Finale special challenge for Outlander writers
NEW YORK — Rape is dramatic. No wonder it’s a tried-and-true device for TV drama.
It’s a staple of Game of Thrones, the wildly popular HBO series whose disapproving viewers “fear that rape has become so pervasive in the drama that it is almost background noise: a routine and unshocking occurrence,” as The New York Times said in a frontpage story a year ago.
That uproar was renewed recently by a rape scene in the episode that aired May 17. But oddly for a series whose untamed storytelling savours graphic violence of all kinds, this particular rape was con- tained in a brief scene staged off-camera.
If this depiction, downright demure for Game of Thrones, was meant as an olive branch to detractors, the gesture didn’t work. Reaction was swift and harsh, including that from U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who tweeted that the scene was “gratuitous” and “disgusting,” adding that she was “done” with the show.
Viewers who agree may likewise want to skip the season finale of Showcase’s period drama Outlander.
Meanwhile, viewers with an open mind are invited to share an unflinching dramatization of violence — sexual and otherwise — that nonetheless reflects care and artistry. And they may want to heed this spoiler alert and stop reading here until they see it. (The episode airs Sunday, 8 p.m.)
Outlander, based on Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling novels, focuses on Claire (Caitriona Balfe), a British Army nurse who is mysteriously swept from her 1940s world back to the 18th century, where she falls in love with a dashing Scottish warrior, Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). But their lives are placed in constant jeopardy by Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall (Tobias Menzies), a maniacal British Redcoat officer who means to break the man he regards as his archrival.
“I just want this to be a pleasant experience for us both,” he tells Jamie with chilling courtliness as the punishment that dominated last week’s episode intensifies in the dungeon cell where he is holding Jamie.
“It’s not the usual place you take your male lead characters,” said executive producer Ronald D. Moore, the sci-fi maestro celebrated for Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
He said that in reading the Outlander canon, he realized this scene, looming for him at season’s end, would pose a special challenge.
“There was a lot of conversation in the writers’ room about how we were going to make the adaptation to film,” he said. “And once we had our scripts, I carved out extra time for the actors so they would be prepared.
“I don’t like depictions of torture on camera,” he says. “To shoot this, I had to tell myself, ‘I’m going to be as frank, direct and truthful as I can, but there’s a point where I wouldn’t want to watch it. And that’s the point where I’m going to cut.’ ”