OK, I guess I have to start my comments on Devi by declaring a conflict of interest... or something of the sort. My family is half Indian, and although I've only ever spent a few months in India myself, I inevitably look on Indians as "our lot", as it were, and on India as more some kind of alternate or spiritual homeland than just another foreign country. And all this inevitably colours my reactions to an ep like Devi... the result of which will probably be that I'm even more picky than usual, and that I tend to meander off topic to an even greater degree than is my wont. Sorry... and I'll try to do my best to constrain myself!
So - did I actually like this ep? Well, at least the first time through, I rather got so caught up in the details that I missed the wood for the trees. After a couple more viewings... yes, I quite like the ep. I actually think that, despite trotting out a lot of clichés, and incorporating quite a few nits to be picked at, on the whole they handled the Indian setting very well. And the plot and characters... well, they interested me and held my attention. If I'm not utterly enthusiastic about the ep, I guess there are a couple of things that hold me back. Firstly, the dynamic between Xena and Gab is getting a bit repetitive - there's a limit to how many times you can hinge major scenes in an ep on what is essentially the *same* interaction between the two principle characters... at some point they're going to have to make some connections or grow beyond this. And secondly, although the ep interested me and amused me, nothing in it really moved me - the *great* X:WP eps do... they cover all the bases: they amuse, they grip, they stimulate thought, they illuminate moral issues, and they move me - they stir the feelings, the passions. Daughter Of Pomira did all that for me, which is why a would call it a great X:WP ep, even though I had plenty of nits to pick, and some serious doubts about a few points in the script. Devi, OTOH, whilst perhaps richer and more sensuous as entertainment, lacked the moral and emotional dimensions to make me see it as great. But still, a good ep, would be my overall feeling. (Although there were some points in Devi's script that troubled me somewhat as well, especially on repeated viewing...)
And off we go, for the usual wander through the details, if you choose to accompany me...
***
To continue the chit-chat about Indian music, which I started with last week... the ep opens with music played on probably the best known Indian instrument of them all, the sitar (its name, historically, means "seven strings" - but it doesn't actually have seven strings). It is, of course, a plucked string instrument, and its special timbre comes mainly from the fact that there are a bunch of unplucked, unfretted "passive" strings underneath the main strings which resonate according to the harmonics of the notes being played. The sitar is accompanied by a drone on the tanpura (an instrument similar to the sitar, but simpler, completely unfretted, and used only to play the same four notes over and over again, with resonant harmonics, function somewhat like the drone on a set of bagpipes, but more complexly), and by the "tabla" drums, which are a marvellously versatile instrument in their own right (two drums, played with the fingers, each speaking differently, depending where and how it is struck, one a base drum, and the other a treble, which is tuned according to the dominant note of the melody to be played). The voice that joins in with the opening music after a while is singing the "sargam" - i.e. the syllables sung are the equivalent of the western do, re, mi, etc. This form of singing is common with Indian classical music... sometimes intervals of improvised sargam singing are interspersed between the singing of poetic verses. The syllables of the Indian scale are Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa - however the intervals between them vary according to the Raag being used, and not all notes are used in all Raags...
*
Gab's first comment is "India is so different... and yet there's this connection too." I wondered what she meant by that... why does Gab feel that she has a 'connection' with India? I would have thought, coming from ancient Greece, that India would have seemed extremely alien to her...
*
Gab and Xena certainly look like tourists at the start of this ep, wandering round gawking, and oohing and awwing, almost as if they just got off the plane... And TPTB really did manage to roll out just about every cliché in the book about "exotic India" - let's see, we got an elephant, some firewalkers, snake charmers, a bed of nails (presumably belonging to a fakir, though I didn't actually catch sight of him)... they even made the performance of the "famous Indian rope trick" a central feature of the plot. All the norms of the comic book version of India... but then I suppose that's fair enough, up to a point - it is, after all, a "fantasy" show!
*
Interestingly enough, despite the fact that I'd assume everything was shot in NZ, they really *did* succeed in capturing the feel of India to a considerable degree - I had no trouble believing I was really seeing India, especially in the opening, establishing scene, and the other outdoor scenes in alleys and market squares etc. Even the light looked right!
