Starz’s epic series Outlander is taking a hiatus after a turbulent midseason finale which saw the show’s hero thrown into a dangerous situation.
The Droughtlander is hitting fans hard and many are looking for any relief.
Thankfully, Starz has an official podcast which offers viewers titbits from the most recent series, offering some behind-the-scenes insight into the making of the show.
In one of the episodes, Outlander’s boss Matthew B. Roberts opened up about the concerns he and the rest of the team had about the midseason finale, specifically Jamie Fraser’s (played by Sam Heughan) hand injury.
In Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels, Jamie ended up having a finger amputated because the digit was so badly smashed during the second Battle of Saratoga.
However, in the show, Jamie’s finger was saved by his medic wife Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) thanks to her knowledge of 20th century medicine.
Speaking about the moment in the TV series, Roberts said: “We knew we were going to have some issues with the hand.
“The wound in the book is very severe, we knew we didn’t have enough runway to provide the time for the perfect healing.
“We had to jump time in the episode, so that was always a concern.”
Adding: “We had a lot of meetings about the hand, what it was going to look like initially and going forward the healing process, the scars and everything.”
Roberts went on to say: “It always astonishes me whatever befuddles me in that we always manage to pull it off.
“We have a rule in the room, which is, ‘Don’t break the dream’ and the dream is when you start the episode and you get to the end hopefully there’s no breaks in the dream or you’re like, ‘Hold on, what’s going on?’
“Yes, there’s always going to be book readers who know the story and ask, ‘Why wasn’t this scene in or that’s not the way it happens in the book.’
“That of course you can never contend with because that’s foreknowledge.
“Somebody knows something that may or may not be in this particular story because it’s the television series.
“But for a person who has no knowledge of the story, you want them to seamlessly turn it on and go all the way to the end.”
Roberts went on to say how the hand, like other plot points, had to work in the context of the TV show rather than the books due to time constraints.
The Outlander showrunner said there was a “great logic in continuity” and all of this added to the authenticity of the story they were trying to tell.
Moreover, Roberts stressed Outlander was a “fictional show” with fictitious characters and real-life historical figures incorporated into this narrative.
