The New York Times bestselling author explains the differences between Ian and Rachel’s wedding night in the book and on the TV series.
The first four episodes of Outlander Season 7 part 2 have focused mainly on the drama with Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) and Lord John (David Berry). But Friday’s “Hello, Goodbye” episode took us away from their lives and gave us a romantic interlude with the marriage of Young Ian (John Bell) and his Quaker fiancée Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small).
This episode is also one that parted from the novel Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, written by New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon, on which the story is based.
In speaking with Gabaldon, she understands the difficulties of both space and nuance in trying to adapt something the size of Outlander to a TV series, so she is comfortable in allowing the series to tell its version of her creation but she is also willing to comment on the differences.
“A lot of stuff simply won’t fit, and what’s left often isn’t in the same sequence as the original and may have lost all connections with its original context,” she tells Parade.
As a result, both Ian and Rachel’s wedding and wedding night differ from the original, so people can pick up the novels and get a different take on the story when they’re done watching the series.
Gabaldon explains, “It’s lacking a lot of the original dialogue, which was very frank and had a lot to do with the physical (as well as emotional) act of consummation; it’s funny, tender and physical. The resulting show effect is underwhelming, because so much is left out and there’s not much to replace it.
“Then there’s also the small problem of cultural perception: the show (as an entity) tends to rely on preconceptions and assumptions, rather than what’s actually on the page (let alone why it’s on the page). Ergo, Rachel is a Quaker. Quakers are shy, modest, prim and proper. We can’t show her wearing anything pretty, even for her wedding, let alone behaving passionately in bed!
“Whereas Book Rachel is modest, but decidedly not shy or prim. She’s very forthright (as most Quakers of the time tended to be—and in justice to the show, they often use book dialogue in which this shows), and speaks very frankly, without regard to anything but her own conscience. Book Rachel and Ian have a pretty forthright and enjoyable wedding night.”
Also, in Friday’s episode, Roger (Richard Rankin) met his father Jerry, who died when Roger was just a wee bairn, so he never knew him. When Roger went through the stones in search of his missing son Jem (Matthew and Andrew Adair), he inadvertently thought of his father rather than Jem, which took Roger back to the wrong time period, 1739 instead of 1778.
But, in truth, it was the right time period because it allowed Roger the chance to meet his father and try to send him back through the stones to London during World War II, which is when Jerry, who was a pilot in the war, died, allegedly when his plane crashed.
Of course, Roger knows history can’t be changed, and his father needs to die, or at least not to have been a part of his life, because if Roger hadn’t been raised by his grandfather, he never would have met Claire and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and discovered that time travel was possible for certain people.
Gabaldon comments, “Well, again (as always…)—Book v. Show. Roger does indeed send his father back through the stones, Jerry does indeed land during WWII, and there’s a very neat little twist in which Jerry (and his wife, Dolly) jointly save wee Roger (aged 2 or 3) during a bombing raid on London, but the parents perish in the Underground station (a lot of Londoners took shelter in these during bombing raids), when the roof caves in, which is why he ends up living with his grandfather.
“This all happens in a short story titled “A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows,” which is in the book Seven Stones to Stand or Fall, though I think the story is available as a stand-alone e-book, for a buck or two.
“Later in Season 8, you’ll get Roger having a vague memory of having been caught in a man’s arms, but as there’s no connection to this part of the story, no one will have the faintest idea what that’s about, unless they happen to have read Leaf.”
New episodes of the second half of Outlander Season 7 will premiere at midnight ET on the STARZ app, all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms each Friday. On linear broadcast, it will debut on STARZ Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT in the U.S.
