written by Steven L. Sears - Co-Executive Producer
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 04
SD: Gabrielle’s dead.
Steven: There you go. And my response to people who say Renee is at work in New Zealand right now is that we know there’s more than one character Renee can play.
SD: Was this story always going to be a two-parter?
Steven: It started out as a two-parter. Then we wondered if it might be done as a single episode and then it became a two-parter again. The story was treated very much like two separate episodes with a continuing line. We wanted to end the season with Hope being reborn and looking exactly like Gabrielle and Gabrielle dying. We already knew what the ending of the first part was going to be. That was Gabrielle stopping Xena from killing Hope. There were a lot of things that carried through both episodes, but, aside from the character arcs, there were two different mechanical plots going on. The first was trying to destroy Hope before Hope could be unreleased.
SD: Before she could be reborn?
Steven: Right. The second was to thwart Hope from gaining her dominion - from killing all those people and getting her powers.
SD: You have written yourself into quite a hole - no pun intended.
Steven: What will happen in season four will make sense. In our particular world, we have so many obvious outs and the one that we’ve picked is not an obvious one. There is a resolution point that hasn’t been reached yet and it will happen in the next season. It’s not going to be as fantastic and mindbending as some people would want, but I know many people on the internet have been speculating on what might happen. And at least one person has gotten close to it.
SD: There’s a bit of discussion in this episode about what’s been going on between Xena and Gabrielle for the past season. They refer back to the problems they’ve been having. And Gabrielle seems to be really pensive and quiet.
Steven: She’s got her resolution with Xena, but Hope shows up again and what’s the reaction going to be? Gabrielle can’t ignore their past history just as Xena can’t. That’s why Xena was angry at Seraphin. Seraphin thinks Hope is this incredible goddess and this is the creature that killed Xena’s son. And there’s a certain part of Gabrielle that will always feel the guilt of bringing this creature into the world. And, at a certain point, she realizes what she has to do. When she reaches that point, the tension goes from her. She’s more accepting about things.
SD: And Gabrielle doesn’t tell Xena what she’s thinking because she knows Xena would stop her.
Steven: Right.
SD: When Hope was invented, was it planned to have her hang around the series for a while?
Steven: Yeah, she was a bit of an experiment. She has a lot of potential as a villain. We wanted to explore a different god than the ones we’re used to because the ones we’re used to have become too familiar. And there are a lot of things about Hope and Dahak which are still unexplained in our universe and we’re going to see a bit more of that. We want to expand the Xenaverse and we’ll also be doing more of that in the fourth season.
SD: One of the things I like about this show is that Xena and Gabrielle are not simply props to hang a new villain on. There must be some interaction.
Steven: Writers love that because it gives you the chance to give the regular character more depth when you explore new situations based on the baggage the character has already accumulated. If you take a look at Gabrielle in the first season and compare her to Gabrielle in the third season, there’s no way she is the same character. One is definitely a growth from the other. The danger, though, is that you become serialized and we probably went as far as we could this last season being serialized. It was a by-product of the stories we wanted to tell. There were episodes toward the end of last season that, if you hadn’t been watching from the beginning, you’d have to turn to someone and say, ‘What is this about.’ So, this next season, we will continue the growth, continue references to their past, but an episode will not be so dependent on a previous episode that you have to hear a long explanation to understand what is going on.
SD: In “Sacrifice I,” when I heard Ares say to Gabrielle, “You still owe me for getting you to Chin ahead of Xena.” I could imagine someone saying, “What’s a Chin?”
Steven: A new viewer could just sit back and accept that there was some sort of debt owed here, but they would miss the richness of it, the whole motivation.
SD: Ares wound up trying to protect Hope, but at the beginning of the episode, he wanted Hope dead. Dahak made him an offer he couldn’t refuse?
Steven: Since "The Deliverer,” Ares looks at the introduction of Dahak as being the end of his god system. He truly believes Dahak could possibly destroy Ares’ world. As Xena pointed out, just as Ares and his cohorts did to the Titans' world. When Dahak appeared to Ares, Dahak said, "Come work for me." Now, Ares has a no-lose situation here. If Dahak wins, then he’s right there with the big guy. If Dahak loses, what’s Ares going to lose? The other gods would be mad at him? They’re always mad at him. Ares doesn't lose anything.
SD: Why does Dahak want to be bothered with Ares?
