Well I don't have too much to say in the way of over-arching meta-analysis of Key To The Kingdom - it wasn't exactly an ep that invited deep speculation. I thought it started out really funny, but then didn't really live up to its initial promise... still, I'm not complaining, much..
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I'm sure I've seen that "priceless porker" somewhere before... I'm probably being really dense! Somebody tell me - what was it modelled after?
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Err.. the trap protecting the "ruby" Auto stole looked *really* pointless! Why would you "loose a hand" - the spikes came down apart from each other, leaving plenty of space in between. Indeed it looked as if you could easily have just reached in and taken the jewel after the trap was sprung. And how did Auto manage to saw in from below - I thought the plinth looked solid?
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I quite liked the 'voices off' yelling "Oh, the ruby, it's gone!" "Oh, the ruby, it's back!"
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Unlike some, I'm personally thankful for Meg... at least it means that they can have an ep which gives Lucy a chance to explore her comedic urges without having to make a mockery of the character of Xena (as they did, IMO, in ISAIH)!
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So the secret of the key was shouted out by a "nubile guard", eh? A slightly odd usage... although giving that "nubile" basically means "marriageable", I suppose most guards ought to be nubile, in the broadest sense of application (I mean, if they weren't fit enough and of suitable age to marry, they wouldn't be much use as guards, I guess...)
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How come anybody in the Xenaverse always seems to be able to find a Xena costume whenever they want one? Are they off-the-peg items in all good ancient Greek clothing stores, or something?
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"We're villains!" (dum de dum dum duh!) Actually, this was the high point of the ep for me - the "bad acting" schtick had me in stitches - 'Xena': "This is a good day to die." Villain1: "Oh. No. It is the warrior, Xena!" Villain2: "What? Oh! What shall we do?" Villain1: "We must attempt to fight her." Villain2: "I will ram her through with my sword. Urgh!" 'Xena': "Now go away from this place and don't come back - or you will suffer the wrath of Xenerr. Raar!" Villains: "Urgh!" 'Xena' (to tax-collector): "Be not afraid - I'll not harm you. Take me to your leader! We've got some things to discuss..."
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And why was Meg making the sign of the deformed rabbit when she said "Be not afraid"? - Is this some sort of Thrassian symbol of peace?
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Unfortunately, saying that this was the high point of the ep implies that it was all downhill after that - and I'm afraid, for me, this was basically true... The rest of the ep was a bit on the ho-hum side - not awful, or anything, but rather pedestrian, with the plot somewhat mechanical and predictable, and too few moments that were really funny or really dramatic. I think, for me, this was the weakest of all the 'look-alike' eps - perhaps precisely because they didn't really exploit the potential of the swapping and confusion between the LL's, as they did so well in the earlier eps (IMO, at least - I know some people never liked the 'look-alike' eps at all - but I found some of the funniest moments came from Xena being put into the place of her alters, and vice-versa... so shoot me - I thought Big Business was hilarious too, and I'm not even much of a fan of Bette Midler or Lily Tomlin).
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I did like it when Joxer stuck up for Meg: "Meg has had a hard life, and she needs our help! Now I'm asking you as a friend - lay off her!" I've always supported the idea of Joxer and Meg as a match, since they seem well suited. But I'm not sure whether or not I can really see this ep furthering that agenda - it all seems very temporary and open-ended... So I've got a nasty feeling they're just going to drop Meg, and that the next time we see Joxer, he won't even mention her. I could be wrong - I hope I am, since I don't approve at all of this sort of cavalier and arbitrary treatment of characters. Why can't Meg and Joxer just find a kid (or two) to legitimately adopt (heck, with all the mayhem that goes on, there must be plenty of orphans who need a good home), and settle down to run an inn and raise their family... or something?
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I thought it was a bit hard on the poor pussycat when Auto threw the grappling iron out of the window!
