She Was Xena - a Mighty Princess

I left the previous column on a bit of an unintentional cliffhanger. Would I go back and watch Xena or would I leave it as a (sometimes) fond memory? The answer, as you could probably have guessed, is that I did go back and watch "Sins of the Past" - the episode which introduced us to the newly good Xena and her soon-to-be special friend, Gabrielle.

I have the first season on DVD. Not the new boxed set - the original (two-part) DVD release. This set is infamous for a massive screw-up by the DVD company. Episode 1 is, by and large, followed by Episode 2. That is customary in all but the most complicated shows (stand up "The Prisoner"). Whoever planned the Xena boxed set made a basic error. They let a computer which couldn't count do it. So 1.1 was followed not by 1.2 but by 1.10. Episode 1.2 was positioned after episode 1.19 and the series ended with episode 1.9 rather than episode 1.24 (which instead sat between 1.23 and 1.3).

It was incredibly weird to watch Xena again after all these years. It was all so very familiar but familiar to the degree that every word, look, kick and beard was already etched into a distant part of my brain. It was as if I only watched it last week and not, as is likely the case, in 2002. It wasn’t simply that I knew what was going to happen because I know what is going to happen when I watch Yes Minister or listen to the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was rather a weirdness akin to going back to your old school.

The first fight set the tone of the series. It was one woman against an army, the kicks were high, the stunts were outrageous, physics was ignored and Xena won without suffering so much as a scratch. There is one spot where she plunges a spear into the ground and spins round on it, knocking down the hoard of warriors circling her. If you’re going to be fantastically ridiculous, do so as early as possible. That way no one can feel duped or offended by it. Luring people in with down to earth, gritty realism and THEN presenting a woman spinning round a spear kicking people and giving them just enough time to get up before coming round to them again and kicking them a second time would lead to much shaking of heads and cursing a wasted hour.

The theme of the episode is Xena - fresh from a three-episode arc in Hercules which portrayed her as an evil warlord (warlady?) who became so disgusted with herself and her followers that she joined forces with Herc and donned a white hat - tries to go home and be forgiven. At least at first she isn't planning on becoming a superhero. She wants to give up the fighting and become the village girl she was meant to be. But when she reaches her village she finds the locals - who were tricked into supplying troops for her army, most of whom ended up dying in Xena's quest for power - unwilling to forgive or forget. When her mother disowns her she gets the message and prepares to move out.

Luckily for her, a warlord of old acquaintance is planning on raiding the village and slaughtering all within its walls. Redemption takes the form of a one on one battle with the warlord (of which more later because it is magnificent) and a hug from mummy. She’s offered the booty which the scared villages assembled in an effort to bribe the warlord but turns it down because she’s not that kind of gal any more.

And so to the fight. It is a scaffold match with the loser being the first one to hit the ground. They fought with staffs and at first it is two people bashing each other with sticks – think Gladiators but without the camp – until the scaffold starts giving way. Rather than this being the end of the fight, it is only the beginning. They step off the crumbling wooden structure and continue the fight standing on the heads of the villagers who had come to watch. At one point Xena even uses her staff as a vaulting pole and plants it firmly onto the head of a yokel, propelling herself forward and leaving him with the mother of all headaches.

I can’t do justice to the battle – if "The Night of the Sky Walkers" put you off scaffold matches (there’s a reference for the teenagers) here is one to restore your faith in above-ground combat. It is fast, it is furious and it is funny. This was the fight which made me sit up and think this show was cool.

The worst part about the episode is the dialogue. There is barely a line in the whole script which isn't corny. Neither of the show's leads were experienced enough in film or television to overcome the lines so their scenes do feel a tad embarrassing. Renee O'Connor is fine when she has to talk ten to the dozen to get out of scrapes but when asked to give lines real depth she struggles. Both the actors and the scripts would get better over the months and years and if we're honest, no one was tuning in for the dialogue.

So my overall impressions seeing it for the first time in years is that it does a lot of things very well and as a first episode it puts forward a very strong case for you to tune in next week. That said it is over a week since I watched it and I haven’t been tempted to watch episode two. I will therefore leave you with another unintentional cliffhanger – has my flirtation with Xena (I wish) ended after one episode? I’m fairly sure I won’t return to tell you.