written by Steven L. Sears - Co-Executive Producer
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 06
SD: Everyone’s having a great time with this episode - Xena versus Caesar and Pompey, Gabrielle picking up a javelin! Was it time to do another Caesar story?
Steven: We had talked for a while about doing a story roughly paralleling the real events in Caesar's life. When the war between Caesar and Pompey finally came to a head, Pompey had become the people’s choice in Rome and he gave Caesar an ultimatum - dismantle your army. This is historically correct. Caesar refused and so began the civil war. Pompey had more men, but Caesar had a more disciplined army and higher morale. I borrowed from two battles. The first was a stalemate and at the second one, Caesar decimated Pompey's forces. If we used the first one as a model, it would imply that Xena allowed Caesar to win a battle which none of us wanted to do. So we went for the stalemate and the battle of attrition between stabilized lines that characterized World War I.
Now, finding the heart of this story was the difficult thing. What I tried to key in on was that this kind of battle was something Xena does all the time. It's something Gabrielle has seen and been around, but what would it mean if she actually had to be a participant? What if there was a moment where she had to choose being what she normally is, which is someone who stays back and helps the wounded or actually had to say to men, “Follow me into battle, possibly to your deaths.”
There are two sides to Gabrielle in this episode. First, she took on the responsibility of saying she would lead these men. But there was still a part of her that did not realize people would die because of that. Logically she knew this might happen, but not emotionally. When she saw it happening on the field, that changed her. She's a different person now. Emotionally she is now responsible for people being killed and this has launched her into a spiritual quest that we're following this season.
SD: And, at the end, where she's saying, “I’ll tell Temecula it was a good day of fighting,” you can see she’s no longer certain of anything.
Steven: She’s seeing herself in Temecula. How do I explain this to him? How do I explain this to myself?
SD: That line, “a good day of fighting,”” what does it mean?
Steven: When you step back from a war, you can say, “Oh that was a glorious war.” When you're in the middle of it, the best you can say is that it was a good day of fighting. If you can say that, it means you lived through it. You're still alive.
Because this is a TV show with a hero, Xena's stakes have to have been met. And they were. She protected the land, got most of the people away to safety, Caesar and Pompey went back to Rome. The village was destroyed, but they could come back and rebuild.
When Xena said this to Gabrielle, she was trying to find any kind of explanation to take away the grief and pain Gabrielle was feeling. Gabrielle wanted desperately to feel better about what had happened. What Xena was telling her wasn’t harsh or cruel. She was just saying, with all this weight on your shoulders and that big gaping hole in your chest, you want to figure out why this happened and that there is something you can hold on to and say it’s wonderful and right, but it's not. The best you can say is that it was a good day - you're still alive even though others are dead.
SD: In “When In Rome,” all Gabrielle had to do to let a bad man die was ignore what she believed in. In “A Good Day,” in order to save a good man, she would have had to actively betray her beliefs by killing someone. So the question is, when she threw the javelin, did she miss on purpose?
Steven: Gabrielle firmly believes in the greater good, but she doesn't know how to implement it. She doesn't know how you attain the greater good. First of all, it's very subjective. What is good? When I first came up with this concept, what I was saying was that there are things worth dying for, things worth fighting for. But what follows, by extension, is that there are things worth killing for. She's extremely conflicted about this. The interesting thing is if Gabrielle were to have gone to the dark side and come back like Xena did. she would not have this conflict.
Xena has a moral standard that she follows. There's a phrase I once read, “You can't change the future, the future is set. But the past you can change anytime you want.”
SD: By interpretation.
Steven: Right. A hundred years ago, Custer and his men were murdered. Well, no, they weren't murdered. They died as aggressors. It depends on the interpretation. Looking back, you have to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Xena has a code she follows that she interprets a certain way. Gabrielle has completely eliminated that possible interpretation and that's causing her conflict. Because in the world she lives in, people die. And some people have to be removed, killed.
There were about 15 minutes cut from the episode. There was more to the dialogue between Xena and Gabrielle at the end. And part of it concerned Gabrielle's intentions when she threw the spear. In the beginning of the episode, Gabrielle knocked a spear thrown at her right out of the air with her staff. This was to set up the fact that she knew how to handle it very well. She had every intention of stopping that man from killing Phlanagus, but her heart choked and, at the last second, she pulled and it went off course. Logically she knew she had to do this, but emotionally she wouldn't allow herself to. It was a betrayal of her heart. And because of that, a good man died. The last thing I wanted to do was make a point that all Gabrielle needed to do was know how to throw a javelin and then everything would be fine. This goes back to “Dreamworker” where Gabrielle asked Xena to teach her how to use a weapon. You can teach anyone to use a weapon; that’s easy. But do they have the heart to use it?
SD: I noticed when Gabrielle led the charge into battle, she had a sword.
