Xena: A Retrospective
(Firstly I want to apologise for the huge gap between updates, I had four family members die one after another and then I moved house and my Xena dvds were in storage, it was a very chaotic few months to say the least.)
Sins of the Past
Well Unchained Heart ended with Xena getting on a horse and riding into the sunset and, unsurprisingly, the first episode of her own series starts with her riding on a horse. Clearly some time has passed though, since she's wearing different armour and has put a weird plaited headband thing in her hair. While riding through a burnt out village, she has flashbacks to a bunch of soldiers shouting "Xena" at her, which intelligent viewers will realise means it's probably her name and that she's responsible for what happened here some time ago.
Then a kid enters and asks her if she has any food. She brushes him off and asks where his parents are, which would make more sense if she wasn't standing in the ruins of a village she ordered torched. My guess is that they're dead. The kid then informs Xena that his parents are on in the other side (DEAD!) and that Xena the Warrior Princess killed them while breathing fire and throwing thunderbolts. I think this kid might have been eating nut bread. Anyway, Xena guilty gives the kid some bread and cheese and rides off as though she can escape her past misdeeds by riding really fast. Incidentally that kid has suspiciously white teeth for a starving orphan.
Then Xena rides off into the woods, gets off her horse and starts stripping. Only two minutes into our first episode and she's already making with the naked! Oh, wait, she' stopped at her rather boring grey underwear slip thing. Oh she was only taking off her weapons and armour! I get it, she's trying to leave the SINS OF HER PAST behind!
But destiny cannot be cast off so easily, or even for a few minutes, as it's not ten seconds after Xena's buried her weapons and armour that she's in a situation where she's gonna need them again. A guy with a rather impressive plastic Mohican and his vicious thugs are trying to round up some village girls to sell as slaves. A plucky young blonde/redhead/strawberry blonde/lady in a bad wig volunteers to be taken as a slave. Yep, that's our first glimpse of Gabrielle and boy was that little house on the prairie outfit bad (at least it's not bilious green though). She's so plucky that she makes our bad guy (who's called Hector apparently) want to physically discipline her two seconds after talking to her (usually it's Joxer that has that effect on people).
Of course Xena catches the whip and opens up a can of whuppass so big that we only get to see reaction shots. Fight scene! And we hear our lovely leather lady's battle-cry for the first time. Gabrielle punches a guy and for some reason Xena is so intent on watching this that she gets hit from behind and falls down. Naturally she falls exactly where she had just buried her things and her would be killers get all their weapons chakremed to bits.
Xena disarms Hector with ease and says that's he's "with Draco", another name from her past. She says to tell him she said hi, which is sort of the closest Ancient Greece had to text messaging (l0l drak0 u suck0xrs brb).
Que beautiful but inexplicably Hungarian opening credits.
Now Xena is in Gabby's parents' house and being fangirled by Gabrielle. She is interrupted by her dad who asks Xena to move on and tells Gabrielle to hush. We also see Gabrielle's fiancé Perdicus at this point which establishes that Gabrielle isn't really happy in either her family or her sex life. She stays behind to talk to Xena and asks her to take her with her, which is a bit weird, because if Gabrielle's father knows that Xena is a bloodthirsty warlord, then Gabrielle, lover of all things story shaped would certainly know too. She learned that Xena is going to Amphipolis but Xena warns her not to follow, which I assume means she actually does want Gabrielle to follow her because otherwise she'd have said she was going somewhere, else right?
Cut to Draco's introduction (also with splendid plastic Mohican as well as being shirtless mmmm... where was I?) where he is demonstrating how badass he is by having men shoot arrows at him. He signs up the one that he didn't catch before asking Hector about his sore throat, which implied that Hector has already given his message in an earlier scene that we didn't get to see as Draco already knows about Xena.
Draco goes into his tent and is surprised when Xena enters behind him, probably because Xena seldom uses the door when entering tents. They have some playful banter that establishes them as old rivals and almost-but-not-quite lovers. Xena asks him to spare the village (Portadia) and Draco asks Xena to ride with him in return. Xena explains that she can't do that and that she's going home. Draco tells Xena that people like them can never go home, how he tried once and his own father almost killed him. The warning here is that Xena cannot escape the SINS OF HER PAST, however much she wants to.
