MURTAGH THE UNDEAD, Part 1 So. People keep asking me what I think of Murtagh turning up alive at Ardsmuir Prison, when he actually died on the battlefield at Culloden. Some people are shocked that I approved of this! (Actually, I didn’t have anything at all to say about it.) Well…as I may have noted once or twice, “The show is the show and the books are the books.” I think the Tallships, Sony and Starz people have done an amazing job in adapting the OUTLANDER story to film, and we couldn’t have been luckier in our professional association. Everyone involved, from show-runners and writers to the remarkably talented cast and crew works like a dog, 12-14 hour days, five or six days a week, for a pretty solid nine to ten months, and does it with dedication, humor and a lot of coffee. Now, let me explain a bit about my role in the show. First off, I’m the Source, which is good for PR; Sony/Starz would really like me to get up in front of however many million of y’all there are at the moment and say how much I like what they’ve done. Luckily, I can usually do that without lying. I _do_ like most of what they’ve done. Secondly, though, I’m officially a consultant on the show (it says so in the credits at the end). When I got one round of contracts, during the negotiations leading up to production, I noticed that they were offering me a job as consultant. I asked my agent what, exactly, they might expect me to _do_ as a consultant? (Given that I knew absolutely nothing about television production…) He replied that it could mean “anything or nothing.” Most productions, he said, would like the original author to keep completely out of things; in that case, I’d take the money and keep out. But, he added, they _might_ want my input on some things, in which case, they’d tell me. Luckily enough, I met Ron and Maril early on, before they’d taken the material to Starz, and we got on very well. They had the same views I do, on the importance of character, how a story should be told, and so on. So, as the show got going, they gradually began showing me things and I gradually began telling them what I thought about those things. So they went on showing me things: now, they send me the script outlines, the scripts, the revisions of the scripts (there are usually 6-8 revisions of a script before actual shooting), the daily footage (or pixelage) they shoot, and the various iterations of each episode as it comes together (episodes get a Director’s Cut (which, so far as I can tell, is purely for the director’s enjoyment; I’ve never seen a Director’s Cut actually be used), a Network/Studio Cut (meaning it’s for approval by/has been approved by the Network (which is Starz) and the Studio (this is Sony, who actually pay for the production of the show), and sometimes separate Network and Studio versions, finally ending in a Locked Cut, which theoretically means no one can make further changes. This is actually not true—I’ve seen up to three different Locked Cuts on a particularly tricky episode—but by and large, that’s supposed to be the final version). Anyway, they show me all this—which is terrific fun—and they invite my comments. This is very courteous of them; they don’t _have_ to listen to me at all. Stop and make a note of that, will you? THEY DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME. There is absolutely no legal requirement that they pay attention to _anything_ I say, and I have zero power to make them do or not do anything whatever. So whether Murtagh lives or dies, he does so without the necessity of my approval. The production can do anything they want (aside from things the network or studio want, that is. They _do_ have the power to implement their opinions). Still, the production people do listen to me—I might, after all, actually know something useful, or be able to spot a complication that will emerge in a later episode or season if they do X—and nine times out of ten, if I point out a problem, they’ll do something about it. (They may not do what I suggested, but they’ll do _something_...) The tenth time, they’ll usually explain to me why they can’t do something (logistics and expense being the usual reasons), or why they do want to do something I thought they shouldn’t do. As Ron remarked in one interview, “Diana isn’t shy about saying she doesn’t like something.” OK, on to Murtagh. Well, Murtagh died at Culloden, as I said. For quite some time, Jamie’s memories of Culloden have been sparse and fragmented—for good reason. However, now and then he gets a memory back. And the closer he gets to a battle, the more stuff his brain starts dredging up. As we got into the early discussions of Season Three, Ron asked what book-Jamie’s experience of Culloden had been; exactly what _had_ happened? As it happened, I’d written a scene for GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE in which Jamie recovers his memory of the culminating moments of the battle, and I passed that on to Ron and Maril, for whatever use it might be in their planning. (Basically, they just wanted to know whether Jamie had indeed killed Black Jack Randall, as Jamie has never known that himself—so far.) So they shot the footage for 301, and I believe I said, after seeing the first cut—“So you’re keeping Murtagh alive, eh?” Because we didn’t see him die on the field, and good story-telling does not (usually) involve important characters dying off-screen. Frankly, I’d thought they probably _would_ keep him alive. Partly because it would be a popular move with the show-fans, partly because Duncan LaCroix does fabulous things with Murtagh and they enjoy working with him, and—partly because they _could_. Everybody likes to play God now and then. (I get to do it all the time; it’s a great feeling.) Did I think keeping Murtagh alive was a good idea, in terms of how it might affect the story? I had no idea, because I didn’t know how or when they meant to stick him back into the story—but when I got the 303 script and saw how he was used, I thought that was OK. Tomorrow I’ll tell you why. (And maybe I’ll show you the scene from BEES, so you can see what really _did_ happen….not decided yet…)
