Their transition to television is backed by Star Trek alumni Ron Moore. Obviously, Battlestar Galactica has already made it through its run, but word on the street is Moore is shopping a television version of Diana Gabaldon‘s successful book series. The seven books in the Outlander series are hard to pin down to a single genre: romance? historical fiction? science fiction? fantasy? military history? But with True Blood and Game of Thrones both on the air, it seems like it might be a pretty interesting experiment for networks, and one that could be spun in any number of ways depending on who picks it up.
What do I mean? Well, lets talk about what Outlander is about.
The first book in the series opens on Claire Randall, a British Army nurse, and her husband Frank, a history professor, on their second honeymoon in Scotland. In 1945. Frank is a bit obsessed with tracking down his family lineage; Claire, not so much, and during one of her wanderings in the highlands, she comes upon a circle of standing stones, steps through, and is transported to 1743. She runs into Frank’s ancestor (a British Captain and not a particularly nice guy), but is taken from him by a group of Scots. Thus follows Claire’s introduction to the historical politics of the time: the British and the Scotts are not really getting along well, and because she is so clearly neither (mostly by virtue of being out of time) she’s suspected as a spy at worst, an unattached (not necessarily meaning that she’s unmarried, but that there’s no family to give her political connections, no friends to call on, and certainly no money) woman at best. The Scots she’s made friends with are obligated to turn her over to the British for brutal questioning… unless they make her a legal Scotswoman by marriage. Claire, of course, wants to get back to her own time and her own husband, but has no idea how to, and accepts Jamie Fraser’s hand.
Aaand at this point I’m about half way through the Wikipedia plot summary of the first of seven books. With Ron Moore at the helm, it’s easy to see how the time travel aspects of the story might be highlighted, and probably Gabaldon wouldn’t mind, being most familiar with all the different ways of pitching her genre blurring story. All I can say is: China would not approve.
(via Digital Spy.)
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