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I have to admit I can see what people mean when they complain about Lucy's portrayals of Meg and of Evil Xena having quite a bit in common - but perhaps that isn't as unreasonable as it might at first seem. They both had "hard lives", in different ways, and a certain similarity between Evil Xena's psychopathic, feral madness and Meg's crazy bravado and slightly pathetic self-assertion, coupled, in both cases, with ill-hidden self-loathing, is perhaps not entirely inappropriate at all...
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OK, why did Gryphia conceal the fact that the baby had been stolen? How could she know that the thieves weren't ruthless villains? Was it just because she suspected that Meg, a woman, had made off with the child, that she covered up his absence?
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So now the Scythians make "double latch locks", eh? The last time we saw them, they were fearsome warrior riders, laying waste the countryside (until they got gippy tummies) in ISAIH.
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"Um. Well. Xena is this warrior. She goes around righting wrongs and s..aving people. It's all pretty sappy, but she seems to get her kicks out of it." Well summed up, Auto! (Well at least he skipped the "singing songs" part...)
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I liked Auto's come back in the dungeon, when the old man said he was trying to steal the crown and he was sure to fail: "Oh, and I was doing so well!"
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That thing Auto wore in the dungeon was a variant of the one Xena had in The Debt - they actually used those things in China... not sure about ancient Greece, though!
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I found the "Raising Arizona" thing a bit hard to take, to tell the truth. But then I didn't really like Raising Arizona itself. Don't get me wrong - I can sympathise with going gaga about babies... I'm onto grandchildren now, and yes, there's something almost more wonderful than anything in the world about giving your all for a child, and what you get back from them. But somehow this plot, and Raising Arizona itself, for me, had the leaden ring of pathos over exploited and the charms of quirkiness pushed too far.
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And what was with that child?? Sometimes it looked about 6 months, and other times it was more like a 3 year old! How many actual kids did they use? It looked like four or five different ones at least, to me.
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Of course, given that "the key" had existed for 20 years (as we were told several times), presumably this child never grew...
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Considering how well he normally fights, didn't it seem a tad odd that Autolycus couldn't hold his own against Meg?
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I could have done without the gratuitous Joxer abuse in the market-place, and I didn't really find the "baby in the chariot" thing particularly diverting. But then I have to confess, I always found the Three Stooges *utterly* unfunny - so I guess my sense of humour diverges widely from that of TPTB in some areas.
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So now we've had a "Joxer-drag"! These people certainly aren't afraid to take the p*** out of the controversies they create, are they?
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Talking of which, I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that this was absolutely the most Gab/ROC-lite ep ever - she didn't appear at all, not even as a disembodied voice, a vision, or an arthropod's head... and not only that, but she wasn't even mentioned once!
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Meg said "There was no one to love him, there was no one to hold him, no one to tell him stories - well I just reckon that's a lousy way to grow up!" But he wasn't "growing up" was he? I mean, he's been a baby for twenty years, apparently!
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"You gotta hold the back of the head..." Oh come on - this kid is crawling, and looks as if he should be walking!
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"My father, he died when I was really young.." Well he died the night she was born, according to her previous story!
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I suppose the "little lights" story was ok, as pathos goes...
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Twenty years they've been looking, and Ormestin and Kryptos never noticed that there was a large map printed on the baby's blanket?! Mind you, not that it looked as if that map would be much help in locating the lost door to the crown anyhow - it appeared to be basically a crude sketch of an island.
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And if they hadn't been able to find the darned place in twenty years, how come Ormestin and Kryptos and Co. turned up at the hiding place about 30 seconds after Auto and Meg and Joxer got there?
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I love the way Auto reaches round and produces this *massive* rope and grappling hook from out of his trousers - obviously he has very special trousers (a bit like Argo's saddlebags, perhaps...)
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But then we had to suffer through more bad Three Stooges schtick with the grappling iron...
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And what did we find watching over the crown of Athena?? Looked mighty like the Eye of Hephaestus to me!! Maybe Xena tucked it into Argo's saddlebags when she left, ready for when she needed to imprison Ares...
