Episode 707: A Practical Guide for Time-Travelers

Sing me a song of a lass that is gone.

Let us take a moment to remember Sinéad O’Connor. Music imprints on our memory in profound ways that are both personal and universal, and Sinéad O’Connor never flinched from showing us that what is universal is also personal. Coming through our television set, bare head and bare face in an era of big hair and loud noises, she stared at us straight-on, daring us to look away. But she never did. She wanted us to see the injustices and oppression and inequities of the world, and she was never afraid to destroy her own world in her efforts to bring us that truth. Like other artists we have lost, O’Connor wasn’t content to let the suffering of others flit about the periphery of her vision and the edges of her existence. She felt the pain of others and wanted us to feel it, too.

What a gift, then, to have her voice begin our story each week. How truly poignant and tragically special it is that we had O’Connor to sing us this song of our lass that is gone. Because in O’Connor we recognize much of what we love about Claire— a woman who does not turn away from injustice and feels compelled to act in accordance with her own morality. A complicated, smart and—yes—often frustrating woman. A most uncomfortable woman.

Goodbye, Sinéad. Truly, nothing will ever compare to you.

And now, our episode…

Warning- Contains spoilers from Outlander Episode 707: A Practical Guide for Time-Travelers

The kicker: there is no guide. Sometimes no amount of reading or training or warning can ready us for a journey in which we embark into unfamiliar territory. Whether it is Buck MacKenzie marveling at the Scotland of the future, or William realizing what war actually entails, there is no preparing our characters this week for travel into worlds unknown.

Roger is writing his time-traveling guide for his children, but this episode demonstrates that even as adults we often feel like children ourselves. Diarmaid Murtagh did a marvelous job with his character, imbuing Buck MacKenzie with a child-like sense of awe at plane travel and dams and television. “Star traveler,” he translates to Jem, undoubtedly seeing himself in the time-traveling and universe-hopping character of Roj Blake. This strange new world is at once recognizable and yet totally foreign.

So, too, is William’s current landscape. He is an officer but he is untested and young, not quite understanding what it is he thinks he seeks. The levity and camaraderie last right up until the moment the shooting begins, whereupon we see that understanding explode into William’s consciousness. He has surely studied battle—he is educated in warfare and strategy—but nothing could truly prepare William for seeing his close friend die at his side. Like many tragedies in life, there is no practical guide.

And that is perhaps a disheartening idea with which to reckon. Indeed, aren’t we all travelers into uncharted lands? Aren’t we all Buck MacKenzie, entering the future as it comes with no knowledge of what awaits us? Even Roger and Brianna, who are living in the time in which they arguably belong, cannot predict what is coming. How rapidly an otherwise enjoyable night can turn on a dime…how our lives can be turned upside-down without warning. Like William, they are blindsided and unprepared when tragedy lands at their door.

The episode opens on the eve of the Battles of Saratoga with the British officers confident of their impending victory. As Claire has previously discussed, these two battles are generally considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War, with (spoiler alert) the British eking out a victory with heavy casualties in the first battle and ultimately surrendering in the second. Keeping thematically, the British forces are perhaps not prepared for a future in which they are not the most powerful army in the world. There is no guide that will explain this burgeoning new world order.

As a time traveler, Claire does take some small reassurance in knowing ultimately who will prevail at Saratoga. But even knowing the outcome of a battle cannot fully ready a person for the details of what may befall them. The image of Jamie laying motionless on the battlefield at the episode’s end shocks us in the same way that William and Brianna and Roger were taken unaware.

In the twentieth century it is a MacKenzie family reunion of sorts, as Roger and Brianna debate what to do with the time-traveling relative in their midst. And, again, who would know what to do in such a situation? Even as Roger doggedly tries to document the time-travel experience, there is nothing to prepare this family for such a visitor.

Nor do they foresee the upheaval caused by Rob Cameron, who abducts and has possibly time-traveled with Jem. (No spoilers, please, for the non-book readers). Jem’s membership into the Tufty Club (a program designed to teach children about road, home, and water safety) speaks heartbreakingly to the episode’s theme— we can teach children about the dangers of the world around them, but sometimes there is no plan when dangerous people mean to do us harm…there is no practical guide.

Aeschylus wrote of Agamemnon returning home to Mycenae after the Trojan War, only to be murdered by his wife and her lover. In this Greek tragedy Agememnon was the time traveler of sorts, returning to a country that was strange with change. His home looked the same as it always had, and yet it was different, lurking with hidden danger and abandoned of those who had once seemed familiar. It may not surprise you that Roj Blake (the titular character of Jem and Mandy’s television program), suffered a similar fate, betrayed by those he trusted in his efforts to return home.

It’s a fairly nihilistic idea, thinking we can never prepare for our future. As always, the optimism in Outlander comes from family. For although he is unaware of their relation, William does take some comfort from the words imparted by General Simon Fraser. “They sent forth men into battle, but no such men return,” Fraser quotes of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. In this he tells William he understands the profound change that transforms a person after war. He is seeing William in a way that William likely wishes to be seen…an acknowledgement of William’s grief and the end of his naivety. We cannot rely on a manual for life’s sorrow, but we can look to those with such wisdom to be our guides.

Slàinte. 

Screencaps provided by Outlander-Online.