Steven: That was deliberate. There was a scene I'd written in an earlier draft that you didn't see. because we went straight to the battle, that explained this. Just before they're about to charge the wall - and there was a wall originally but we couldn't afford it. “Take the wall,” is what she yells - Phlanagus hands Gabrielle a sword. She says, “I don't want that. I don’t want to be in the position of having to kill someone.” And he tells her, “If the men don't see you with a sword, they won’t think you're serious. They're not gonna follow you. They want to know you are in it with them.” So when she leads the charge, she's swinging the sword as a rallying point. But as soon as she gets to the wall, she jams it in the ground and leaves it.
SD: Did Xena trick Gabrielle into leading the army?
Steven: This was another scene that was cut for time. When Xena and Gabrielle were looking out over the valley, Xena turned to Gabrielle and said, “Tell me what you see.” And Gabrielle answered, “Well, that dark line right down the center is where the armies are facing each other. This area over here has many fires and it looks like there's a lot of men there. But I'm willing to bet there's no one there. That dark area is probably where they are waiting.” Gabrielle is surprised at what she figured out and says, “Wow, I know a lot more about this than I thought. I must have picked it up from you.”
This was a test from Xena to see what Gabrielle had learned being with her. Xena's point is that once she takes Caesar and Pompey off the battlefield, she's not going to be there to lead the villagers and Xena needs someone who knows how both she and Caesar think to guide the men. Gabrielle says, “You're asking me to lead these men to their deaths. I can't do that.” At that point, Xena isn't mad at her, but resigned that her friend just can’t do this. Xena then told Phlanagus to listen to Gabrielle's advice, but she didn't know Gabrielle would actually decide to lead the men. And when Caesar's army pulled back and Gabrielle knew it was a trick, she made a command decision to stay and fight. That added another level to Gabrielle's guilt over the death of Phlanagus.
When Xena commented that “I've seen so many changes in you,” it wasn't just referring to since the beginning of the series. She was also referring to changes she never expected and Gabrielle's leading the army was one of them.
SD: What would happen if Gabrielle had to kill to save Xena’s life?
Steven: We saw at the end of “Sacrifice” that she would give up her own life to save Xena’s. And in “Crusader,” when Najara is ready to kill Xena, Gabrielle throws herself over Xena’s body to protect her.
SD: But if she died trying to protect Xena, that would still leave the bad guy free to then kill Xena.
Steven: I guess that question is still to be answered.
SD: During the burning of the village and the final battle scene, the real noises were removed and music and/or silence were substituted. It made it much more emotional. As if the space left by the removal of those sounds was filled by the viewer's emotions.
Steven: It was meant to invoke an internal mood. During the burning of the village, there were a lot of emotions going through Xena. She asked these people to burn down everything they've ever known and loved. At the same time, this is something she's done quite a bit of in her past, burning down villages. But never so antiseptically. Never just walking in and saying, “Burn down your village.” It had always been in battle.
SD: At the end, Xena says to Phlanagus’ wife, Nogalin, “Your husband gave his life for peace so that your son could live without fear.” I thought Nogalin might say, “I'll be sure to tell him that his father died for his village.” Instead she says. “When he asks me what his daddy used to do, I'm going to tell him he was a simple fisherman. That's what he was to me.”
Steven: For Xena to say that makes perfect sense. Not that he died gloriously, but that his life wasn't wasted. And it was just as logical for the simple peasant woman to say, “It wouldn't have been wasted if he'd just been a fisherman.”
SD: Does Gabrielle enjoy fighting? Sometimes it seems she’s having a good time swinging that staff.
Steven: When I watch Renee doing her staff work, she has two different ways of fighting. In a serious episode like “Good Day,” her feet are planted and her moves are very quick and precise. She has a very serious look on her face. During the comedies as in “Tale of Two Muses,” she does a kind of hop, jumps up and down like she's really anxious to get to the next bad guy. It's very playful. As if she's thinking, “I'm in a fight and I can actually defend myself, but no one's being killed.” It's more a reflection of the tone of the episode.
SD: Is there something similar with Xena and Lucy?
Steven: Xena’s got a whole bunch of different methods of fighting, but there are three that stand out. One is when she's given in, let go completely. One is where she’s very focussed. And the third is where she's just fighting the way Gabrielle does, just to get the bad guys out of the way. That's when you see a lot more personality on her face. She’ll roll her eyes or make a face. When she's focussed, she rarely smiles. She just looks straight ahead. When she's given in, is when she's smiling. She's given over to the dark side.
That's the look Ares likes to see. But totally giving in to that darkness is a safe place for Xena because it's what she’s used to. She knows that area. It's familiar and comfortable for her. It would be really easy for her to just slip back there and enjoy it. love it, revel in it. And you can see on her face when that happens.
SD: Was Xena ever under Ares’ control? Or is she someone he's always wanted, but never got?