*
So Gab is doing yoga every day now (so she says) - is this a carry over from Aiden? (But he never called it "yoga", did he?) Perhaps she found another teacher. You'd think she'd feel a bit awkward about it if she only learned about it from Aiden...
*
Another new Indian instrument is introduced when Eli appears, and it's another of my personal favourites - the sarangi. This is a bowed instrument - i.e. it's played by sawing a bow across it, like a violin or cello, producing saw-tooth waves. It also has passive strings, like the sitar, and this, plus its very different soundbox, gives it a very different tone from the violin, closer to the human voice (and indeed, emulation of the human voice is widely considered to be one of the greatest aims of Indian instrumental music...)
*
It's interesting that Eli the magician should have an assistant called "Maya". "Maya" *means* (in a sense) "illusion", and most specifically is used in Hindu and Buddhist teachings to refer to the whole physical world...
*
After the rope trick, Eli says that all he does is perform illusions - so if the rope trick was an illusion, how the heck did he do it? I've heard about it, but I've never seen it done myself. Taken as a conjuring trick, his version was certainly extremely impressive...
*
Despite my occasional complaints I was actually quite impressed with the presentation of this ep - it had some very nice little touches... for example, when Maya was climbing up the rope, and paused a moment to take a mouthful of something from the woman on the balcony - that just struck me as *so* Indian! Obviously one or more people involved with putting this ep together had some real familiarity with the subcontinent...
*
I would have been happier with Eli if he had seemed more Indian - the actor was fine in the role, but I'm afraid I couldn't for a moment actually see him as a native of India.
*
Xena seemed so girlish and touristy watching the magic show - somehow it seemed a bit out of character for her (I'm not used to seeing the warrior really relaxed, especially not recently).
*
I must say I thought it was a bit disgusting when Maya fell back down from the sky in pieces - if this guy is a magician, I'm definitely not hiring him for my next children's party!
*
I thought Maya was rather fun - *especially* when she was possessed. I liked her faces, and her sword juggling.
*
Eli: "Be careful - something's wrong!" - definitely a candidate for the "No, shit, Sherlock!" award of the week!
*
BTW - aren't Indian clothes lovely? Take a look at Maya's costume, for example... the colours, and that fine gold decoration (admittedly the tailoring of some of the costumes was a bit unusual for India - but the fabrics and designs certainly looked authentic).
*
I nearly injured myself laughing at the cuisinart / watermelon trick! (And another mark for accuracy - the watermelon is grown extensively in India - although I couldn't speak for the history of this practice...)
*
That was a *most* peculiar trick when Xena sort of spun about her axis and flew at Maya - I've never seen Xena do *that* before. And it was even more physics-defying than most of her moves. Is this another Hong Kong borrowing?
*
When Xena flies at Maya, Eli says "Abba help me!" "Abba" is a somewhat familiar term for "father". In this context it would refer to a god. It's a not inconceivable thing for an Indian to say in such circumstances, although I can't say I've heard it commonly. Exactly *which* god the speaker might have in mind would depend on the speaker, and the circumstances... Indians often refer to female gods as "mother", but they're generally less prone to referring to male gods as "father"... With Eli I have no real idea - the only god he mentions by name is Rama, who is more usually addressed, now, through one of his avatars. Mind you, the Indian side of my family are Muslims, so I only know Hinduism as an outsider...
*
OK, I have a problem... when they figure out later what happened, Xena says that Eli expelled the possessing spirit from Maya "straight into Gabrielle" - so how come they showed us the white 'spirit thingy' taking off out of Maya and flying around? Admittedly is *did* come back and 'buzz' Gab - but it looked as if it went past her and rose again to me, rather than entering her. So... is this a case of the f/x people not being on the same page as the writer, or what?