Steven: Ares is a tool. For one thing, Dahak needed Ares before Hope was born. If Ares had not shown up, Xena would have killed Hope. Then, later, we find out that Hope likes Ares. There’s also the idea of knowing your enemy. Having one of the gods on his side gives Dahak a better chance of defeating the other gods. Dahak definitely has a very sophisticated plan.
SD: And then Ares mates with Hope to bring about the first of the Six Destroyers.
Steven: In Ares’ mind, this was a good plan. You think about any two kingdoms that might possibly war against each other — how did they prevent wars? They would marry the daughter and son of each of the kingdoms and have children. That offspring would unite the kingdoms. Ares thinks that if he and Hope mate and she has a child, his father-in-law won't get rid of dear old dad.
I took the idea of the Six Destroyers from the Biblical Armageddon. If you’ve done any reading of Revelations or Armageddon, you hear reference to the beast with six heads. There's much you can draw on if you're into Biblical theology or popular mythologies of other cultures and I've drawn on a lot of it.
SD: And Dahak is from Zoroastrianism?
Steven: Yes.
SD: I hadn’t thought about Ares and Dahak being equal. I thought Dahak was a more powerful god.
Steven: There's a lot of Machiavelli in Dahak. Machiavelli wrote a treatise on holding power. Machiavellian means cutthroat. There’s no personal consideration — you hold on to power. If you’ve got a strong opponent and a weak one, Machiavelli states that you never ally yourself with a stronger opponent because once the two of you beat the weaker one, guess who’s next?
SD: You!
Steven: Right. If you combine your forces with the weaker one, you can defeat the greater one and then you can still defeat your weaker partner. Ares made a mistake, but, quite honestly, it was the only thing he could do because he initially offered an alliance with Xena and she turned him down.
SD: I was wondering why Ares didn’t ask any of the other gods to join him against Dahak. Why did he turn to Xena? Aside from the fact that she's the star of the show!
Steven: Let’s assume that Ares amasses his army, attacks Hope, and wins. Where does that put him among the gods? It puts him very high because he defeated the threat to their power. If he lost, he definitely would have turned to the other gods and said, “I need your help.” But he was not going to ask for help — he is the God of War. And Xena was going to be his ally in leading the army.
SD: Are we ever going to see more of the back story of Ares and Xena? I’m intrigued with Ares’ remark, “I gave Xena her focus.”
Steven: There are two things that make Xena an incredible adversary. One is that she has this focus. Things do not distract her. And it’s never been determined exactly where that came up. Ares did give it to her. She had hints of it along the way. But we haven’t seen the actual episode where that is ingrained in her. I don’t know if we ever will. But it’s assumed that that was Ares' gift to Xena.
The other ability Xena has is that she has an uncanny ability to be inside the head of her opponent. This is true for any great general in history such as Patton, Alexander and Robert E. Lee. And it's not just that she can defeat someone on the battlefield, think about the effect that has on her opponents. Every move they make, she counters them. She’s inside their mind. And, by the way, we're dealing with that concept in an upcoming episode.
SD: I’ve heard that Dahak is going to be in Hercules next season. The writers on both shows must have to keep an eye on what the other show is doing when characters cross over.
Steven: I will be having a meeting with Liz Friedman to discuss Dahak on Hercules since he was created in an episode I wrote called “The Deliverer,” and I did a lot of research on him even though he doesn’t appear until the end. But we have to keep the continuity going. We can’t do it all the time. People who watch both shows will catch those things we miss. For the most part, we treat Xena as its own show, but we have a big brother who shares the same universe.
SD: As when Callisto and the story of the burning of her home town of Cirra by Xena was used in Hercules' “Armageddon Now.” They told a story that didn't match what was set up on Xena, but it didn’t matter because it was in a different timeline and, at the end, everything reverted to normal.
Steven: Right. It had to be something that didn't violate the integrity of our Callisto story. If “Armageddon Now” had been the truth, if Callisto had killed her own family, then it would have invalidated every Callisto episode that’s been done on Xena. The whole strength of the Callisto character is that she’s not wrong. She’s absolutely right! And she has lost any perspective of emotion on it now. Up to the point where she was killed.
SD: What is it with rocks and Callisto? She can transport herself from one place to another, but she can’t get out from under those rocks that are always falling on her!
Steven: It's a convention of using the Earth. If you go back to "The Xena Scrolls,” Ares was imprisoned in Earth — inside a cavern. It’s a very esoteric allusion to the Earth Goddess.
