Outlander: "The Devil's Mark"

It is 18 April 2015, and time for another episode of Outlander.

Clare (Catriona Balfe) has hit every time traveller's worst nightmare: being arrested for witchcraft. Captured along with apothecary and suspected witch Geillis (Lotte Verbeek), she is interred in a gated pit until her trial can be assembled - a trial that will almost certainly end with being burned to death at the stake. Geillis hopes that Dougal (Graham McTavish) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) will save them. Clare knows that both men have been banished from Castle Leoch.

There is something inevitable about "The Devil's Mark". If you are going to throw a woman back in time from the 1940s to the 1740s, sooner or later the witch trial chapter is going to come along. It is simply too easy to include, and comes ready-to-wear with high drama and desperate situations. It is also, sadly, a handy excuse for the series to dive once again into it's raison d'être: violence towards women.

Outlander: "By the Pricking of my Thumbs"

It is 11 April 2015, and time for another episode of Outlander.

When Claire (Catriona Balfe) finds a harmful charm under her bed, she confronts a spiteful Laoghaire (Nell Hudson) - only to find the charm came from Geillis (Lotte Verbeek). Jamie (Sam Heughan) seeks the support of the Duke of Sandringham (Simon Callow) in ridding himself of Captain Randall. Dougal (Graham McTavish) is bereft with his wife unexpectedly dies.

It has been almost two years since I last watched an episode of Outlander; not by any specific intent, simply that I kept choosing to watch other things. I suppose that is, if nothing else, a minor indictment on how I find the series. It has a little too much sexual assault - and more often the threat of sexual assault - for my liking, and it gets a little tiresome. Thankfully this mostly self-contained episode steers away from that and into other criminal areas instead.

Outlander: "The Reckoning"

It is 4 April 2015, and time for another episode of Outlander.

Claire (Catriona Balfe) has been captured by English soldiers and taken to Fort William. She is in the process of being sexually assaulted by Captain Randall (Tobias Menzies) when her husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) comes to the rescue. While they successfully escape the English, where does there marriage go from here?

Outlander's first season was divided in the middle by a gap of several months. "The Reckoning" marks the beginning of the second half, and resolves the highly melodramatic mid-season cliffhanger: Randall in the process of assaulting Claire, Jamie revealed in the window, flintlock pistol in hand. It was an odd sort of a cliffhanger in many respects, because Outlander has never been quite so  over-the-top in its episode endings before. It felt remarkably forced at the time. This subsequent episode struggles somewhat to get back to a sense of normality; in fact it pretty much takes the whole hour.

Outlander: "Both Sides Now"

In 1743 Claire Randall (Catriona Balfe) continues her way on the road with her new husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) and members of the McKenzie clan. In 1945 her old husband Frank (Tobias Menzies) continues to frantically search for her, despite everyone else - including the Inverness police - having given up on finding her.

The first season of Outlander was split in two on its original broadcast, with this episode first airing in September 2014 and the subsequent episode airing in April 2015. As a result this episode effectively acts as a season finale in all but name. It is a striking episode that is in turn moving, thrilling and terrifying. The spectre of rape, which has loomed uncomfortably over the series since the first episode, returns to torment Claire once again not once but twice in the same hour. That does damage the episode somewhat. I am not sure what motivates the use of sexual assault as a generator of drama in contemporary American television, but I am reasonably sure I don't like it. It is somewhat like conducting surgery with a shotgun when a scalpel would do.

Outlander: "The Wedding"

In order to keep Claire (Catriona Balfe) out of Captain Randall's clutches, Dougal (Graham McTavish) has ordered Jamie (Sam Heughan) to marry her. This is something of a problem for Claire, since she already has a husband whom she loves back in 1945, but with Randall's threats looming over her head she does not have a choice.

"The Wedding" is a striking hour of television. I spent the entire episode on edge, not because of what was happening on screen but because the previous six episodes had led me to assume something dramatic and terrible was going to happen at any moment. I was anticipating Randall turning up and kidnapping Claire. I was anticipating murder. I was anticipating yet another attempt at a sexual assault. Instead I got two strangers, recently married, properly meeting one another for the first time. It was extraordinarily effective.

Outlander: "The Garrison Commander"

Claire (Catriona Balfe) and Dougal (Graham McTavish) are escorted by British troops to a nearby inn, where Claire can be assessed and introduced to the garrison's commanding general. Her visit takes a dangerous turn, however, when she comes face to face once again with Captain Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), her 20th century husband's ancestor and the man who attempted to rape her when she arrived in the 1740s.