*
I know Vikram was *supposed* to be rather a prat, but even allowing for the fact that he was meant to be irritating, I didn't like the way the actor played him, and I was quite relieved that he got offed fairly early on. For one thing, even though he *looked* the part fine, he didn't seem Indian, or more specifically, Indian priestly, at all. Now I realise that this need not be a problem - after all, Xenaverse Greeks hardly *seem* Greek. But you do need to make up your mind how things are going to be played - for example when Herc went to Ireland, all the Irish were actually played as Irish (more or less). Devi was inconsistent in this respect... whilst Eli and Vikram seemed totally non-Indian, the two people from the crowd who spoke immediately after Vikram's entrance ("It's her - she has the higher power!" "He's right - she beat the demon!") both clearly *were* Indian - and the contrast made Vikram stick out most incongruously, to me at least.
*
BTW, listen to how that guy from the crowd pronounces "Devi" - he says it right... something rather closer to DAY-VEE then to DEVVY. Almost all the featured actors (and some of the extras) mangled it horribly throughout... which, small point though it is, probably got on my nerves more than anything else in the ep. It did occur to me that perhaps someone had encouraged them all to use this odd pronunciation on purpose, to make it sound more like "devil".
*
And whilst we're on the subject, "Devi" simply means "goddess" (not any particular goddess, and not necessarily with any association with healing... and the word is also used figuratively and metaphorically, much like the English word "goddess", when praising females, etc...) This, of course, makes it rather awkward when later Xena says to Eli that he is the Devi... The masculine equivalent would be "Deva" or sometimes just "Dev" (as in "Jai Guru, Deva" - which means "Hail Teacher, God", and is the refrain of the Beatles song "Nothing's Going To Change My World" - although when I first heard it I thought they were singing "Jackarooday var"... and I wondered why). So the Hindu name "Devdas" means "gift of god", making it an exact cognate of Mozart's middle name "Amadeus" (in it's Latinised version, or "Theophilus" in the Greek version, which, I believe, is how Mozart was originally named). Sorry... wandered a bit off-topic there!
*
Xena: "I don't like the sound of this - I'm gonna get him outta here!" Gab: "I'll handle the crowd!" So... is this a new division of labour?
*
And how did Xena *know* Eli's box had a false back? Did she just assume it, because he was an illusionist? They'd have looked a bit dumb if it *hadn't* had another way out...
*
"So is she?" "What?" "Your friend, Gabrielle........ is she really a Devi?" I must say something else did flit across my mind here, especially given the *long* pause after "Gabrielle" ("No I'm not - but my girlfriend is...")
*
And this conversation was possibly the high point of the ep for persistently and egregiously mispronouncing "Devi".
*
Then Eli tries to hypnotise Xena. I had my doubts about this the first time I watched - Xena is a classic "bad hypnotic subject"... I don't think you could *ever* hypnotise someone like her - she has a kind of constant vigilance and suspicion, which, together with her divided and tension-filled self, and her strong self-awareness, would almost certainly make her completely resistant. I was thus very relieved when it turned out Xena was just leading Eli on, and wasn't really hypnotised at all (chalk one up to the writer for character consistency...)
*
OK, if Gab was already possessed after Maya was healed, how come she kept acting like her normal self for a while, and needed persuading to accept the role of Devi? This "possession" thing seemed to be handled a bit oddly... eventually Gab changed completely - but why did it take so long? Maya seemed to be completely taken over immediately. Are we perhaps supposed to see this as meaning Gab is stronger than Maya, and needs to be taken over more trickily and gradually?
*
Presumably Ravi (the "eye guy") was meant to be some sort of demon all along, helping to put over the deception. Incidentally, he was another one who was played by an actual Indian and who pronounced "Devi" properly - listen when he says "Praise to our Devi" when he first meets Gab. (I'm sorry... I told you - this really bugged me!)
*
Nice sitar music again when Eli is trying to hypnotise Xena...
*
When the crowd are all chanting "Devi! Devi" this is another good example of the right pronunciation, since most of the extras were apparently Indian. But then Vikram wanders in again, sounding more like a low-church Anglican vicar than a Hindu pandit: "Suffer not a demonizer among you!" Some slight consistency problems here...