Steven: This is an area we haven’t explored. After the death of M'Lila, she was basically a mass murderer. Ares came in later in the picture and we may be exploring that in the future. There was a certain point when Ares looked at Xena and said, “All this woman needs is a bit of discipline and I can give her that.” It was obviously after Solon and the Battle of Corinth. After that battle, Xena was lost. All the things Alti had told her had not come true. She lost her son by her own choice and she'd lost the man she didn't know she loved, Borias. This was the perfect time for Ares to step in and he did.
In an upcoming script, “Past Imperfect,” there was a line where Xena said to Borias, “We never had love, we had power and passion. We had lust and you confused it with love.” And then, later on, you can tell that she was confusing love for all those things. She was denying herself love, rationalizing what it could possibly be.
SD: Someone on the internet wrote, “Did you see the look of absolute despair in Gabrielle's eyes during the last battle scene? She looked around her seeing all the death and destruction and the look of horror in her eyes was chilling. Now Gabrielle knows the path Xena came from.”
Steven: I can't give away anything that's coming up, but she's on a spiritual search. And in order for that to happen, she has to have questions about her life and what it means to her to stay with Xena.
SD: Does a good soul have to turn bad just because they learn to live in the real world?
Steven: The truth is, somebody who's idealistic and really believes in goodness, but doesn't understand the reality of the world is someone we don't hear much about because they die young. The people who understand what it's like, who know how to deal with reality and still keep the ideal of goodness, they're the ones who accomplish things. A little bit of cynicism is not a bad thing. Otherwise people will use you, manipulate you.
SD: At the end of “Dreamworker,” Xena gives words of wisdom to Gabrielle. At the end of “A Good Day,” Xena is still trying to comfort Gabrielle. But at the end of “A Family Affair,” neither one can help the other. Gabrielle's been looking to Xena for guidance and now she’s realizing Xena doesn’t have all the answers she needs.
Steven: At one time, Gabrielle had Xena on a pedestal. Xena could do no wrong and what she said was absolutely true. She's stepping down from there. It's not a position Xena ever wanted. The first time Gabrielle ever said to Xena, “You're wrong,” she realized Xena was human with human fallings. You don't see an idol that way.
This is the direction we're moving in right now. We're setting them up to have questions. In the first two seasons, we dealt with obvious issues. Now we're dealing with people issues and that's harder to explain and harder to rationalize. It's more of a challenge. And trying to find all those levels and get them into 43 minutes is really difficult.
SD: There seems to be more of a division between the comedic episodes and the dramatic ones this season.
Steven: That's the philosophy we've had, to be honest. We’re doing so many dark episodes, that if we didn't do some really funny comedies, it would just be a depressing series. And you can't do camp in a serious episode. One of the things we’re known for is our campy style. We make fun of ourselves. We're breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience and letting them in on the joke. We come up with certain lines or actions that will mean something to regular viewers of the show. Like Joxer in “Been There, Done That” saying to Xena, “Is that a hickey?” Most people will think it’s a funny remark. Others will say, “Did you see the look on Gabrielle's face?”
SD: In “One Against An Army,” Xena said to Gabrielle, “Even in death we will be together.” Yet, in “Crusader,” Xena was arranging to leave Gabrielle behind with Najara and in “Locked Up And Tied Down,” Xena gave herself over to life imprisonment. She seems to be making a concerted effort to leave Gabrielle.
Steven: There are two ways to look at it. One is that when someone says something like that, it's with the purest intentions. When you said it. you believed it. But it was based on the situation at the moment. If things change, it doesn't mean they were lying.
The other way of looking at it is that Xena is saying, “Spiritually you've become so much a part of me, there's no way you could leave me.” It's more an affirmation of the bond between them. Gabrielle has affected Xena so much that Xena is a completely different person because of that. And Xena has affected Gabrielle just as strongly.
SD: And you could say that now Xena is trying to leave Gabrielle because she’s trying to escape her belief that Gabrielle will die if she stays with her.
Lastly, I’ve been thinking about the line from “Sins Of The Past” when Gabrielle said to Xena, “You’ve got to take me with you. Teach me everything you know.” Boy, is Gabrielle getting more than she bargained for!
Steven: That’s true. That was Gabrielle's naivete. “Teach me everything you know” - she didn't realize what that meant. She looked at the surface: “You're a neat fighter. You don't take guff from anyone. This is great.” Xena never wanted to be a mentor. But by the mere fact that Gabrielle wanted to learn, she did learn. She's now learning the responsibility that comes from having that knowledge. It’s a case of “Wow, you really know how to use that sword. Teach me, too.” And Xena tells her, “I can show you how to use it, but you've got to understand why I use it. You've got to know the baggage that comes with this skill.”
SD: Xena particularly did not want to teach Gabrielle her life. As Xena said when she gave up her son, “If he stays with me, he'll learn things a child should never know.”
Steven: Which, by the way, may or may not have been a mistake on Xena's part. Xena for a long time tried to protect Gabrielle from the darkness. That may have been a mistake because, inevitably, she couldn't do it. If Xena had taught her back then about the darkness, maybe Gabrielle would have been more prepared when it finally caught up with them.