Well I thought LUATD started out very well... there was a lot to like, for me anyway, in the earlier parts of this ep.
Who could resist that opening - the back-rub interrupted by attackers sneaking up? It had a real "classic Xena" feel for me! I always loved those little moments with the Warrior and the Bard together at the beginning or end of an ep... and this ranked with the best. And heck, it even connected to the plot: "What have you been carrying...?" And I *loved* the exchange "Some people say the unexamined life is not worth living." "Those people haven't lived my life!" ... Call me a sap, but "the unexamined life is not worth living" has been one of my all time favourite human utterances ever since I first heard it - and BTW, it's usually attributed to Socrates... nice to see the big guy making an appearance on X:WP! Maybe next we can have "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance"...
And it was good fight too! Gab is really getting very active in the fight department these days... check out her action - holding the staff by one end and whipping it round to knock guys flying... I certainly wouldn't want to get on the wrong end of it!
Not quite sure about the concept of an "arrest warrant"... somehow I feel that if you start with arrest warrants, next thing we'll see will be Xena coming back to Argo where she's tethered, tearing a piece of parchment from under her bridle, and saying "Damn! Another parking ticket!"
Xena was certainly very ready to incriminate herself, as soon as they spoke up about the reason for their visit. I suppose it's quite consistent with her ongoing angst and guilt. But then, if she's that enthusiastic to own up to all her past wrongs, shouldn't she sometimes be making more effort to actively seek out people she wronged in the past? We've never really seen Xena actually go to someone she'd hurt as evil Xena and try to offer amends of some sort... she's run into quite a few such people, but it always seems to have been by accident, when pursuing other plans, except in the odd cases where they've sought her out (notably Callisto).
I liked the handing over of the chakram... sure it's kind of borrowed from the old "cop hands in his badge and gun" scenes, but I still loved the feel of it. Especially since she gave the chakram to Gab. At first I thought she was giving it to the guys arresting her, which might have made more sense. But giving it to Gab played really well... it carried a sort of dual message: Xena is renouncing her weapons and allowing herself to be taken to face trial unarmed, but also somehow Xena is giving some part of herself to Gab for safe-keeping, and giving also to Gab the burden of deciding to take action, to seek control... as Xena herself attempts to give up control and to allow her fate to be decided by others.
And apart from all this symbolism and emotion, it was also a handy plot device!
As a couple of people already noted, it was raining steadily by this point in the opening scene (didn't notice any rain during the back-rub, though). All in all rain played quite a big part in this ep, much of it apparently the genuine article, supplied by nature...
I thought Xena's comments about her guilt seemed a bit forced... not that she wouldn't *have* such feelings, but that she would be voicing them in this way, as if she'd just discovered them, at this point so late in the day. I mean, Xena may not be Socrates, but surely her life can't be *that* unexamined... surely we're not supposed to believe that she hasn't noticed that she had guilt feelings until now?
Did anyone else find the witness's initial comment about Thelassa a bit odd? "It's hard to explain just who she was?" I mean, I could see "It's hard to explain what she was like" (which was what they actually went on to talk about), but "hard to explain *who* she was"? Well, how do you usually explain who somebody was? Through their relationship to other people and their position in the society, surely? Which was precisely what we *weren't* told about Thelassa! If some asked "Who was Jan Baker?", would "She had a light..." be considered a reasonable answer?
I thought the woman who played the first accusing witness was a rather poor actress - she just didn't convince me at all... she seemed to be sort of wobbling around trying to find ways to act "extreme emotion", not succeeding very well, and having trouble delivering her lines so they made sense in the process.
Interesting to see Gab bringing out the old "A line even she wouldn't cross..." thing. That "line" certainly seems to be getting more and more battered the more we see of the evil Xena!
Again, I *loved* the exchange: "Xena has changed!" "And she's done nothing since you've known her to make you question her resolve to do good?" And didn't we *all* wait with bated breath for Gab's answer to *that* one??!! ("Well... she did once try to kill me. And another time I had to hit her on the head to stop her slaughtering a village... but hey!") I thought: "If you're looking for perfection, we all fall short..." was an *excellent* compromise answer from Gab. And Xena's looks during this dialogue!! Priceless!! I hope you don't feel I'm enjoying our heroes' pain too much here.... The funny thing is, although I feel for their pain, in a way still I *do* enjoy its portrayal - especially when things are raised with such layering and irony as in this scene.
"Do you accept the condemnation of this court for your guilt in this matter?" "I do." Interesting judicial system these people have... the prisoner has to formally accept the verdict before sentence is passed. A perfect system for guilt-ridden would-be penitents... but I wonder how they deal with good-for-nothing weasels?
So Xena is condemned to life on Shark Island. I wonder how much the judge and the villagers actually know about Shark Island? Actually, I think this is quite an important question - but I'll return to it in closing comments on the eps themes and their treatment.
I suppose it's worth mentioning that this whole deal: a judicial system with arrest warrants, trials, and punishment in large central prisons, is totally anachronistic (in X:WP, couldn't be!) Only a state with a fairly advanced bureaucracy can support such things, and even then, prisons were rarely used very extensively until quite modern times.
Anyhow, so far in this ep, we've been dealing with absolutely classic Xena themes, the ones that have driven the show since the start. "You could have argued the Greater Good!" (Excuse me m'lud... my client would like to argue the Greater Good.) "C'mon - surely what you can do outside prison will outweigh..." "What?" Of course "outweigh" is the wrong choice of word - it sets the argument up to be defeated. A better way of putting it would be: "Ok, you did wrong. You hurt a lot of people. So what are you going to do now? Are you going to go into some sort of masochistic sulk and indulge yourself in pain and privation in order to somehow make yourself feel better about your crimes? Or are you going to try and do something useful?" Of course, this comes close to the whole heart of the crime / punishment / rehabilitation nexus which is at the core of this ep...
