Outlander has steadily grown an audience through its first two seasons, and it's no wonder why. The epic fantasy and romance adventure series fills a lot of niches, and changes often. In fact, the series based on Diana Gabaldon's famous novels is filmed within so many different timelines and changes locations so often that it can be quite difficult to shoot. Here's exactly what makes Outlander so complicated to shoot, according to showrunner Ronald D. Moore:
There's an extended journey across the Atlantic and then the story eventually goes to Jamaica, the Caribbean and ending up in the New World. Season 3 will be as different to Season 2 as Season 2 was to Season 1. It's exciting creatively; it's very hard in terms of the production. You are doing a whole new series with every season. So that's very difficult. Scouting new locations, building new sets, bringing in new cast members, new costumes, different eras. It increases the expense, it increases the time necessary to prep everything, to shoot everything.
If you don't know much about Voyager, the third book in the series that Outlander is based on, this quote gives you a lot of information. Namely, Jamie and Claire are about to head on a grand adventure and a long journey, and without spoiling things too much, there are a lot of crazy plotlines that happen as part of this adventure. Obviously, since we last left Jamie at the Battle of Culloden and we last left Claire pining over Jaime in the 1960s, the Starz drama is going to have a lot of ground to cover during Season 3.
That obviously poses a challenge for the showrunner and also the creative team, for all of the reasons Ronald D. Moore mentioned at the Edinburgh International Television Festival earlier this year. During the panel, Moore also mentioned that he had the additional challenge of having to please new viewers and fans of Diana Gabaldon's book series (via Variety).
My job as the showrunner is to figure out how to service that audience and also bring in a new audience that has never read these books. And the show, week after week, has to function on both these levels.
Of course, it's not as if Ronald D. Moore should be unused to putting together challenging TV programs. He's probably most famous for creating the updated version of Battlestar Galactica, a science fiction series that was shot throughout the cosmos, and also featured plenty of complex special effects and location changes. While the former Syfy series is a different sort of show, you can see why Ronald D. Moore was the right man for the job of created the complicated Outlander timelines and intricate plots.
Season 3 of Outlander is not expected to hit the schedule for a while, but we did recently learn that production has begun on the series. We'll keep you updated regarding any new information that wafts our way, but for now you can check out what we know about the upcoming season here. In addition, you can find out when the rest of you TV favorites are returning with our TV premiere schedule.