*
OTOH, another plus was the architecture - those arches we see Gab through with the crowd are *so* typically Indian, right down to that peculiar blotchy griminess which so many things in India seem to have (which certainly conveys an Indian atmosphere to anyone familiar with India - although being really picky, arches like that in India almost definitely derive from the Muslim influence, which didn't arrive until way after the "Xena era", and even the griminess is probably largely due to modern pollution...) On the same lines, the paintings in the temple where Eli hangs out are in a style developed in the period of the (Muslim) Mughal emperors, 1,500 years or so after the time of Julius Caesar...
*
Now interestingly (well, perhaps only for me...) Vikram in fact pronounces "Devi" right when he comes to say it - probably because, for all his rather strange manner, the actor is of Indian origin, directly or indirectly...
*
It's also interesting (rather more generally, hopefully) that despite initially seeming bigoted and fanatical, Vikram is in fact the first one to be, quite correctly, suspicious of Gab's condition. But Xena still seems prejudiced against him (and honestly, so was I), and so doesn't take his warning seriously.
*
The shot immediately after Xena leaves the temple, after talking to Vikram, is clearly actual stock footage of India (well I guess it's just a single still, not even footage, really...) The architecture here however is most *definitely* Muslim, specifically Mughal, and so about 1,500 years before its time.
*
The trouble with this ep, when you come right down to the essential Xena / Gab interaction is... well, isn't this getting a bit repetitive? How many more Gab: "This is great!" Xena: "Gee, I dunno..." moments are we going to go through?
*
Gab says to Xena "I know that you had a spirit inside you..." Am I just getting absent minded here? (Quite probable at my age...) *When* did Xena have a spirit inside her? I mean they both became Bacchae in GJWTHF, but I don't think that counts. And Xena and Calli swapped bodies... but I don't see that counting, either. And Xena was inside Auto in The Quest, but not vice versa? So what *is* Gab talking about...?
*
Xena: "Gabrielle, there are spirits that are good, and bad. But they're smart, and sometimes you can't tell one from another!" I liked the vehement way Xena delivered this line. But what does Gab reply? Gab: "Whatever this is, it wasn't bad, Xena..." I mean they can only go on doing this sort of thing for so long before we all come to the conclusion that Gab is totally psychotic... and I reckon we're fast approaching that point now. And since when has Gab been dreaming of a life as a healer? Excuse me, I thought Xena was more the healer of the pair. The whole idea of dealing with the sick and injured seemed to be thrust quite unfamiliarly on Gab in first season eps such as Prometheus and Death In Chains... You could, I suppose, make the argument that Gab's obstinacy and self-absorption, which rise to a pathological point in this ep (i.e. she starts to seem crazy) are a function of her being 'possessed'. And I'm sure we are meant to see it that way, to some degree. But the scary thing is, these traits are very much part of the week-to-week 'normal' Gab, and can be traced all the way back to her early appearances (The Titans, anyone?) I'm in two minds - I can almost see the point of folks who theorise that somehow the spirit of Hope lives on in the Gab we're seeing now, and that her behaviour is TPTB preparing us for some denouement based on this. But then somehow this seems unlikely - there have been too many little intimate moments since Gab's return that seem very much the real Gab. (To say nothing of problems with Devi itself - Tataka possessing Gab who is already somehow possessed by Hope... I don't think so.) And even Gab's increasingly evident problems (stubbornness, wilful blindness, self-absorption, even something of a megalomaniac streak) seem to arise from roots that we've seen in the character since we first got to know her. I just hope (oops!) something happens soon to stem the growth of these trends - there's only so much I can take of a crazy Gab flying in the face of everything she's experienced and everything anyone (especially Xena) tells her, and persistently adopting various schemes to become some sort of saint, superwoman or deity. Get a clue Gab, and work on being human...
*
I was confused by the business where Gab goes out onto the balcony, Xena looks after her, then Xena turns around and Gab is on the bed... was that just an awkward edit, with the scene where Gab gets up taking place at a totally different time (which is what I mostly think)? Or was Gab meant to have teleported, or Xena to have zoned-out, or something?
