2.20 The Price

This is an episode I remember hugely disliking and being bored by on my first run through season 2, and never watching again. All I remember is it being one of those that’s all peril and no humour, but looking at it now I can see other reasons that would have turned me off, even if I wasn’t alert to the reason why.

The Horde are basically voiceless savages, and while I enjoy Xena facing her past and a bit of grim backstory, I much prefer it when she has to face antagonists with personality to them. And, you know, dialogue. I am a fiend for awesome dialogue and I have a tendency to bounce completely off stories that have none. This is a very male-heavy action story which has nothing about it that feels especially ‘Xena’ and offers nothing to our female leads other than the opportunity to act tough or look horrified.

Also there’s something grotesque and pretty damned offensive about the racial stereotype of the growling, murderous savage, and little is done to mitigate the using of this antiquated trope. (this is I think later addressed in the far better episode Daughter of Pomira though I didn’t love that one either) I found it interesting that the use of Maori costume and iconography with the all-male Horde is used to emphasise them as being violent, ugly and terrifying – the contrast being the way that the costume and iconography were used to add to the mystique of the Amazons, who also have a scary, dramatic appearance but are shown to have complex characters, a history and society rather than just being “monsters”.

Okay, it is kind of cool to see Xena taking on the responsibility of yelling at a bedraggled, heartsick Athenian troop of soldiers to shape them into a force capable of fighting the villainous Horde, and I can see the main point of the story is how easily Xena can slip into her own war-hungry maniac self when the threat is bad enough. Seeing Gabrielle’s calm competence in getting a sickbay organised, and later standing up against Badass Xena to be merciful to the wounded Horde, effectively shows how far she has come. But the whole thing is so shouty and violent, I still can’t love it.

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Something I’ve been thinking about through my Xena rewatch is the way that long-running TV shows occasionally use key episodes to define and redefine their own mythology. The ye olde clip show was one method used by comedies in particular to look back on their own history and remind the audience of key moments and character traits. Often in an SF drama series, it is the weird gimmicky or unexpectedly humorous episode that does the same job – and these are often the most beloved and/or divisive episodes as well as the most memorable. X-Files visiting the set of a TV show parodying their adventures, the boys of Supernatural finding a roleplay convention based on their life, the Buffy musical, the Farscape animated episode, any of the Star Trek “evil beard universe” stories, or Fringe’s “Brown Betty” take on film noir.

Old School and indeed New School Doctor Who never really did that sort of thing because, frankly, there was no formula to shake up. Every episode was different and odd and completely different to the one before. But there are several key stories throughout the classic run in particular which you can see are working to define the mythology of the show. During the Fifth and Sixth Doctors’ runs in particular, there were so many stories which looked backwards, or became self-referential, throwing in so many details from “canon” that it’s hard to keep them straight. There was even a whole Fifth Doctor season in which every episode featured a returning monster or character… Unsurprisingly, this was also a period responsible for many of the most head-scrambling canon inconsistencies of the show. The more references there were to the past lives of the Doctor, the more opportunities there were to get it wrong. More recently, episodes such as School Reunion and the many season finales of New Who have worked quite hard to cement a new mythology, bringing back beloved characters again and again for hero moments and dramatic ensembles, something which has caused much squee and much eyerolling among fans. Just like in the good old days.

But the stories which were most effective in defining and redefining the mythology of the show were the first two multiple Doctor stories, The Three Doctors (1973) and The Five Doctors (1983). In the days before VHS rentals of the show, and even in the repeat-heavy regions of the world such as Australia (which provided endless loops of 70′s Who for whole generations of children but mostly ignored the black and whites of the 60′s) The Three Doctors was the story which introduced and cemented the characters of the first two Doctors in the minds of many. This meant unfortunately that, regardless of any Target novelisations one might or might not have read, many of us ended up with a vague feeling that the First Doctor was a sickly, slighly cranky advisor floating in a scanner window, and the Second Doctor was basically a sidekick with a recorder. Needless to say, a re-examination of the 60′s stories reveals far more complex characters.

Far more dramatically, The Five Doctors (still just before the period when it was common to record, rewatch and purchase or hire old shows) was a major event story which not only served to redefine the characters of many previous Doctors, but also many of the companions. I could talk at length about the returning Doctors and how their characters come across in this story and whether or not they are served well (including the First Doctor now played by a different actor in a white wig) or are written as parodies of their former selves, but for the purposes of my own take on the Women in SF week, I want to discuss instead how the female companions are served by this story.

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2.16 For Him the Bell Tolls

This is the episode that really shows what Ted Raimi can do – a homage to Danny Kaye’s classic performance in The Court Jester, it sets up a situation where Joxer is charmed to become a Hero with a capital H every time a bell rings – and then returns to his own bumbling self when it rings again.