Cut to Gabrielle and Lila's bedroom, where Gabrielle tries to sneak out of her room without waking her sister, sadly the laws of comic effect and plot device are weighed against her so naturally she falls over and wakes Lila up. Lila laughs at the idea of Gabrielle becoming a warrior and that's okay because she has no of knowing what her sister's abs will look like at the end of the series. Gabrielle says her farewells to sister and sneaks out her Definitely Grecian Bamboo Door, not bothering to say bye to the rest of her family or her fiancé, guess his feelings don't matter because he's not her One True Soul Mate, or whatever.
Cut to Xena crossing a bridge on her horse, it is now day so some time must have passed. She refers to her horse as "boy" but the wailing of a thousand Argo fans drowns out the continuity error. Xena is accosted by a blind Cyclops who she had blinded sometime in the past and she avoids him easily, making his giant trousers fall down (where do Cyclops and Titans get their pants from anyway? And where do they go potty?)
Cut to an underling telling Draco that Xena has been spotted. Draco tells him to take some men and cut her off at the pass ("Cut them off at the pass? I hate that cliché!") and start burning Amphibious, saying they are doing it on Xena's orders. Ooh, Draco, you bad bad boy, reinforcing the message that Xena can't escape the SINS OF HER PAST.
Cut to Gabrielle crossing the same bridge Xena was crossing earlier. Since she's not a mighty Warrior Princess and doesn't have plot sensitive arrow-catching reflexes yet, Gabrielle gets caught by the Cyclops and she has to talk her way out it (she's good at that). We will never see or hear from this Cyclops again, unless you count those Xena spin-off novels, which I don't.
Cut to Xena on horseback not wearing her breastplate for some reason, following Draco's men that were supposed to be following her, they kind of suck at that. She takes them out one by one until Hector is all that's left. Xena puts the pinch on him (for the first time!) and he spills Draco's plan. Hector's life expectancy is getting pretty low since he's been beaten by the Warrior Princess twice now and is just an underling.
Xena saunters off into the distance and we cut to a scene of a visually impaired cart driver coming across the prone body of Gabrielle. Didn't we just see this guy back in Hercules? They have a back and forth conversation about how Gabrielle wants to go to Amphipolis and the driver doesn't want to take her. This being Gabrielle she eventually talks the guy into taking her with him.
Cut to Xena (still not wearing her breastplate) riding pasty some wonky trees while our favourite nose flute music plays. Ooh a rainbow! Some village women are gathering the bountiful brown weeds harvest while singing Glede Ma Glede (which is actually Greek for a change). Xena goes into a tavern where she comes face to face with her mother who pulls her own sword on her daughter.
El gasp! Commercial break!
But Cyrene aint that much of a Warrior (unless it involves an axe) and she's only taken Xena's sword to confiscate it. She doesn't want to see Xena, even if she's there to warn her mother that Draco is going to attack the village. Cyrene won't hear anything Xena's got to say and the rest of the village blame Xena for the deaths of their family members in battle. Xena emotes some distress and leaves, without her sword.
Cut to Draco berating Hector for telling Xena their plan, he seems only vaguely put out about it, maybe he's grateful to Xena for pointing out how crap his lackey is. Draco makes Hector fight him in a duel while he is also giving battle orders. After getting whupped by his commander, Hector demonstrates a complete lack of learning ability and tries to kill him. Draco kills him with little effort or remorse, showing again that he is a tough cookie.
Meanwhile Xena sneaks back into her mother's tavern to get her sword and now that there are villagers around to look bad in front of she manages to have an awkward heart to heart with Cyrene. But of course it can't last as the other villagers arrive to tell her Xena that Draco's army is shouting her name. Cyrene washes her hands of her daughter and the villagers prepare to stone Xena (with stones). Xena mocks them and drops her weapons, prepared to take the punishment.