*
I *really* don't like that little way Gab smiles when people bow down and worship her... it gives me a very bad feeling about her character flaws (maybe that's why I have so much trouble with gods - who could really admire someone who wanted to be worshipped?)
*
They did a great job of misdirecting suspicion towards Eli... I liked that. It makes the ep more interesting when it isn't obvious where everything is headed, and who is to be trusted and who isn't.
*
I quite liked the bit with Gab's 'bodyguards' vanishing and then the demon dogs appearing. It seemed somehow appropriate to the kind of demonic goings on involved. And the dogs were fairly successful in effects terms - by relying mainly on real dogs, with just a little in the way of CGI enhancement, they created more sense of real menace than the sometimes rather hokey pure CGI monsters often do... If you're being picky, though, you might complain that if the bodyguards were supposed to have turned into the dogs, then there should have either been more bodyguards or less dogs...
*
Incidentally, what the heck happened to Maya?! *Everyone*, including Eli, seemed to utterly loose interest in her once she got unpossessed in the opening scene...
*
The streets that the dogs chased Xena and Eli through looked very Indian too... They surely don't have alleys and buildings like that naturally occurring in New Zealand - so were these all sets? Or did they actually do location shooting? I have to say, if they did build and dress all this, I'm impressed!
*
The trick where Xena swung herself and Eli up over the dogs by her whip was, of course, absurd - the whole nature of *swinging* on a rope is that the middle point of the swing is necessarily lower than the ends... whereas in this case, they rose and then descended. I'm starting to think that Xena enters some sort of Escher-space when she performs her stunts... And did Xena just abandon her whip hanging from that architectural whatnot?
*
I wasn't entirely clear *what* was supposed to have happened when Eli appealed to Gab to free him from the demons and then levitated... having seen the whole ep and looking back, I still have trouble making sense of it. Was this all a trick by Eli to get away? But then why did the demons stop pursuing him and let him get away with it?
*
I liked the singing during it anyhow - more great classical Indian vocals! I'm *so* glad that Loduca chose to use classical Indian traditions and excellent Indian musicians in the music for these eps!
*
OTOH, Eli's "Praise the Devi! Praise the Devi!" really got on my wick... Sorry, it's that pronunciation again - "Devvie Does Dallas", anyone?
*
I must admit that when Eli first started talking about Tataka I had no idea what he meant - actually at first I thought he said Gattacca (sp?) like that movie. I do have a passing familiarity with the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic about the exploits of the god Rama, but I didn't remember Tataka's name at all, and neither did a couple of the purely Indian members of my family. However, Tataka does play a moderately significant role in that epic. She is a 'hideous she demon' who is killed by Rama. Perhaps significantly the argument is made that killing her was an acceptable thing to do because removing her from the world was for the greater good, similar to driving out a possessing spirit from a body. However, although she is *compared* to one, there doesn't seem to be any suggestion that she actually *was* a possessing spirit (although the whole idea of 'possession' is definitely very well established in India and of great antiquity). And all the descriptions I could find of Tataka portrayed her as a hideously ugly ravening demon, rather than a cute blonde wearing pearls... Perhaps the most obvious problem with borrowing the character Tataka from the Ramayana is that her main function in that epic is to get *killed* - she is done with, removed from the world... so using her in a "sequel" is a bit moot - but then TPTB have never bothered about *that* sort of thing, have they?
*
As an almost entirely random aside, "tataka" is also a Japanese word, meaning "battle" or "war".
*
Gab was certainly pretty impressive in her "pearly queen" outfit. And that little pavilion she was in, with the flowered branches hanging down around it, was *so* Indian - if all this was done without location shooting, the set-dressers did a *tremendous* job!
*
"I mean, underneath all this, I'm still me..." Errgh... Gab...
*
So Gab asks Xena why she has the Ganges water - why doesn't Xena just tell her? This seemed entirely like willful misunderstanding brought on by a bad case of script writers to me. And the whole "Ganges water burns in the hands of a priest" thing sounds more like a borrowing from a bad horror movie than any Indian tradition (although admittedly some Indian traditions do sound a bit like bad horror movies...)