Ted Raimi carries the story off with aplomb, making it that bit more special than its Hercules-lite plot really deserves, and his ‘swashbuckling hero’ persona is both hilarious and weirdly convincing.

Also, damn that man can fence.

This episode also marks the first appearance in Xena of the goddess Aphrodite played by Alexandra Tydings, whose bubbly, bitchy surfer babe persona was one of the highlights of the Hercules series from quite early on, along with her cranky, who-oiled-those-chest-muscles, bleached blond son Cupid, played by… um, Karl Urban.

One of my favourite things about the Herc-and-Xenaverse is the way that the same actors appear over and over, often playing several different characters. It lends a certain theatre rep feel to the whole production, and there is great fun to be had in spotting the reappearance of a favourite performer. Sometimes an actor used in a minor role is cast later in a major or more iconic one (Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor, for example, both played less significant roles in the Hercverse before being cast as Xena and Gabrielle) and often it ends up that the same actor plays a different major roles in each “verse”. The actress who plays Gabrielle’s sister, for instance, has a recurring role as the daughter of one of Hercules’ Argonaut friends, and Gina Torres appears as Cleopatra in the Xenaverse, and pirate/Sumerian queen Nebula in the Hercverse.

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My friend  godiyeva is the best enabler in the world when it comes to high tea – every time someone has a win, she declares it is high tea time, regardless of whether we can actually schedule an outing (sadly the school pick up times of our children makes tea a very difficult possibility). I think this year we are several high teas behind, especially since I just found out that I won an Arts Tasmania grant for FURY, to go with my Australia Council grant. People really want me to write this book! I’m also excited that the excellent new Tassie YA writer Kate Gordon got a grant too – luckily we had already planned to meet for coffee tomorrow, now we can add cake to the menu! Celebration cake!

Meanwhile, my friend Kaia in Sweden only recently discovered that when Australians and Brits talk about having their tea, they don’t necessarily mean drinking a cup of this:

Instead, we mean eating an evening meal. The origin of the term is of course the nursery tea which involves cakes, crumpets, toast and jam, or sandwiches, served to the kids nice and early in the evening, possibly in the nursery with Nanny so the parents don’t have to make their oyster stew or roast whelk child-friendly (oh, how I sympathise). According to Jane Brocket in her splendid book Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, tea gets higher and higher the later in the evening it is, and you are allowed to add things like sardines or sausages and finally, if it’s eight o’ clock, you can call it supper instead and have bacon and eggs with it.

High tea, on the other hand, is best served in a fancy or old fashioned hotel, with pretty bite-sized desserts on a tiered cake stand. Our favourite in Hobart is still the one at Hadley’s, which offers scones on the top layer, pretty sandwichable savouries on the bottom layer, and delicious tiny cakes in the middle.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that tea in the TARDIS is automatically high, regardless of whether there are sardines involved. In fact, I would venture to say that this particular Tea is not only High. but Far:

2.12 Destiny

As far as best episodes of Xena ever go, this one makes a good case for itself. In the pre-credits sequence, Xena does her usual thing of trying to save a bunch of villagers (and Gabrielle) from some big meanies. Only this time, she manages to get herself seriously wounded. To the show’s credit, they don’t let her fall thanks to an ordinary fight, or an error in judgement.

No, to get the better of Xena it takes a massive great tree on a pulley system cracking her against another massive great tree.

In any case, she manages to give Gabrielle instructions on where to take her to get help (a mountaintop, that won’t be hard at all!) and lapses into unconsciousness.

As Gabrielle struggles to get Xena to her destination, we are treated to a flashback story about how Xena crossed over from a bad-ass woman with a mission to protect her village, to an evil warlord who cared about nothing but power and screwing people over and KILL KILL KILL.

Naturally, it’s because of a bloke.

At this point, if someone were describing it to me, I would be very annoyed that our major subversive feminist hero went to her darkest place ever because of a man. I might in fact want to kick, bite and break things. But we are not just talking about any man here. We are talking about (drum roll) JULIUS FREAKING CAESAR, thank you very much, and as the episode demonstrates, it’s not just any love story gone bad. It’s far more interesting than that.

My favourite Caesar anecdote of all times, made especially glorious in Colleen McCullough’s retelling in (I think) Fortune’s Favourites (a novel rumoured to have inspired this very episode), is about how as a young man he was captured by pirates. He not only demanded that they ask a much higher ransom than they originally intended, but also promised that he would come back and capture them all in return, and that when he did, he would crucify them honourably rather than selling them as slaves. They laughed good-naturedly, knowing he could never find their secret cove again, but he was true to his word, much smarter than they gave him credit for, and duly had them all executed.

