“I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you”
– Florence and the Machine, “Cosmic Love” (album Lungs, 2009)
With the new opening credits lending a Caribbean vibe to the familiar score, they also suggest a new bend in our lovers’ journey towards more adventure, mystery, and danger. This stands in contrast to the ninth episode’s title of “The Doldrums,” which often means a period of stagnation. Fortunately, it also brings a grateful bit of stillness by which Jamie and Claire can reconnect without distraction. As is typical for the Frasers, however, distraction can only be held at bay for a short period.
After a few weeks at sea, Claire’s narration reveals her comfort in the steady routines of seafaring life, as if she were settling into her 18th century life as Claire Fraser while also reawakening her 20th century self as a surgeon. It has been an ongoing process for her to merge the hard-won facets of her identity and she relishes this bit of consistency that allows her to get her bearings again after so much tumult since Christmas. As a result, we see a confident ease to her form in the way she prepares medicines, interacts with the crew, and even carries herself throughout the ship in her wide pleated skirt and loose blouse.
Most notable, however, is the way she regains a physical symbiosis with Jamie beyond their sexual connection. These are the moments that Sam Heughan’s and Caitriona Balfe’s choreography is remarkable not only because it looks natural and effortless but also how they bring a bittersweet poignancy to their rare moments of peace out in nature (kudos to the script by Shannon Goss and director David Moore). One night, Claire finds Jamie on the deserted deck, staring up at the large, bright moon. When she approaches him from behind and gives him a sweet kiss on the cheek, I realized I couldn’t remember when that had last happened. “Is it really just you and me,” she asks, to which he replies, “You and me and the man in the moon.” Then, he turns and envelops her in an embrace as they kiss again and she leans against his form, the two of them looking up at the sky together. There are about six consecutive actions in one fluid movement, almost as if they were dancing in place, and epitomizes the connection that comes with time, effort, and emotional need.
Later on, they speak of this connection and how they still can’t explain it, but that night under the moon, it is explained for us. Claire tells Jamie of how men had just flown to* the moon in 1968 and describes what it looked like: barren but beautiful, a new world of firsts for man to discover. She then recites a portion of the children’s book Goodnight Moon which Brianna had loved to be read and later recite, and the parents share their collective loss and individual heartache: Claire because she remembered what it was like to be in the presence of their child; Jamie because he can only imagine and believe.
Their relationship is structured in the same way, unencumbered by the limitations of time and space. It is almost hyperreal, as if they could see or sense inside the matrix of how things connect – in society, in nature, between two people – and that makes each moment together more viscerally felt. Now that Claire has crossed time and space to return to Jamie, the moon in all its ancient cosmic permanence represents this metaphysical connection they share that cannot yet be explained but must be believed. As Captain Raines (Richard Dillane) quotes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “There are more things of Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” so Jamie and Claire are one step closer to the cosmos than other humans, so their paradigm of the world is substantially deeper and richer.
Indeed, the theme of belief extends to the rest of the crew as relating to their structure of superstitions and traditions amidst the vast expanse of ocean and its mercurial temperament. When the waters turn dead calm for weeks and the crew grows hungry and desperate, their instincts are to turn towards superstitious fervor over scientific logic. Wisely, Goss chooses to emphasize the “sense of assurance” and unity over crazed hysteria (which would have quickly come) as the impetus behind the crew needing a Jonah to sacrifice to the sea. Those in power or with superior knowledge utilize such beliefs to reestablish order rather than trying to prove the scientific alternative and increasing the tension on board.
Yi Tien Cho (Gary Young) does such a masterful job of this as he places his status as an outsider front and center, then mesmerizes the agitated crowd with a story of honor and sacrifice. He had heard the seamen’s derogatory references to him and his abilities and “strange” behaviors, and he uses his gift for storytelling to both counter their prejudice and confirm their superstitions. Rather than serve the Emperor’s wife as a gifted composer but be castrated, he chose escape and exile with his manhood intact. His freedom is stymied by living in a land that does not match his rhythm of speech or composition, whose people do not recognize his gifts and capacity for love, where he is an Other in his own right like Jamie and Claire. Like Jamie, he must take a different name in society and constantly temper his true self with whatever persona allows him to survive in a strange land. Like Claire, he can feel isolated even in a crowd and the sacrifice of his homeland is acutely felt. For Li Then Cho, his love for women is spiritual sustenance, and being among so many who will not have him is like being surrounded by the salty sea but unable to drink. Tossing the pages of his life story overboard is both sacrificial and controlled, as if to say This is my past and what I have given up to be here, and if you believe in my actions, you can no longer look through me.
As the crew rejoices over the rains returning due to Yi Tien Cho’s “sacrifice,” so Jamie and Claire enjoy a reinvigoration below deck, again demonstrating their bodies’ natural cadence as they meld together with the pitch of the ship. Their scenes sharply contrast the youthful and blooming romance between Fergus (César Domboy) and Marsali (Lauren Lyle), whose surprise informal marriage by handfast earns the worst consequence for young lovers: separation within close proximity. For teenage Marsali, the passion of youth stretches time according to yearning, so days can seem like years. For thirty-year-old Fergus, his mettle after a period of casual promiscuity will be tested as he and Marsali have two choices: continue a chaste courtship and actually get to know one another or watch their infatuation “fizzle out,” as Claire says.
As evidenced in the final sequence where Claire is summoned onto a British man-of-war to aid its crew suffering from a plague outbreak, so her identity as a healer sways towards the more logical side of men’s perceptions of a learned, outspoken female. For the moment, it is advantageous though it does separate her from Jamie and the Artemis. It can swiftly sway back towards the superstitious angle that intelligent women are witches and evil and bring about curses. Luckily, Jamie and Claire share a sort of internal divining rod which pulls them back together again.
*Author’s correction: I had previously written that men had walked on the moon in 1968. Claire was referring to the Apollo 8 mission that she had seen on TV in the hospital staff lounge in 03×05, during which men had flown to the moon.
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