But before rock beats Warrior Princess, Gabrielle beats rock. She tries to talk her way out of things, but when the truth doesn't work she insists Xena is Draco's girlfriend and that they will get it big trouble if they pelt her with polystyrene prop rocks. But Xena doesn't warm to Gabrielle and tells her to go home, Gabrielle points out that she just saved her life and guilts Xena into giving her a lift.
Xena goes to visit the tomb of her Little Dead Brother (who will hear about a lot over the series as she feels guilty for his death). She has a monologue of sorrow over his body which Gabrielle totally subverts into a moment of dawning friendship.
Cut to a barn somewhere nearby where the villagers are meeting Draco. The Headman tried to bargain with Draco by giving him loot instead of attacking them. Btu Draco only wants Xena who happens to come in behind him at the most dramatically appropriate moment. Draco gives Xena an ultimatum because she can't ever escape the SINS OF THE PAST!
Queue the fight scene!
This fight scene starts on the scaffolding, something Hercules did once or twice but who cares. The villagers are suddenly on Xena's side even though they were totally going to stone her like ten minutes ago. The scaffolding is only bamboo so of course it falls apart and Xena almost falls off while Draco whacks her fingers. Cyrene looks upset but there goes the yiyiyiyi and Xena's back on form. This time Draco falls off and lands on some-one's head. They take the fight to the villagers heads for comic reaction shots. Draco nearly falls of but one of his men goes to help him back up, Gabrielle, plucky as ever trips him and Xena wins!
Xena makes Draco swear to leave the village alone while the Hungarian Chanting comes back in full strength. As he leaves the lackey that Gabrielle tripped tries to kill Xena for some reason and Draco knifes him, cos a deal's a deal. The dumb ass head man offers Xena the loot but of course only bad guys take the reward.
Cyrene and Xena have another heart to heart and Xena's forgiven. Xena leaves and starts a fire before finding Gabrielle in the bushes. Xena relents and lets her stay with her and the greatest subtext ever was born! Yaay!
Number of yiyiyiyis heard: 3
Number of Chakram throws: 2
Number of death pinches: 1
Episode Index.
Sins of the Past
Well Unchained Heart ended with Xena getting on a horse and riding into the sunset and, unsurprisingly, the first episode of her own series starts with her riding on a horse. Clearly some time has passed though, since she's wearing different armour and has put a weird plaited headband thing in her hair. While riding through a burnt out village, she has flashbacks to a bunch of soldiers shouting "Xena" at her, which intelligent viewers will realise means it's probably her name and that she's responsible for what happened here some time ago.
Then a kid enters and asks her if she has any food. She brushes him off and asks where his parents are, which would make more sense if she wasn't standing in the ruins of a village she ordered torched. My guess is that they're dead. The kid then informs Xena that his parents are on in the other side (DEAD!) and that Xena the Warrior Princess killed them while breathing fire and throwing thunderbolts. I think this kid might have been eating nut bread. Anyway, Xena guilty gives the kid some bread and cheese and rides off as though she can escape her past misdeeds by riding really fast. Incidentally that kid has suspiciously white teeth for a starving orphan.
Then Xena rides off into the woods, gets off her horse and starts stripping. Only two minutes into our first episode and she's already making with the naked! Oh, wait, she' stopped at her rather boring grey underwear slip thing. Oh she was only taking off her weapons and armour! I get it, she's trying to leave the SINS OF HER PAST behind!
But destiny cannot be cast off so easily, or even for a few minutes, as it's not ten seconds after Xena's buried her weapons and armour that she's in a situation where she's gonna need them again. A guy with a rather impressive plastic Mohican and his vicious thugs are trying to round up some village girls to sell as slaves. A plucky young blonde/redhead/strawberry blonde/lady in a bad wig volunteers to be taken as a slave. Yep, that's our first glimpse of Gabrielle and boy was that little house on the prairie outfit bad (at least it's not bilious green though). She's so plucky that she makes our bad guy (who's called Hector apparently) want to physically discipline her two seconds after talking to her (usually it's Joxer that has that effect on people).