In this version, Xena is the pirate captain. And Caesar is devastatingly charismatic, while at the same time giving the overall impression that he is a smug, privileged private schoolboy with delusions of grandeur. Caesar is played by Karl Urban. He is smarmy, irritating and supremely confident, and Xena pretty much wants to rip the clothes right off him. So she does.

[FAR TOO MANY SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE, COULDN’T HELP MYSELF]
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2.9 A Solstice Carol

I’ve talked before about the weird juxtaposition of Christian mythology in with the ancient Greek stories in Xena. Peter M Ball also singled it out as one of the aspects of the Xenaverse that jars badly. This episode is the worst offender, and it is the closest I have come to skipping one in this rewatch. I was determined to find some redeeming feature, though I figured a naked fish fight was too much to hope for…

What I did find was an answer to why, perhaps, the more Christian/Biblical stories of these early seasons don’t work. I think it’s because they’re just so BADLY WRITTEN. In particular, they tend towards sentimentality, as if they’re so desperate not to offend that they end up being like one of those awful moralistic made-for-TV Christmas movies.

In this case, we actually have a Christmas story, something I think was only done this once, and thank Ares for that. Apart from the substitution of language so we get ‘winter solstice’ instead of Christmas and ‘fates’ instead of spirits, it’s basically an amalgam of all those really bad 80’s holiday movies and Dickensian cliches, complete with ragged, good-hearted orphans, a sad old toymaker, and a mean king who needs to be taught a lesson. Yes, really.

At the episode’s lowest point, we have Santa Claus using a crossbow armed with candy canes, Gabrielle bell-ringing on the helmets of the naughty guards, an unhappy ex-wife forgiving her husband with very little reason to do so. Oh yes, and a gratuitous Mary & Joseph cameo.

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2.5 Return of Callisto
This episode is a real game-changer.

Gabrielle marries her childhood sweetheart Perdicas (yes we’re still forgetting what she said about him in episode one) and leaves her life with Xena to be a wife; meanwhile, Callisto escapes from her life imprisonment even nuttier than before, and goes on a fairly singular killing spree, leaving Gabrielle widowed after less than a day. Xena and Gabrielle fight over whether Gab can take revenge herself and ultimately Xena is the one who does it, allowing Callisto to die rather horribly in a swamp of sadness – sorry, quicksand!

There’s a lot of interesting material in this episode. Gabrielle is unsure about whether she is going to accept Perdicas’ offer of marriage, but his story of how he has tired of being a soldier-for-hire moves her, and later when she sees him freeze in horror after killing a man in a battle, she decides her answer is ‘yes.’ The irony is that Xena had to rescue Gabrielle in that battle BECAUSE Perdicas froze up – if we read this episode (which we are invited to) as being about Gabrielle choosing between two life partners, it leaps out at us that Xena’s competence in battle is what rules her ineligible for Gabrielle’s heart, even as she saves her life. Meanwhile, Perdicas on his knees staring into space is what makes Gabrielle go all soppy.

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A few key points of art direction as we groove our way into Season 2:

While the production team in Season 1 seemed to go to great lengths to avoid any night shoots at all (do we remember the scene in which Gabrielle & Diana lie down to sleep in the middle of the day?) this new season features night scenes in nearly every episode, as well as many more sunrise and sunset shots. This also leads to the iconic ‘full moon’ shot which used to cause me much merriment. It’s always full moon in Xena. Every single time.

Also, Gabrielle is now wearing her classic outfit which was to represent her character over the next two and a half years: teeny sage green top showing off midriff, low-slung plum suede skirt, fighting staff. I love this outfit of hers, which still sums up ‘Gabrielle’ to me and it took me a long time to come to terms with her later style changes, especially the cutting of her hair. It was an important change, though, marking her ascension from Xena’s junior assistant to her partner.

2.1 Orphan of War

This episode is notable for introducing us to Solan, Xena’s long lost son. It’s also the first time we hear the name of Borias, Xena’s lover and the father of her son, the warlord who turned his back on evil before she did, who will come to be such an iconic part of her backstory. Solan has been raised by centaurs, and while he takes pride in being the son of Borias he has no idea who his mother is.

It’s an interesting enough insight into Xena’s past, but the episode itself don’t have much to it apart from the scenes with Xena and Solan. There’s a shiny evil stone, one of Xena’s former lieutenants wants it, lalala. Disposable ep. (though to be fair the Ixion stone will be highly relevant in a major two parter within a year or so – but not a Xena one!)

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The internet is full of many wondrous things, and this is one of them.

(via i09)