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OK, King Cleades says he reformed from his bad old ways whilst he was a baby, because seeing the people of Thrassos through the eyes of a child changed his perspective - but given that he appears to have been kept in a chest in a locked room, and seen by no one but Gryphia, the guards, and Ormestin & Kryptos, how the heck did he see anything to give him this changed view of the kingdom?
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The extra fight at the end really seemed like an entirely arbitrary way of stretching the script out! Let's see - have a fight, defeat the bad guys, let them wander off, have a chat, have a fight, defeat the bad guys....
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And *what* was with that closing scene - right at the end like this they throw in the "Meg can't have children" thing? And then, what was that 'giggle in the sky' supposed to mean? I dunno, I start to feel I'm getting the writer's idea bag dumped on me at this point, rather than a finished script...
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And BTW, Meg's "I can't have children" is utterly anachronistic (not that that's ever bothered them, I know). Medical science in Ancient Greece was not up to stating definitively that a woman could or couldn't have children. I suppose if she *tried* enough with a bunch of different men, she might come to some conclusions - but even then, the consensus would probably be that some god or other could likely help her. It just felt like a modern plot plank borrowed without much thought, to me..
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So who was who in Key To The Kingdom?
Well I guess most of you (those who've seen both eps, at least) instantly spotted Paul Willis as Ormestin, even under the *really* bad hair... he is of course, well remembered as Atyminius, the psychopathic villain who returns from the underworld in Mortal Beloved. He also played Marcus, the Magistrate, in the HTLJ ep Mercenary.
You may well also have recognised King Cleades - he was played by Craig Parker, who we last saw as Sarpedon, the Prince in love, in For Him The Bell Tolls. He also played a student bartender in the TV movie of Stephen King's Tommyknockers. Like many Xenaverse actors, he did a stint on the NZ soap Shortland Street - he played Guy Warner. And he also co-hosted the NZ TV series Two People, with Theresa Healey.
But did you recognise the prisoner who told Autolycus the rhyme about the key... the guy with all the hair and fingernails?? He was played by none other than Norman Forsey, known to all of us as Princess Diana's dad, King Lias! Norman also played Casca, the deaf old relative who Xena had to save from a chariot accident, in Been There, Done That. And over on HTLJ, he played the seer, Tiresias in The Road to Calydon and The Festival of Dionysus, and Tersius in The Outcast (which featured Lucy Lawless, as Lyla, wife of the Centaur Deric).
And what about Gryphia the old nurse? She was played by Yvonne Lawley, who hasn't been on X:WP before, but she may be quite familiar if you watch HTLJ... most recently she appeared as the Norn (the fate with the funny paint) in Norse by Norsevest and Somewhere Over Rainbow Bridge, and previously she played Alyssa in Atlantis. She was also in Hercules And The Circle of Fire and Hercules And The Underworld playing "Woman" and "Old Woman in Market". Interestingly enough, she was in the TV movie of Tommyknockers along with Craig Parker (King Cleades) - she played Mabel Noyes. She also did an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theatre (again like many Xenaverse actors, including Lucy), playing the mother in Some Live Like Lazarus.
John Stubbs, who played the Tax Collector, has previously been seen as the Head Guard in the HTLJ ep Resurrection. And Geoff Knight, who played the Key Guard (the one who spoke), was a Trojan Guard in Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts.
Peter Mason, who played a Shopkeeper in The Debt, Billius in The Quill Is Mightier, and "Owner" in the HTLJ ep The Mother Of All Monsters, was credited as playing a Drunk in Key To The Kingdom... but try as I might, I can't spot him at all, so I strongly suspect that his role was edited out. (If he does appear, could someone please tell me where?)
Oremestin's co-ruler Kryptos was played by Martin Howells, who hasn't appeared on X:WP or HTLJ before, so far as I know, and about whom I know nothing. Brett Hodginson, who played the Peasant having his taxes collected, was also a new face.
The ep was written by Eric Morris, who is a completely new writer to X:WP (and HTLJ)... indeed I can't find any references to anything he has done before.