*
"Why is this so hard for you to accept?" Well all I can say is, Xena really *must* love Gab a lot... to put up with this crap over and over again and never even loose her temper. Of course, I guess she owes Gab a few... But you know, maybe that's Xena and Gab's problem - maybe they need to have good, honest, screaming row now and then, before the tensions build up too far and someone gets hurt. If so, they've come to the right place, in my experience - there's no one like the Indians for screaming at one another, especially their family members!
*
When Xena is fighting Ravi in the temple (after he attacks Eli) that music is *not* Indian... I'm not sure, but I believe it's probably derived from the Bulgarian tradition that Loduca so often uses on X:WP.
*
And after Eli kills Ravi with the holy water (which I guess was the whole purpose of that plot point...), this is where Xena says that Eli is the Devi (somewhat unreasonably, as I already noted... but perhaps he's a goddess inside).
*
Lovely little melody on the Shehnai (double-reed pipe) when we cut back to the sleeping Gabrielle.
*
What Gab is wearing when Xena wakes her is an Indian 'blouse' - the garment that is worn underneath the sari... and incidentally for Indian women to sleep in a blouse and petticoat is indeed very common. Come to think of it, the BGSB itself looks very like an Indian blouse. And didn't the yellow blouse that Gab was wearing here look very like what she had on in that supposed "short hair" holiday greeting video that was posted (it was so blurry that I couldn't tell whether her hair was actually short or just tied back...)
*
Whatever we were supposed to believe about Gab's condition and self-presentation before, by this point she is clearly deceptive and actively up to no good... So what about the night before, when she disarmed Xena by crying at her - was that deception too? I find this "possession by degrees" thing a bit hard to make sense of... I mean it's hard to accept that Gab was instantly totally possessed - because then all that "Why can't you see what I'm feeling?" business would have had to have been the demon talking, not Gab... and it felt *so* Gab. But then if she *was* possessed slowly, by degrees, to the point where she could deceive Xena whilst dispatching assassins - then shouldn't the real Gab at some point during this process have sensed this evil thing taking her over, and struggled, or somehow tried to signal Xena? Somehow this whole thing seems rather put together for convenience of presentation, and not to stand up too well to close consideration... Anyhow, now apparently Gab's spirit is who knows where, and Tataka is in control.
*
When Eli is running through the woods (which BTW, are most un-Indian - un-Greek too, for that matter) the music is back to the Bulgarian gaida pipes which we know so well. Actually the Indian and Bulgarian musical influences seem to blend together quite well...
*
The whole "icon for the exorcism" thing made no sense at all to me... an icon is an image (especially a religious image) - from the Greek Eikon, meaning "image". How can a quill be an image?
*
I'd have been happier if they'd played Tataka a bit more forthright and tough - her sort of po-faced gracious act was a bit too uncomfortably reminiscent of the bard we know...
*
And they didn't seem to be able to make up their minds how to pronounce Tataka, either - sometimes it was Tataahka and other times Taahtaka... I don't actually know, but I'd suspect all the vowels are short, in fact.
*
I wonder why ROC as Tataka didn't wear a proper sari - a single length of cloth wrapped around over the petticoat with the end brought up and round over the shoulders or the head. Perhaps they found it too awkward (although plenty of Indian women work in fields, on building sites, etc. in them...) Instead she wore a sort of "pseudo sari" - basically a skirt, a blouse, and then a separate piece of cloth over the shoulders and the head, which looked rather like the end of a sari, but which wasn't attached to anything, and which she discarded when she started to fight. (Whereas Indian women have ways of tucking the sari in to fight, or do similar things...)
*
*Really*! Xena is getting beaten up by *everyone* this season! And now it's Gab's turn (oh sorry... Tataka's - and it was Tataka who licked the skin off Xena's face too - but it sure looked like Gabs). This is starting to get upsetting - constantly seeing Xena pounded and tortured.