"The Garrison Commander" is an excellent episode of Outlander, combining great character work and dialogue with some unexpected plot developments, a harrowing flashback and a fleshing-out of a great new villain for television drama. Jack Randall was clearly going to be an ongoing antagonist from Claire from the moment she first encountered him. It is simply too perfect: a vile, spiteful and cruel monster, bearing the exact facial features of her husband Frank. Tobias Menzies does a startling job playing the two men in the same episode - Frank via a brief flashback and Jack throughout its second half - and he makes them strikingly different to each other.

Outlander: "Rent"

Claire (Catriona Balfe) is sent on the road to provide medical assistance to Dougal (Graham McTavish) and his men as they travel the McKenzie lands to collect rents from the people. At first she suspects Dougal of defrauding his older brother, Laird Colum McKenzie, but then she realises that Dougal is working from a different motive - and an entirely new problem becomes clear.

After three episodes within the confines of Castle Leoch it is quite refreshing for Outlander to get on the road itself and stretch its legs. It's an excuse for the series to show off some absolutely beautiful Scottish scenery. It may seen a weak reason to recommend a series, but Outlander really does showcase the Scottish landscape in a manner better than any other TV or film production I've seen before. (Braveheart, for example, was mostly shot in Ireland.) The Scotland Tourism Commission must be loving the series.

Asides from the pretty visuals, "Rent" also introduces what I suspect will be a key plot driver for the series over not this season but the next two or three - the Jacobite uprising against George II.

Outlander: "The Gathering"

While Claire (Catriona Balfe) develops a plan of escape from Castle Leoch, the McKenzie clan assembles to pledge fealty to Colum (Gary Lewis). The ceremony proves a dangerous one to Jamie (Sam Heughan), whose unique position could see him executed on the spot should he say the wrong thing. A boar hunt leads to tragedy - and a renewed respect between Claire and Dougal (Graham McTavish).

"The Gathering" is a weirdly messy and disconnected episode, saddled with a wobbly plot structure, some oddly two-dimensional dialogue, and more of the irritating elements that keep getting in the way of Outlander becoming a genuinely brilliant television drama. Of the four episodes viewed so far it is the first that I did not particularly enjoy.

This is not for a lack of decent material. As always the episode is very well shot, and a boar hunt sequence in particular is well paced and plays out in a very dramatic fashion. The problem, in the end, comes down to Dougal.

Outlander: "The Way Out"

1940s nurse Claire Randall (Catriona Balfe) is trapped in 1743 Scotland, where the Laird of the clan McKenzie has imprisoned her in Castle Leoch and its surrounds out of fear she may be an English spy. While biding her time Claire connects with the enigmatic herbalist Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek), continues to flirt with the dashing Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) and in saving a poisoned child's life earns the ire of the fire-and-brimstone priest (Tim McInnerny).

Thankfully Outlander's third episode skips any implied or threatened sexual assaults, although in return it does give us the spectacle of a 12 year-old boy having his ear nailed to the pillory. Asides from that it is a rather comfortable affair, settling Claire into 18th century life and further exploring the various characters living out their lives around her. There are a few glimmers of genius, but generally speaking this is a fairly amiable historical drama.

Outlander: "Castle Leoch"

Former army nurse Claire Beacham (Catriona Balfe) has been transported back in time from 1945 to 1743 Scotland, where she has been rescued from English redcoats by a group of Jacobite rebels. Now a guest in the nearby Castle Leoch, Claire must use her wits to ensure she is not imprisoned as an English spy - or even accused of being a witch.

Before anything else it is worth appreciating just how effectively "Castle Leoch" explores the experience of travelling back in time. The initial panic, the confusion and the sheer terror of it is well played by both the script and Catriona Balfe's performance, but also the steely resignation that comes when Claire accepts that she has indeed slipped back 202 years and that without careful consideration of her words and action she is likely to die at the end of a knife, a rope, and on top of a fire.

Outlander: "Sassenach"

In 1945 Claire Randall (Catriona Balfe) and her husband Frank (Tobias Menzies) take a holiday to Scotland to reconnect with one another following the Second World War. When Claire visits a stone circle one afternoon, she finds herself inexplicably thrown centuries in the past and into the Scotland of 1743 where roving English patrols are hunting down the Jacobite rebels.

Outlander is an American/British co-production based on the romantic time travel novels by Diana Gabaldon. The series caught my eye when it was first released in mid-2014, but it has taken until now for me to sit down and watch its first episode. I was interesting in seeing the series due to an interest in both time travel stories and Scottish history, and also because the series has been supervised by writer and executive producer Ronald D. Moore whose previous work on Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have impressed me a great deal.

As a pilot episode "Sassenach" is overly long and a bit clunky, but it points to some pretty solid historical drama down the line. It is definitely worth giving it a watch and seeing where the series goes.