Of course Xena catches the whip and opens up a can of whuppass so big that we only get to see reaction shots. Fight scene! And we hear our lovely leather lady's battle-cry for the first time. Gabrielle punches a guy and for some reason Xena is so intent on watching this that she gets hit from behind and falls down. Naturally she falls exactly where she had just buried her things and her would be killers get all their weapons chakremed to bits.
Xena disarms Hector with ease and says that's he's "with Draco", another name from her past. She says to tell him she said hi, which is sort of the closest Ancient Greece had to text messaging (l0l drak0 u suck0xrs brb).
Que beautiful but inexplicably Hungarian opening credits.
Now Xena is in Gabby's parents' house and being fangirled by Gabrielle. She is interrupted by her dad who asks Xena to move on and tells Gabrielle to hush. We also see Gabrielle's fiancé Perdicus at this point which establishes that Gabrielle isn't really happy in either her family or her sex life. She stays behind to talk to Xena and asks her to take her with her, which is a bit weird, because if Gabrielle's father knows that Xena is a bloodthirsty warlord, then Gabrielle, lover of all things story shaped would certainly know too. She learned that Xena is going to Amphipolis but Xena warns her not to follow, which I assume means she actually does want Gabrielle to follow her because otherwise she'd have said she was going somewhere, else right?
Cut to Draco's introduction (also with splendid plastic Mohican as well as being shirtless mmmm... where was I?) where he is demonstrating how badass he is by having men shoot arrows at him. He signs up the one that he didn't catch before asking Hector about his sore throat, which implied that Hector has already given his message in an earlier scene that we didn't get to see as Draco already knows about Xena.
Draco goes into his tent and is surprised when Xena enters behind him, probably because Xena seldom uses the door when entering tents. They have some playful banter that establishes them as old rivals and almost-but-not-quite lovers. Xena asks him to spare the village (Portadia) and Draco asks Xena to ride with him in return. Xena explains that she can't do that and that she's going home. Draco tells Xena that people like them can never go home, how he tried once and his own father almost killed him. The warning here is that Xena cannot escape the SINS OF HER PAST, however much she wants to.
Cut to Gabrielle and Lila's bedroom, where Gabrielle tries to sneak out of her room without waking her sister, sadly the laws of comic effect and plot device are weighed against her so naturally she falls over and wakes Lila up. Lila laughs at the idea of Gabrielle becoming a warrior and that's okay because she has no of knowing what her sister's abs will look like at the end of the series. Gabrielle says her farewells to sister and sneaks out her Definitely Grecian Bamboo Door, not bothering to say bye to the rest of her family or her fiancé, guess his feelings don't matter because he's not her One True Soul Mate, or whatever.
Cut to Xena crossing a bridge on her horse, it is now day so some time must have passed. She refers to her horse as "boy" but the wailing of a thousand Argo fans drowns out the continuity error. Xena is accosted by a blind Cyclops who she had blinded sometime in the past and she avoids him easily, making his giant trousers fall down (where do Cyclops and Titans get their pants from anyway? And where do they go potty?)
Cut to an underling telling Draco that Xena has been spotted. Draco tells him to take some men and cut her off at the pass ("Cut them off at the pass? I hate that cliché!") and start burning Amphibious, saying they are doing it on Xena's orders. Ooh, Draco, you bad bad boy, reinforcing the message that Xena can't escape the SINS OF HER PAST.
Cut to Gabrielle crossing the same bridge Xena was crossing earlier. Since she's not a mighty Warrior Princess and doesn't have plot sensitive arrow-catching reflexes yet, Gabrielle gets caught by the Cyclops and she has to talk her way out it (she's good at that). We will never see or hear from this Cyclops again, unless you count those Xena spin-off novels, which I don't.
Cut to Xena on horseback not wearing her breastplate for some reason, following Draco's men that were supposed to be following her, they kind of suck at that. She takes them out one by one until Hector is all that's left. Xena puts the pinch on him (for the first time!) and he spills Draco's plan. Hector's life expectancy is getting pretty low since he's been beaten by the Warrior Princess twice now and is just an underling.
