals.
They set off to return to Scoland, but are shipwrecked after yet another elaborate bonking session in a thunderstorm at sea (a brilliant storm scene). They land on the coast of Georgia.
Series 4
They go to North Carolina, where Jamie’s rich aunt Jocasta has a plantation. She’s blind and it’s a slave plantation.
Notably, Claire has brought her 20th century attitudes on many things … slavery, native-Americans, contraception, a woman’s right to choose. She is also a skilled surgeon. She writes a pseudonymous newspaper column advising on the rhythm method, and other factors in a local newspaper.
They find a skull and pendant and Claire sees that the skull has amalgam fillings. Another time traveller! There will be more.
They get a land grant to Fraser’s Ridge, where they encounter the local Cherokee and Claire ensures they speak rather than fight. The Cherokee have a problem with a bear which attacks Jamie. He kills it then discovers it was a Cherokee banished for rape. There you go, the Cherokee have a much better attitude to the crime than do the English, Scots, French and Americans.
Jamie is being promoted by the English colonisers, and finds his beloved godfather, Murtagh, is leading the rebel Regulators. Lord John visits with the son. He has always fancied Jamie.
Back (Forward?) in 1960s America, Roger flies to Boston to propose to Brianna. He has discovered a news item on Jamie and Claire’s death in the 18th century. Brianna goes through the time portal to warn them. Then Roger decides to follow. He ends up a prisoner of pirates led by Stephen Bonnett. Bonnett was saved from hanging by Jamie, then robbed the boat Claire was travelling on, stealing her wedding ring and murdering one of the party. After Roger and Brianna argue on their wedding night, Bonnett rapes her. She’s pregnant, but by whom?
She travels to Fraser’s Ridge. Her maid discovers the rape and beating and all assumes it was Roger. He turns up, is beaten and sold to some travelling Mohawk who were trading with the Cherokee. Ian sells Roger to the Mohawk. They have to go and rescue him, and Ian offers to take Roger’s place as a Mohawk slave.
Here’s a point. The Mohawk live weeks of travel away from the Cherokee. It’s hard to see why they got into the story at all, but I eventually realize it allows Ian to have the Mohican haircut in Series 5 when he returns. He’s reticent about what happened to him, but as Ian is a major character, I have my suspicions.
Roger and Brianna are reunited at Jocasta’s house. Then the Governor Tryon appoints Jamie as a militia officer … and instructs him to hunt and kill Murtagh. Just to complicate it, we find Murtagh and Jocasta have loved each other for decades.
Season 5
We’re back to the Culloden dilemma. It’s 1772 now and the American Revolution looms. For our actors as Jamie and Claire, a full thirty years have passed in the story (though only six years in their life as actors outside the series). They have to age up considerably as they will now be at least in their mid-fifties. Even so, Jamie continues to wonder whether Claire would like another child.
Claire has also managed to develop penicillin.
Aunt Jocasta has decided to make Brianna’s son the heir to her plantation. Stephen Bonnett will hear of this and try to reclaim the boy. Roger is still not sure who the father is.
Jamie is appointed a militia colonel and forced to wear the despised redcoat. He is also forced to hunt The Regulators, who are all Highlanders.
We have an interesting minor plot here. One of the settlers at Frasers Ridge reveals that he and his mute twin were bondservants … i.e. indentured servants. I have written about indentured servants. They were transported very minor offenders from Britain, whose punishment was indentured service in America, usually for a term of seven years. Basically, white slaves. Many Scots and Irish soldiers were transported in this way by the English. You could also be transported for poaching a rabbit. None of them would be serious criminals: they were hanged.
When the American Revolution began, transportation was stopped, because the English realized that all those who had been transported joined the American cause (as you would). They contemplated sending prisoners to Canada, but decided that those sent would encourage the Canadian colonies to join the American ones. They were kept in hulks, until the First Fleet started transportation to Australia instead.
Jamie and Claire set out to buy the twins freedom from the couple who own them, (Series V, episode 3) and this ranks with the last episodes of both Series one and five in being the most gratuitously violent. They find that the woman, Francis, has been subjecting her hateful husband to slow torture in retribution for his years of violence. He has had a stroke and cannot escape the torture. Francis gives birth, and it is apparent that the father was a black slave. She runs off leaving the baby with Claire. Jamie decides euthanasia by pistol is the merciful act upon the tortured husband.
At the Battle of Alemance, Jamies fights for the British, then has his life saved by Murtagh, who then gets shot by a redcoat. Roger was captured and hanged but survives but is traumatized.
There is a whole episode where Jamie nearly dies from a snakebite.
During this they have had to deal with the violent Brown brothers who run the settlement of Brownsville.
Roger and Brianna decide to return to the 70s taking their son.
Lionel Brown attacks Fraser’s Ridge and kidnaps Claire, and she is brutally gang raped while hallucinating the 1960s. Jamie gathers his men to rescue her. we have learned by now that donning kilt means SERIOUS retribution. The Browns get it. Jamie, in accordance with clan rules, delivers Lionel’s dead body back for burial. Lionel’s brother accepts that Jamie did what he had to do … but then threatens he will have to do the same.
The cast throughout is top grade. Catriona Balfe and Sam Heughan have been doing this for seven years, often in draughty kilts, or torn bodices, in every kind of weather, often immersed in water or lying in cold open country. All credit to them.
That’s all, folks. Series 6?
Peter Viney's Blog 
Leave a Reply