Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Outlander 5.7: The Paradoxical Spark

A momentous, grim episode 5.7 of Outlander tonight, which portrays what is said to be the spark of the American Revolution, seen through the eyes of - and animated by - our time travelers.

Brianna says the battle in North Carolina, in 1771, will have profound repercussions. The Regulators (the Americans fighting the Crown) will be badly beaten by the Redcoats and their American allies, and some historians say this will be the "spark" that ignited the American Revolution five years later. Should Brianna warn the Regulators? Tempting, but might that not risk removing the spark and therein changing history, with the result of no American Revolution? This time-travel paradox is as fundamental as it comes: with no American Revolution, and no USA in which Brianna will be born, there would be no Brianna to travel to the past in the first place. My favorite kind of paradox.

But, of course, Roger volunteers to try warn the Regulators, anyway, in the hope that people they know and love could be saved - such as Murtaugh - but simmering resentments will foment the American Revolution nonetheless. A neat way of beating the paradox, but ...

Before the hour is over, Murtaugh is dead and Roger may be hanging from a tree. The British indeed slaughtered the Regulators, so the spark has been preserved. But at what price? Murtaugh is definitely gone.

As for Roger, as I say many a time in my reviews of all kinds of television series, I'm a great believer in the principle that if you don't actually see the character shot in the heart or the head, he or she might somehow survive. We didn't see Roger's face on the rope. We saw a body wearing his clothes. But that leaves open the possibility that the Regulators stripped him of his clothes, and the body hanging from the tree was someone else's.

Again, I haven't read the books, and I'm an eternal optimist, so I'm thinking Roger is alive. But he may not be well, and who knows where he is. We'll just have to see in the weeks ahead.