Xena saunters off into the distance and we cut to a scene of a visually impaired cart driver coming across the prone body of Gabrielle. Didn't we just see this guy back in Hercules? They have a back and forth conversation about how Gabrielle wants to go to Amphipolis and the driver doesn't want to take her. This being Gabrielle she eventually talks the guy into taking her with him.
Cut to Xena (still not wearing her breastplate) riding pasty some wonky trees while our favourite nose flute music plays. Ooh a rainbow! Some village women are gathering the bountiful brown weeds harvest while singing Glede Ma Glede (which is actually Greek for a change). Xena goes into a tavern where she comes face to face with her mother who pulls her own sword on her daughter.
El gasp! Commercial break!
But Cyrene aint that much of a Warrior (unless it involves an axe) and she's only taken Xena's sword to confiscate it. She doesn't want to see Xena, even if she's there to warn her mother that Draco is going to attack the village. Cyrene won't hear anything Xena's got to say and the rest of the village blame Xena for the deaths of their family members in battle. Xena emotes some distress and leaves, without her sword.
Cut to Draco berating Hector for telling Xena their plan, he seems only vaguely put out about it, maybe he's grateful to Xena for pointing out how crap his lackey is. Draco makes Hector fight him in a duel while he is also giving battle orders. After getting whupped by his commander, Hector demonstrates a complete lack of learning ability and tries to kill him. Draco kills him with little effort or remorse, showing again that he is a tough cookie.
Meanwhile Xena sneaks back into her mother's tavern to get her sword and now that there are villagers around to look bad in front of she manages to have an awkward heart to heart with Cyrene. But of course it can't last as the other villagers arrive to tell her Xena that Draco's army is shouting her name. Cyrene washes her hands of her daughter and the villagers prepare to stone Xena (with stones). Xena mocks them and drops her weapons, prepared to take the punishment.
But before rock beats Warrior Princess, Gabrielle beats rock. She tries to talk her way out of things, but when the truth doesn't work she insists Xena is Draco's girlfriend and that they will get it big trouble if they pelt her with polystyrene prop rocks. But Xena doesn't warm to Gabrielle and tells her to go home, Gabrielle points out that she just saved her life and guilts Xena into giving her a lift.
Xena goes to visit the tomb of her Little Dead Brother (who will hear about a lot over the series as she feels guilty for his death). She has a monologue of sorrow over his body which Gabrielle totally subverts into a moment of dawning friendship.
Cut to a barn somewhere nearby where the villagers are meeting Draco. The Headman tried to bargain with Draco by giving him loot instead of attacking them. Btu Draco only wants Xena who happens to come in behind him at the most dramatically appropriate moment. Draco gives Xena an ultimatum because she can't ever escape the SINS OF THE PAST!
Queue the fight scene!
This fight scene starts on the scaffolding, something Hercules did once or twice but who cares. The villagers are suddenly on Xena's side even though they were totally going to stone her like ten minutes ago. The scaffolding is only bamboo so of course it falls apart and Xena almost falls off while Draco whacks her fingers. Cyrene looks upset but there goes the yiyiyiyi and Xena's back on form. This time Draco falls off and lands on some-one's head. They take the fight to the villagers heads for comic reaction shots. Draco nearly falls of but one of his men goes to help him back up, Gabrielle, plucky as ever trips him and Xena wins!
Xena makes Draco swear to leave the village alone while the Hungarian Chanting comes back in full strength. As he leaves the lackey that Gabrielle tripped tries to kill Xena for some reason and Draco knifes him, cos a deal's a deal. The dumb ass head man offers Xena the loot but of course only bad guys take the reward.
Cyrene and Xena have another heart to heart and Xena's forgiven. Xena leaves and starts a fire before finding Gabrielle in the bushes. Xena relents and lets her stay with her and the greatest subtext ever was born! Yaay!
Number of yiyiyiyis heard: 3
Number of Chakram throws: 2
Number of death pinches: 1
Episode Index.