On the other hand, the ep was directed by Autolycus himself, Bruce Campbell. On X:WP, Bruce has previously directed The King of Assassins (hmmm... I think I can see the similarities), and on HTLJ he directed The Vanishing Dead, What's in A Name? and last week's knockabout spoof, For Those Of You Just Joining Us.
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The disclaimer was:
No Priceless Porkers, of either organic or ceramic origin, were harmed during the production of this motion picture.
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And what about the Herc ep, Let There Be Light?
Well, I'm so turned off by all this Dahak drivel, that there's probably not much point in my even commenting much on this ep... I'm just totally out of sympathy with whole thing. I'm only glad that they're keeping the darned nonsense on HTLJ, which at least preserves X:WP from it.
To recap one more time, why do I hate Dahak so much? Because it turns the whole thing into some hokey, pseudo-religious struggle against absolute evil, accompanied by bad horror-movie trappings - which is the absolute antithesis of why I started watching the show in the first place... i.e. humour and sensible humanism!
I suppose Michael Hurst was ok as "the possessed", though frankly, I think he should have left it to Linda Blair!
A couple of little technical points:
I see they've added another arrow to their quiver so far as boat scenes are concerned... The scenes on the ship going from Sumeria to Greece were *not* shot using the famous RenPics boat - they were shot on a static set, with the motion and the sea added afterwards as a (not particularly good) CGI effect... or at least, that's certainly the way it looked to me!
And they actually showed us a map! Which was interesting (given various "alternate universe" theories of the show that have been mooted) in that it did conform essentially to real-world geography, although "Greece" was written right across Macedonia and parts of Bulgaria (& "Sumeria" looked a bit oddly placed, too).
I was interested to note that the teacher said that the writings of "Socrates, Homer and Ovid" meant more to him than gold. An interesting choice of authors... no writings of Socrates survive, if indeed, he ever made any - we know of him mostly from the writings of Plato; Homer almost certainly never wrote anything, since he was part of a pre-literate tradition; Ovid lived a generation or two after Julius Caesar, in Rome and subsequently in exile in Tomi, near the mouth of the Danube - of his writings, some survive and some are lost... but it's hard to see what they'd be doing in ancient Greece (unless you subscribe to Terry Pratchett's theory of "L. space")
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And who was who in the HTLJ ep Let There Be Light?
George Henare, who played Zarathustra, has previously been seen on X:WP as Hidsim in Lost Mariner. He was also in Rapa Nui, the (rather dreadful) epic about young lovers on ancient Easter Island, and in the (vastly better) Once Were Warriors, a NZ film focussing on the Maori people - both these are available on video... but if you rent Rapa Nui, don't say I didn't warn you! George also did an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theatre (like many Xenaverse actors, including Lucy), appearing in Here There Be Tygers.
If you recognised Donogh Rees, who played Mnemosyne, you were doing pretty well, considering her character only actually appeared as a cgi creation... she played the dreadfully tragic (and *very* strangely accented) Frigga, in the recent ep Somewhere Over Rainbow Bridge. She was also in Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, along with Lucy, and several other folks who've shown up in the Xenaverse - she played the Lab Supervisor.
Danny Lineham, who played the School Teacher, is quite a familiar face on HTLJ... he played Drinker #2 in The Warrior Princess, Lycus in The Sword Of Veracity, and Johe in Prodigal Sister. He also showed up as Grathios in the X:WP ep The Reckoning. Danny was also seen (in a minor role) in the movie The Frighteners, which starred Michael J. Fox.
Joseph Greer, who played Nilos (sp?), was in Hercules and the Circle of Fire, as Peleus, and also in the ep All That Glitters, as Romanus. And Graeme Moran, who was credited as the Professor, played Villager #1 in A Rock And A Hard Place (but if the School Teacher was the guy trying to stop the books from being burned, who was the "Professor"?) Stephanie Liebert, who played Antibius, appeared as a Young Woman in Reunions.
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), and Render Unto Caesar. They also wrote the X:WP ep One Against An Army.
The ep was directed by Robert Radler, who is a newcomer to the Xenaverse.
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The disclaimer was:
No Cast Iron Snakes were harmed during the production of this motion picture.