*
But after it all, was Xena about to fail the "Hercules test"? (BTW, I assume everyone noticed that this was another example of TPTB using every plot idea they come up with on *both* shows these days - reuse, recycle, waste not, want not...) So... had Xena actually given up and made the decision to terminate Gab for the greater good? It sure looked like it - but would she really have gone through with it? I mean I know Xena can be decisive, and she's prepared to commit to a course of action, if it's necessary, however difficult, e.g. trying to kill Hope, even though she'd been told that she'd certainly die herself if she succeeded. But then Hope was moving along fast with a plan to take over the whole world. There didn't seem to be any very pressing reason why Tataka had to be dealt with immediately. So, the exorcism plan failed... couldn't Xena have just run away, lived to fight another day, and come up with another plan (gone to fetch a priest, for example - India's full of them)? Why would Xena force a fight to the death with Tataka? I don't claim to know the answer to this one. Perhaps she thought she wouldn't be able to get away (but she didn't really try, did she?) Or perhaps she was just *mad*... but hopefully that wouldn't have taken her as far as actually killing Gab / Tataka. I wasn't very comfortable with all this frankly... I don't like it when I can't really connect with how Xena's acting. I guess I'd go for a combination of "she was fighting for her life" and "she was mad"... but then I don't think she actually have completed the kill.
*
Putting the pinch on Gab's body so that Eli could do his stuff seemed like a good idea. I thought it was quite clever to have Tataka try to use Gab to deceive Eli ("The power you seek... it's a lie!) - and I suppose this would tend to reinforce the idea that Tataka was knowingly "imitating" Gab in order to deceive Xena earlier... But to what extent? Was Tataka in control when Gab was talking of dreaming of being a healer? And what about when Xena said they should do yoga together, and Gab realised she was testing her - was *that* Tataka? And if so, how come she didn't fall for Xena's trick? As I say, the whole "possession by degrees" thing left me confused and uneasy...
*
And Eli is back to appealing for help from "Abba" when he drives out Tataka at the end. That one didn't feel right to me... more like a Christian appeal. Come to think of it, "Eli" is hardly a very Indian name!
*
And Xena was so caught up in the whole thing that she nearly forgot to take the pinch off Gab (the elapsed on-screen pinch time was actually one minute and thirty two seconds, BTW - *considerably* longer than the nominal thirty seconds!)
*
And some more really nice sarangi music for the marketplace shots at the end...
*
I have to admit I was rather uneasy with the concluding mutterings about a "stronger power" for good, and not being alone... too much like a cross between monotheism and Star Wars for me (and I'm afraid I'm no big fan of either).
*
And at the very end, Gab had her staff back, but she was still wearing her 'pseudo sari' get-up... so is this going to be her new outfit, pro tem?
***
So who was who in Devi?
Not an awful lot to say, since most of the cast were new to the Xenaverse, and don't appear to have too much in the way of other credits either.
Timothy Omundson, who did a good job playing the magician with a secret, Eli, can be seen in Starship Troopers (a dreadful movie, I thought - the sort of thing that gets Science Fiction a bad name...), playing a Psychic. He also appeared in the Frasier ep Good Grief as the Director (he didn't direct the ep - he played a director in it). Timothy is an American, born in Missouri and raised in Seattle. He is apparently starring in a new Fox series called Medicine Ball (I've not heard of that one - medicine balls are those horrible heavy leather things they used to make you throw at each other in school, aren't they?) He played the recurring role of Dr. Joshua Levin on Seaquest, and has also done guest spots on Seinfeld (don't know which ep) and Legacy (in the ep Search Party).
Monroe Reimers, who played the ill-fated priest Vikram, has quite a few movie and TV credits to his name, but nothing I've seen, and almost nothing I've heard of... he had a small role in the movie Race The Sun, which starred Halle Berry, and he was featured as Bruno in the TV mini-series The Girl From Tomorrow, and its sequels.
The ep was written by Chris Manheim, whose previous writing credits on X:WP are for The Prodigal, Altared States, Remember Nothing (with Steven Sears), A Solstice Carol, Here She Comes...Miss Amphipolis, The Quest (with Steven Sears and R. J. Stewart), A Comedy Of Eros, Maternal Instincts, The Bitter Suite (with Steven Sears), King Con, Tsunami, A Family Affair (with Liz Friedman), and (of course) last week's Paradise Found.
