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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1.21 – The Greater Good

We’re getting to the pointy end of the season now, and it’s clear that the year has had a powerful effect on both Xena and Gabrielle. This episode answers the question of how far Gabrielle has come under her mentor’s tutelage, and whether she could actually replace Xena. A poison dart weakens Xena, and eventually kills her, and Gabrielle has to literally don her armour to pretend to be Xena, to save a village from warlord attack. This leads to a very cute riff on the famous panning-up shot of the opening credits, as she armours up with rather less elan than we are used to.

This is a powerful episode, particularly from the performances of Xena, Gabrielle and Salmoneus. While Salmoneus is mostly a comic relief character in Hercules, his most powerful serious moments have been in episodes with Xena – first in the Herc episodes that introduced her character, and then in his two appearances in this season.

The death of Xena (first of many) is quite gut-wrenching and almost believable. Though of course, she gets better through sheer force of will.

1.22 – Callisto

It could be argued that this episode is the point when Xena (the show) completely comes into its own. For the next two seasons, one character would dominate. A great hero needs a great nemesis, and Callisto is the final piece in the puzzle that makes Xena a fantastic piece of heroic fantasy. I have a friend who loves Xena but basically is only interested in watching the Callisto episodes. It’s hard to argue with that!

When we first see Callisto, she is laying waste to a village, and calling herself Xena. Later we discover that as a young girl, she lost her family under Xena’s sword. Xena’s evil past is literally coming back to bite her, and Callisto is determined to make Xena suffer – not least by becoming a monster herself, and one whose every crime can be blamed directly on the warrior princess. The “I made you” villain/hero relationship is a classic – think the Joker and Batman in the first Tim Burton movie – and it works viscerally for Xena’s nemesis to be a waif-like blonde woman.

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1.17 – A Royal Couple of Thieves

If you love Bruce Campbell, and you have never seen his Autolycus, you are seriously missing out. His King of Thieves, a character that originated in Hercules, is a pleasure to watch – he flirts and steals his way through life like a dark version of Errol Flynn and while he is fun in Hercules, he takes on a new dimension when performing opposite Lucy Lawless. Their interactions are so sexy and fun, and her tolerance for his foibles is far more entertaining than the same moralising stance coming from Hercules. He also brings out her devious side, and the fact that neither of them can entirely trust each other seems to be something that they really enjoy.

1.18 – The Prodigal

Even more than with the clip shows, the production team behind Xena developed a tradition of pulling out all the stops when it came to a “Xena-lite” episode, and almost all of the Gabrielle-solo episodes make my favourites list. This one has Gabrielle returning home to Potidaea to lick her wounds after she freezes and panics in the middle of a fight. Once there, she is faced with the anger of the sister she left behind, and also a crisis situation as her home village is about to be attacked by a party of warlords.

The village have solved the problem themselves, pooling all their money to hire Meleager the Mighty, a warrior with such a reputation that his mere name strikes fear into the heart of wrongdoers. Unfortunately, Meleager turns out to be a washed up and drunk old has-been. Gabrielle manages somehow to repair her relationship with her sister, to train and coax the village into defending themselves intelligently, and to restore Meleager’s faith in himself. And of course, she earns a new respect for her own capabilities and what Xena has taught her.

That all sounds very worthy and po-faced, but there’s some great humour in this episode too. The actor who plays Meleager carries the different sides of the character off very well, and he has an entertaining rapport with Renee O’Connor. Willa O’Neil, playing Gabrielle’s sister Lila, is touching and funny as well, and was understandably brought back, time after time.

I have to give a mention to the awfully dubbed pan pipe playing at the beginning of the ep, and the equally badly dubbed whistling without pan pipes at the end. Even when she’s PRETENDING, Renee is obviously tone deaf. Which only gets funnier later with the musical episodes…

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1.13 Athens City Academy of the Performing Bards
Gabrielle is tempted by a cute boy to enter a storytelling contest in the hopes of fulfilling her dream to attend Bard School. There are hijinks.

