Outlander is now an award winning TV show and, from the few clips I've seen, doesn't look too bad. Still, I figured I ought to at least try and read the book before watching it. I say try because I knew Diana Gabaldon, its author, more by reputation than output: Gabaldon explains how fanfiction is like white slavery. Seriously. What raised that rant from the realm of the ludicrously unreasonable to the utterly hilarious is the fact that Gabaldon happily admits to basing her own romantic hero, eighteenth century highlander Jamie Fraser, on eighteenth century highlander Jamie McCrimmon, a character she spotted in a re-run of Dr Who. We can only guess how Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke feel / felt about seeing their character say idiotic things like: "Aye, I mean to use ye hard, my Sassenach", and enact simple-minded sex fantasies along the lines of: "he pressed me down, hammering me, a solid, inexorable pounding that reached my womb with each stroke.&qu