Written by Diana Gabaldon, Ronald D. Moore, and Ira Steven Behr
Directed by Anna Foerster

The last two episodes of the first season are about the most difficult to watch of anything I’ve ever seen. There is pretty graphic violence and torture, as well as sexual assault. Viewer discretion is advised and I’d also caution that it has many trigger warnings for abuse.

Wentworth Prison opens with men being hung in the courtyard of the prison. Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Taran MacQuarrie (Douglas Henshall) are there watching. MacQuarrie goes first but does not die immediately. When it’s Jamie’s turn, he resists. He’d rather be shot than hung. However, he’s brought up to hang and has a rope around his neck when Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) arrives and stops the execution.

Claire (Caitriona Balfe) arrives at the prison pretending to be a friend of the family to inquire after Jamie. Sir Fletcher (Frazer Hines) denies allowing Claire to see him. However, he does give her the box of personal belongings. Claire has managed to keep herself together while inside, but as she walks out of the doors, she breaks down and Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) must bring her back to the inn where the rest of the men are waiting.

Murtagh and Claire are angry with Rupert (Grant O’Rourke) and Angus (Stephen Walters) as they appear to be enjoying themselves while Claire and Murtagh are at a dead end as to how to get Jamie out of the prison. It turns out, the two were gambling with two jailers from the prison and managed to get information from them while they were drinking and gambling.

Jamie is chained in the dungeon of the prison. Randall comes to see him and produces the complaint against Randall that Jamie and Claire wrote to the Court of Sessions. It never reached its intended target. Randall taunts Jamie and then offers him a cleaner death than the noose if Jamie will yield to him. Jamie refuses. He assaults Randall and Marley (Richard Ashton), the man with him, but to no avail. As punishment, Randall smashes Jamie’s hand with a mallet.

Claire returns to the prison with Murtagh, knowing it is when Sir Fletcher isn’t in his office. The guard leaves them alone in his office as they search for keys and any information about where Jamie might be held. When the guard returns, they knock him out. Claire takes the keys they found and goes to find Jamie, figuring if she’s discovered by herself she can claim to be lost. She sees the deplorable condition of the men in cells. Finally, she hears Jamie’s screams as Randall is smashing his hand.

Claire waits for Randall to leave, then goes towards where she heard the screams. First, she locates a door that leads to the outside, which she leaves unlocked. She searches further away and finds Jamie in his cell. Jamie tells her to leave, and she’s shocked to learn Randall is there. Jamie urges her to leave before he comes back. She refuses to leave without him, and as she’s trying to free him from his chains, Randall returns.

Randall uses Claire to get Jamie to yield. He threatens to allow Marley to rape Claire, then tries to choke the life out of her until Jamie agrees. As he is escorting Claire from the prison, she leans into the rumor that she is a witch, and curses him with the date of his death. He throws her where they throw the bodies of the dead men.

Claire returns to the forest to find the rest of the men. They have taken shelter with a local clan who is friendly. However, he won’t put his family in danger. When Claire offers to pay him with the pearls Jamie gave her on their wedding night, he hesitates. He confesses that he gave them to Ellen MacKenzie on her wedding night. Still, as much as he wants to, he cannot help them. When a man returns with cattle that had gone missing, Murtagh formulates a plan.

For me, the difficulty was watching the men hang. That is how my daughter killed herself, and it’s still a hard thing to see at any time since I have that image burned into my brain. The way the prisoners were treated, it’s a miracle any of them survived the conditions. I would harbor a guess that more men died of disease and starvation than by the noose. There were no trials for these men, just a proclamation of sentencing and a date with the hangman.

The scenes inside the prison are dark, but there’s good use of lighting to cast shadows and create an atmosphere of horror, which is what the prison really was. There are times when Tobias Menzies’ face is half in the dark which makes him even more sinister in this character.

The acting is good. Caitriona Balfe must pull off an aristocratic lady when in front of Sir Fletcher and the guard, then be the loyal and despondent wife to Jamie. She has nerves of steel and conveys that most of the time, but her collapse against Murtagh after her first visit to the prison shows what doing this takes out of her. At the same time, later on, she is a force of nature as she tries to will the others to help her get Jamie out of the prison. Tobias Menzies is a man possessed. For some sick reason, he is obsessed with Jamie, to the point that he would stop his execution to be able to have him. He claims to be there on the authority of the King, but there’s not much made of this lie. Did he not fear being found out? Even in those days, his proclivities would have raised eyebrows.

Sam Heughan is the one at the center of this. His most graphic scenes don’t come until the following episode, but there’s enough here as he stands against Randall until he must give in to save the woman he loves. Claire would be his undoing, and that’s something that will be dealt with in the next episode.

This is a well-crafted episode in many ways, but it is also quite difficult to watch. At least the situation is presented honestly, without making the men in prison look well cared for or losing the desolation and dreariness of what being a prisoner of the British was for the Scottish.

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