The ep's director was Garth Maxwell, who previously directed Mortal Beloved, The Execution, Lost Mariner, Forgiven and Past Imperfect. He also directed the HTLJ eps Gladiator, All That Glitters, and The Sword of Veracity.
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The disclaimer was:
In memory of Women's Best Friends:
Bear
Dodger
Kali
Samanda
Taffy
Bear
And I've no idea what it means. Someone suggested these were the names of dogs, perhaps dogs of cast and crew that had died... which sounds reasonable.
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And what about the Herc ep, Just Passing Through?
Well by far my strongest comment about this ep, since it was thing that made the most impression on me, is that the feeble "rock video" in the middle was a crashing mistake! OK, I have no problem with them getting silly from time to time. But this wasn't just silly, it was *dumb*! It just didn't work for me, and it messed up the whole ep. Maybe it would have worked, in an ep that was some kind of musical spoof from start to finish. But in the middle of an ep that was otherwise functioning normally in the Hercverse version of ancient Greece, it just seemed too wierd... feeble lutes turning into electric guitars... and it wasn't even done consistently with Herc's character... and the music was bad... and it wasn't really funny...
Another weird thing... when I watched the show, at the point where Iolaus was talking to the red-headed boy in the hospital, their voices kept going off completely - that is, their mouths kept moving, but there was nothing but silence on the soundtrack. Was this some kind of censorship? And if so, can someone tell me what they were saying that my local station considered too shocking for the ears of their audience?
Apart from those two points... well, if you discard the rock video from consideration, I suppose it was an ok, middling HTLJ ep. It's always nice to see Autolycus, but I've been a bit disappointed by his recent appearances on HTLJ, and this was no exception - Bruce was fine, but the material was hardly inspiring.
On the bright side, I have no problems with the way Iolaus 2 is developing (although we can't really keep calling him that...) We'll need to see him doing more, in a serious ep perhaps - but I'm sure Michael Hurst is up to it, and I think he'll work out fine...
But how come they are *still* not saying anything about where Nebula, and even more particularly Morrigan went??
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And who was who in Just Passing Through?
The only really notable reappearance in this ep was Herc's enthusiastic suitor Lucretiana - she was played by Jodie Dorday, who has never appeared on HTLJ before, but is very familiar to Xena fans... Jodie first appeared as the dancing priestess, Io, in the ep Prometheus (and I must admit I found her annoying in this role). Then, in the role of Solari, she replaced Eponin as Ephiny's Amazon lieutenant (redeeming herself in my eyes), appearing in The Quest (where she sacrificed the pin of her bustier to Autolycus' escape efforts) and A Necessary Evil. She also appeared in Warrior...Priestess...Tramp, dancing and singing in Meg's establishment.
Bruce Campbell and Paul Norrell both of course have much to their credit, but I've discussed their résumés in the past.
The only other actor who you might recall from a previous ep was Simon Gomez, who played the Temple Guard, and who previously appeared as Saltar in the ep The Green-Eyed Monster.
The ep was written by Noreen Tobin & Gene O'Neill, who previously wrote Love Takes A Holiday, When A Man Loves A Woman, Armageddon Now, Part 2 (with Paul Robert Coyle), My Fair Cupcake, Twilight (with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci), Render Unto Caesar, and Let There Be Light. They also wrote the X:WP ep One Against An Army.
And the director was Charles Siebert, who previously directed Prince Hercules, Medea Culpa, Top God, and Reunions. He also directed the X:WP eps The Reckoning, Death in Chains, Ties That Bind, Orphan of War, Ten Little Warlords, A Comedy of Eros, and Gabrielle's Hope (with Andrew Merrifield). He can also be seen in person playing the role of Sisyphus in Ten Little Warlords, and he did the voice of Poseidon in Ulysses and Lost Mariner (the god of the seas was, of course, visually presented as a CGI effect).
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The disclaimer was:
Autolycus' intestinal tract was well lubricated and, consequently, was not harm or blocked during the production of this motion picture.