SD: I thought I was going to stump you with that one. (laughing) It’s one of those things that you could just say, “It’s a Hollywood thing. We needed to get the god out of the way for a moment.” But you actually based it on something.
Steven: We have to do that. The bottom line is you're dealing with gods. You can give them powers that are so incredible that how do you ever have them in an episode? You can’t defeat them. It’s ridiculous to think that Xena could defeat somebody who’s an all-powerful god. So, an all-powerful god cannot be all-powerful. There have to be weaknesses. And one of the conventions is to bury them. But it’s only short-term. It does not last.
SD: I was thinking about a line from “Maternal Instincts” - “As Xena goes, so goes the world.” That seemed to be rearing its head again in this episode.
Steven: I’ll tell you what that’s an allusion to. We’ve already alluded to the fact that Xena’s here for a purpose. That M’Lila’s form (in “Destiny”), whatever it was, wanted her back. Solan wanted her back. Mostly because of the love she had for Gabrielle. But there was a reason Solan was able to do this. There’s a power behind Solan. Xena serves a purpose — without heroes, what does the world become? Without Xena, without Hercules, in a very metaphorical sense, what does our world become?
SD: It becomes what happened in “Armageddon Now” when Hercules wasn’t born. Look what happened to Xena. That’s an idea of what the world would be if there wasn’t that particular hero.
Steven: That’s the idea — without Xena, so goes the world. And the two characters, interesting enough, work from different perspectives. Hercules is a demonstration of the good that can be done when you are a good person. Xena does good things, but not just because they’re good. She has more of a struggle going on inside herself than she ever has with the rest of the world. I think that between the two of them, Hercules and Xena, they send a very good message. Too many kids look outside of themselves to justify who they are. And the key is to look inside yourself and be comfortable with who you are. There’s an innate goodness I think we all have and we get corrupted by the exterior.
SD: Why choose one of Gabrielle's childhood friends to be the Priestess of the Blood?
Steven: Connectivity. There's a commonality between “The Deliverer” and “Sacrifice.” It’s a personal message of my own and it has to do with cults. How we fool ourselves and how we can be fooled. In “Deliverer,” you saw Gabrielle go through it. If you listen to everything Seraphin says, even when she admits that some people will die, she is absolutely justified. And without the previous knowledge about Dahak and Hope killing Solan we have from earlier episodes, you can’t argue with her. If you watched this show without knowing anything that came before, the only reason you would believe that Hope was evil is because Xena says so. One of the things I tried to be very careful with Seraphin is that nobody could turn to her and say, “Seraphin, you're being an idiot. This creature is going to kill.” Because she would say, “I know. Believe me, we’re not stupid.”
Xena says, “These are the dispossessed — the people searching for answers.” It goes back to other people telling you, other people giving you candy so you'll believe. And you’ve got to have the strength to look at the greatest gift anyone can offer you and say, “You're not doing that for my good.”
SD: Did you notice the extra dressed in the first season Gabrielle peasant outfit outside the hut that the villagers had trapped Gabrielle and Seraphin in?
Steven: I saw it. It wasn't an inside joke. There were very limited styles back then.
SD: (laughing) Right. How is it possible that Xena can kill Hope by running a sword through the cocoon?
Steven: Hope was in her vulnerable state in that cocoon. If you had any chance at all to kill her, that would be the moment. Which is why Dahak has Callisto there.
SD: And when that failed, Xena has to use the Hind’s blood.
Steven: The Hind's blood would have been a last-ditch effort on Xena’s part to try to kill Hope. The real truth of the matter is the Hind’s blood was to keep Ares at bay. As soon as Xena gets the knife, she turns right on Ares because he’s trying to stop her.
SD: She was going toward Hope with the knife.
Steven: Hope is not like one of our Greek gods. She has a mortal self and that self could, theoretically, be killed. But how do you get past her powers to drive the knife into her heart. Xena’s hoping if the Hind’s blood kills Greek gods, then maybe it will kill Hope. Personally, I don’t think it will. But would any dagger plunged into Hope's heart kill her? Quite possibly.
SD: Who was the sacrifice in this episode?
Steven: The sacrifice is more of a sacrifice of heart. Xena was willing to sacrifice herself to make sure the world lived without Hope. Gabrielle was willing to sacrifice herself to make sure that Xena lived and also kill Hope. At the beginning, it seemed we were talking about Seraphin. Joxer’s sacrifice is allowing himself to be captured and beaten to get the dagger. Ares is sacrificing a bit of who he is by allying himself with Dahak.