Oooh AND we find out how Xena and Gabrielle have been surviving. Xena might not sully herself with money, but Gabrielle earns a few dinars storytelling in a tavern.

Basically this is a clip show, but right from the beginning, the Xena production team (and later, Hercules) embraced the challenges of a clip show, making them more batty and ingenious each time, and I swear spending more money on them than any other episode. This one doesn’t quite reach those heights, but it uses clips from Steve Rees Hercules movies and Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (yes, Spartacus) to illustrate the stories that the boys tell, indispersed with Gabrielle’s own illustrated stories of her life with Xena, and is lightweight but enjoyable. The script cleverly uses bits and pieces from the Hercules episodes that introduced Xena’s character as well. Ultimately though, it’s a clip show, and nowhere near the brilliance that was to come only a season later to justify the format. But let’s move on, shall we…

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1.9 Death in Chains.

Oddly this is almost exactly the same story as the previous episode, except that it’s the goddess of Death in chains instead of Prometheus, and instead of healing being offline it’s the opposite – thanks to greedy King Sisyphus, no one is dying, even the old and mortally injured. As with other fairly average episodes of this season, this one is mitigated by Xena showing off her heroic chops. Also there is a gang of bikie undead warlords led by the amusingly named ‘Toxeus’. Less awesomely, this introduces the ongoing trope of a dull Gabrielle love interest dying tragically. Well, tragicallyish.

Continuity issues: Gabrielle is wearing a tight little Amazon-style number instead of her usual more modest get up, which she will be back in next episode before Amazoning it up.

1.10 Hooves and Harlots

I love the development of the Amazons as characters and a culture in Xena, combining Maori tribal elements with traditions from Greek myth to create something that feels modern and historical at the same time – and this episode which introduces them is particularly good, featuring some interesting female characters and some kick-ass dance & fight sequences. The editing and filmwork is also excellent, which is saying something for a story with CGI centaurs (the ones in Hercules always looked pretty bodgy). The plot itself is another repetition on a theme, this time the “two families/nations on the verge of war – twist ending, it’s a third party causing the trouble because war is profitable for them” that we last saw in The Path Not Taken.

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1.5 The Path Not Taken
Xena has to go undercover with her old warlord pals to save a princess and stop a war – luckily the bush telegraph passes information along pretty slowly between members of the Secret Society of Warlords. She also gets to make smoochytime with Marcus, a dear “friend” from the past.

The aspect that most jumped out at me in this episode, which is all about the contrasts between Xena’s old and new lives, is her statement to the prince who wants to hire her that she does not work for money. This is a theme that comes up again and again, and in the scenes with the warlords, we see why. Their world is all about victory and profit, and Xena wants none of that. Which begs the question – how does she eat? We often see she and Gabrielle eating in taverns, etc, and she usually has some (though not a lot) of money. While I recall several instances of her refusing or charitably disposing of a reward, though, I don’t remember any of her actually taking (however modest) payment. She seems pretty determined to keep to an oath of poverty – indeed, it’s usually Gabrielle who is in charge of the purse. I’ll be keeping an eye out for further evidence of how the Xena economy works as the series progresses!

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Yes, my reward to myself for… oh, something or other, mostly having money in my bank account for the first time in months, was the Big Ginormous Xena Boxset. It’s so shiny! I’ve been rather longing for a proper Xena rewatch for some time. So here we go, in order, from the top.

1.1. Sins of the Past
They manage to pack quite a lot into this episode. It’s rather clever in that it is basically a sequel to three linked episodes in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys from the year before, and yet there is no mention of Hercules or the fact that he pretty much set her on the road to redemption with his Magical Wang. Instead, we see Xena trying to deal with her decision to give up her warlording ways, and the various ramifications of this as she tries (not overly successfully) to change her spots.

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