IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM

The writers’ room is the creative spine of any scripted television series. From it, all things are made. So when Ron Moore and Maril Davis set their sights on hiring the people who would write and produce each episode, they put a lot of thought into the creative balance of the series.

While Ron Moore is a veteran showrunner (Battlestar Galactica), Outlander was his first experience in adapting a TV series from a book, to say nothing of the pressure of pleasing the enthusiastic and exacting fandom that would be coming to the series from Gabaldon’s books. Fortunately, his co–executive producer, Maril Davis, was a fan herself and relished the task of creating a series that readers would embrace.

“It was really important to do the fan/non-fans split in the room, because basically that’s what you argue about when you are breaking the stories,” Moore says. “You want to have the argument front and center about what is critical to the book and what can be changed without changing it too far—it was really important that we had both perspectives in the room so that we could get a coherent line of thought as we were structuring everything.

“Beyond that, I thought conceptually that I wanted a room that was half men and half women,” Moore adds. “I thought that would be an important part of the mix, as it’s a female narrative story written by a woman. Then it was just about figuring out who the players were.”

Moore and Davis first looked to collaborators they had worked with before, including Matthew B. Roberts, who introduced Davis to the book years before. “Matt had come out of the Caprica [writers’ room],” Moore explains. “He and I had developed and written a couple pilots together. So even though we had never formally been on the same staff before, I had a good sense of Matt and what his skill set was.”

“He was a no-brainer, along with the fact that he is a male [book] fan, which was really important to us,” Davis adds. As it turns out, Roberts also assumed the mantle of second-unit director, responsible for the episodic title-card segments and any needed pickup shots throughout the production year.

“Toni Graphia was somebody I had worked with on several shows, like Roswell, Carnivàle, and Battlestar Galactica,” Moore says. “I really like her and thought this would be something she would cotton to.

“With Ira Behr, I had worked with him at Star Trek for many years, but then we had not worked on a project since that point,” Moore explains. “He adds a completely different sensibility, which is great because he is not your typical fan,” Davis says.

Last but not least was Anne Kenney. “She and I had never worked together directly, but Matt Roberts and I had gone out to pitch a series that the two of them had come up with, and they brought me into the development process,” Moore says. “I thought she was smart, a good writer, and Outlander was a good fit for her.”

Moore’s last requirement was that each of them needed to be writer/producers, working in Scotland to help produce episodes on location. “They definitely had to have that as part of their skill set, and each of them did,” he adds. “Each of them had been in the business long enough and had enough familiarity with production that I felt confident that we could make this work.”

When the Scotland production team was in place, producer David Brown suggested a block-shooting schedule, which would create a more efficient system for the aggressive filming needs of the series. Such a schedule, in which two episodes are shot together over five weeks, enables pre-production to have enough time to prepare for the two-episode block that follows.

“I would be lying if I didn’t say this was by far the hardest show we have ever worked on,” Davis says. “So you need some sort of consistency.” The block system fulfills that need by assuring that each block is supported by at least one writer/producer who is there for the entire five weeks. “Because it is such a serialized show and such a complicated backstory, the writers are really the keepers of the flame in some ways,” she adds. “We feel it’s necessary that the director works with the writer/producer all the way through prep and production.”

While filming is under way, Moore and Davis fly back and forth between the Outlander writers’ room in Los Angeles and the Scottish production studio, sometimes multiple times a month. As season two progressed, Moore decided to spend more time in post-production, finishing episodes on time and to his satisfaction. “I am one of the few [executive producers] that follow the episode production from nose to tail, from the initial story and story breaks all the way to final delivery.” Once Moore saw what his staff was accomplishing in the field, relinquishing some time in Scotland made sense. “You have to trust and empower the people who work for you to carry out those plans and to trust their creative takes on individual pieces,” Moore says. “Sometimes that writer knows what has to happen in that script better than I do, because they have lived with it.”