SD: The little pig at the beginning — was it Porkules (title of a Hercules episode)?
Steven: It was my tribute to Porkules. I knew we had a pig and I thought it would be funny. But the point I was making is that it looked like Callisto was going to fry the pig. She points at it and you think, “Oh my God, the pig is gone!” But Callisto just says, “Go away.” This Callisto only has one death in mind and that’s her own.
SD: Here’s a quote from someone on the internet: “No one noticed that Seraphin had grown approximately 7" taller and two breastplate sizes between the first ceremony and the second (when Xena took her place).’’
Steven: Actually, that wasn't unthought of. We decided that was covered by the mask and robes. We’re not completely oblivious to our inconsistencies. And I'll honestly say there have been things that people have pointed out when I’ve said, “I have no explanation for that.” But we try to come up with a reason and if it's good enough, we move on. You can't let things like that get in the way of a good plotline. (laughing)
SD: Someone suggested that Callisto should have gone into the Temple of Mnemosyne (from “Forget Me Not”) to forget her past.
Steven: Just forgetting is not “nothing.” Callisto wants oblivion. She tells Hope’s priest, Werfner, that she wants nothingness.
SD: Did Callisto want to die at the end or had she finally found a reason to live as she said? I thought I saw a smile on Callisto’s face as she was dying.
Steven: Callisto was not happy when Xena killed her. That would mean Xena was manipulated and that was not what happened. When Callisto said, “Now I have a reason to live,” she meant it. The smile was an appreciation of Xena’s victory. But, on a deeper level, there's a bit of Callisto that appreciates who Xena is.
It's the thing that Callisto's been attracted to. There is something about Xena that Callisto doesn’t necessarily aspire to, but Callisto has resented. It is that innate spark of goodness that Xena had as a child that she lost when she was evil and that she’s trying to regain now. Callisto has no understanding of this.
SD: Now about that part of the story where we have Xena jumping off a cliff to save Seraphin. She just knew there was a vine hanging there?!
Steven: Xena reacts to save life and, if you slowed everything down, as Xena’s launching herself through the air, she's already committed to the action. Once she’s committed, she’s looking around saying, “What are my backups?” You could say that as she’s walking along, she unconsciously noticed the grass and roots. Xena has an instinct as a warrior. She doesn’t walk into a room without knowing all of the potential threats. She could say, “This person's a threat, this person is not.” She knows where the doors and windows are at all times. She knows everything that could be made into a weapon and how quickly people could get to them. It's something she wishes she could lose, but it’s come in handy.
SD: The staged argument Xena and Gabrielle had in front of Seraphin seemed so cruel to Gabrielle. Was Xena oblivious to Gabrielle’s feelings.
Steven: No. This was planned off camera. Xena would have said, “Seraphin has to believe you’re coming around to her side.” And Gabrielle would have told Xena to say whatever she had to to make it convincing.
Two things: One — Gabrielle had to sell the idea that it was a real argument. Two — it is a real argument. Because everything Xena says really is true. So that hurts Gabrielle, but it was all for the benefit of Seraphin. So Gabrielle’s reactions are honest and they hurt Xena. When Xena comes back and says, “You almost fooled me,” it’s because Xena knows that was a true spot. You might say that even during the argument there was concern on Xena’s face. I think many people were fooled at that point. Certainly viewers who saw the earlier episodes might have thought Gabrielle was betraying Xena again. When I wrote that scene, I wanted the casual viewer to absolutely believe it. It was a key source of misdirection to keep the audience from guessing where the scene was really going. You have to play the scene totally legitimate.
SD: There was a very poignant line by Xena to Gabrielle talking about Seraphin: “That's the funny thing about people. Just when you think you've got them figured out, they show a completely different side to their character.”
Steven: That is a very Xenaesque comment about life in general. What was missed by Xena at that moment, is the impact it has on Gabrielle. It’s an honest, innocent remark Xena made to try and help Gabrielle out of her problem with Seraphin without realizing she was actually…
SD: ...stabbing Gabrielle right in the heart. And that look on Renee’s face!
Steven: Those words came back to haunt Xena. She never expected Gabrielle to do what she did at the end. It’s a foreshadowing of that.