written by Steven L. Sears
Interview with Steven L. Sears (Co-Executive Producer)
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 02
This episode looked like it was going to be a Xena/Caesar story including a battle between Caesar and Boadicea. But once the battle was set to go, the action shifted elsewhere and we never saw the outcome. And the explanation is…
Xena has an obsession about Caesar and in this episode that blind obsession cost her dearly. She was so focused on Caesar that she completely forgot Gabrielle. Dahak took advantage of that. Khrafstar took advantage of that. Xena was not paying attention to Gabrielle. The moment Xena realized Gabrielle was in trouble, she dropped Caesar like that! She realized what her obsession had led her to. All the people who were obsessed with Xena’s battle with Caesar and were upset when it didn’t happen - that was exactly my point. Gabrielle’s situation was lost in the shuffle. That’s what I wanted to show.
Another point I wanted to put out is how misleading the “one god” statement can be. Back then, Christianity, or One God, for much of the western world was a cult. Today we look back on a pantheon of gods as “they just didn’t know any better.” Back then, the pantheon believers were in the majority and they were looking at the “One God” people and saying “they just don’t know better.” And with Khrafstar, I played off that because you’re immediately willing to think “one god” referred to the Christian, Judaic, or Islamic “One God.”
Also, in many popular forms of monotheism, it’s not really a monotheism, it’s a duotheism because you have to believe in the good and bad. Everything people say about the Christian God applies to a Dark god. There’s a complete mirror - to the Christ, there’s an Antichrist, to the God, there’s a Satan. It’s the yin yang, it’s the Dark and the Light. You can’t express Light unless you know what Darkness is. Keep in mind you’re dealing with a god who can manipulate people because he knows what they react to. It’s the ultimate mindscrew.
So “The Deliverer” is about obsession. We liked Caesar so much as a villain that you manipulated us into a situation that mirrored Xena’s.
It’s obsession on both sides. Xena was obsessed with Caesar. Gabrielle was obsessed with this idealistic view of the world we all would love to believe could exist. And she was obsessed with it enough to believe everything Khrafstar told her because he was giving her exactly what mirrored her thoughts. Which explains why she killed Meridian.
Was it self-defense? I was very careful when I wrote that. It is to be only slightly ambiguous. If you look at the film, her hand moves forward. She doesn’t just hold the knife out. She could have easily knocked Meridian down. We’ve seen Gabrielle fight. We know she could do that. She saw somebody about to kill, a human being, an ideal. Khrafstar, in her eyes, expressed and lived these ideals; had actually experienced a transformation in his life. She looked at him and said this is what everybody should be. And when he was threatened, her thought was, I will do anything to preserve that ideal.
That’s the position Dahak put her in. When she made that choice, she was being seduced by the Dark Side. Satan does not come to you as an evil, ugly thing. Satan comes to you as what you most desire.
And if she had killed defending Xena?
If she had defended Xena, nobody, nobody would doubt her motives. No one would say she was seduced by the Dark Side. You would get yourself an episode where she was dealing with the fact that she had to kill someone and everyone would sit there and say, “Gabrielle, you had every right to. You saved our hero.” The point was that we wanted to put in a situation where she did not have a moral ground to stand on. She was seduced. And her obsession seduced her. Xena, however, has to feel guilty because she put her in that position. Or, I should say, Xena allowed it to happen. Because of Xena’s own obsession with Caesar.
You’ve got such turmoil building up in these characters now.
If every one of these episodes of the Rift were to play in one night, people would be a lot happier. Because our episodic mind tells us that sixty minutes is a complete episode and then it’s over. And we’re doing an arc. People say, “Gabrielle lied!” or “Xena lied!” Well, maybe we’re going to deal with those things later.
Liz Friedman said in San Francisco, “What makes you think there’s going to be a reconciliation?”
Somebody brought up the comparison to the end of “Dreamworker,” which I wrote. I borrowed a lot from that story because Gabrielle’s Blood Innocence was established in that episode. We underlined the difference between Xena now and the Xena of old at the end when they talk about throwing the rock in the water.
Xena: “See how calm the surface of the water is? That was me once. And then… (throws rock into the lake) The water ripples and churns. That’s what I became.”
Gabrielle: “But if we sit here long enough, it will go back to being calm.”
Xena: “But the stone’s still under there. It’s now part of the lake. It might look as it did before, but it’s forever changed.”
One of the things we bring out in an upcoming episode is that I can’t make you feel guilty. I can make me feel guilty, but you can’t do that to me unless I let you. What we’re gonna try to come to with these characters is a self-realization. Because what we’ve built until “The Deliverer” was an incredible dependence between the two. It is a great friendship, but there’s also a dependency. When one person becomes more independent, the other person can express that in anger. They don’t look at themselves and say, “It’s because I’ve relied on you for too much.” They look at the other person and say, “You let me down.” For people who think these are the dark episodes, I tell them the dark episode hasn’t aired yet!
At the end of “The Execution,” Xena and Gabrielle talk about putting people up on pedestals. It was obvious at the beginning of the series that Gabrielle put Xena up on a pedestal. But in the dialogue from the show, we see that perhaps Xena has done the same for Gabrielle.
Xena: “You put people on a pedestal, sooner or later they’re going to fall and your expectations fall with them.”
Gabrielle: “I put people on a pedestal?”
Gabrielle is on a pedestal. Xena is on a pedestal. And what happens when one person is not what you thought they were?