"I'm not looking for redemption any more. Gabrielle, we're always talking about your spiritual quest - you say that you need something to make you feel complete... Well so do I!"
I still think this is great dialogue. I can certainly buy this as a cri-de-coeur from Xena. Indeed I find Xena's motivations throughout this ep extremely easy to empathise with. Maybe penitence is the way to go. Maybe giving up her power and allowing herself to be punished *will* make her feel whole. Maybe... And isn't this a little like what Lao Ma was saying to her, when she wanted her to serve Ming Tzu? Give up the ego, give up the will, serve those you hate... But what then? Big question, of course. Some would say, then nothing - you learn to serve, to suffer, and still to serve, and that is an end in itself. Others would say, by learning to want nothing, you learn not to be, which is the ultimate goal. Yet others would say (and I think myself, this was where Lao Ma was going, given her book) that if you stop trying to have the self on top of everything, you can learn to move the self *within* everything, and to act in harmony with your destiny. ... Or something like that, anyway - hey, I'm not really a philosopher!
So Xena is led away, with Gabrielle crying after her "Xena, please don't do this!" So there really is no ambiguity about this being Xena's choice, Xena's own action...
A quick comment about the "ship" in this ep - when the ship left the wharf, that was RenPics "static" ship set - the wharfside one that really doesn't move. They just made it look as if it were setting sail by tracking the camera backwards. The ship we saw sailing, briefly, and from far away, wasn't the RenPics "sea-going" ship we all know so well... it was either pure CGI, or a blend of CGI and stock footage.
I liked the shot of Gab contemplating the chakram in the tavern. I think that connects directly back to what I said before about the chakram handover - Gab is looking at the chakram, and she sees both part of Xena that has been left with her for safe-keeping and also a responsibility to act, which Xena has abdicated. BTW, how many people wondered why Gab didn't simply voice the direct personal appeal: "*I* need you Xena! How can you just leave me like this?"
And we arrive on Shark Island. OK, now this is a *women's* prison on Shark Island??!! This is even *more* unlikely and anachronistic.
Did you catch the gory skeleton in the first panning shot of the prison - this is clearly not a pleasant and humanitarian institution.
And the first thing we get, during Porky's obligatory speech to the new arrivals, is a prisoner being hanged. Note that Porky says *any* attempt to escape is punishable by death. But we are also told that this woman killed a guard in her escape attempt. Why? Basically, so we don't feel *too* bad about her death, and also so Xena doesn't have to feel completely *obliged* to rescue her. If the first thing that happened at the prison had been a grossly unjust and disproportionate punishment, it would have forced the pace of things altogether too fast. No... this woman had to die, and her death has to be somewhat acceptable. So - she killed a guard.
OK, when did you guess that the commandant was Thelassa? Be honest now! I didn't guess the first time we saw the cloaked figure briefly at the window in the arrival scene. But the *second* time the camera cut to the cloaked figure in the windows, I sure did! I would imagine this was expected - after all, it was telegraphed enough...
Interesting timeline point - Xena sent Ursina to Shark Island 2 years ago, so... about the time of - well Intimate Stranger was the 7th ep broadcast in season 2, so somewhere in around the time of Callisto's coming and going, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Warrior...Princess...Tramp....
The actress who played Ursina - at first I had trouble placing what it was about her... then I realised - she was acting as if she were on stage! I'd take a fair bet that this is a stage actress who's had very little experience working on film. (Stage performances need to be *much* bigger, and tend to be more stylised...)
"How can that *murdering* bitch Xena send people away to be punished? You never had to pay for your crimes - that's always bothered me!" "Then we have something in common. It's always bothered me too." Well they're certainly raising the questions in this ep, aren't they? But what are they going to do with them?
When Xena asked to be allowed to bury the hanged woman, I believe it was really raining again. OTOH, the big thunderstorm at night at the end of the burial was clearly artificially generated. Still, it's interesting the way in this ep they actually *use* the bad weather, which we've heard frequent complaints about in the past...
And this is the big climax of Xena's atonement... pretty well done again, I thought. Watching her scrabbling in the rain and mud to finish the burial and build the cairn I felt right inside Xena's head.
And then the cart-unloading business. Again, a pretty obligatory scene, establishing the classic "sadistic guard" syndrome (of which, more below). And we didn't expect Xena to stick *that* long, did we? Atonement is one thing, putting up with nasty assholes abusing helpless people in their power is quite another... and however much she may want to renounce action and power, Xena *can't* stop choosing to act!
And Thelassa comes out (as it were...)
Pause for a minute here. Did anybody *not* think the "eaten by crabs" thing was totally ridiculous? I mean, I'm sorry, but those crabs looked a *heck* of lot more likely to get eaten themselves than to do any people-eating! I mean - couldn't they have had sharks, or piranhas, or something? Perhaps these crabs were the result of a genetic oddity similar to that which created the vampire bunny....
"As if anything could make up for what you did to me!" So here we have it again - "make up for", "outweigh"...
"You finally have the punishment you sought - but its for a murder you didn't even commit." This line seemed to make no sense to me... how has Thelassa suddenly decided that Xena "sought punishment"? This seems to me a case of the writer confusing the audience's point of view with the character's...
Rats! Jumping rats, yet! (Well actually, rats being thrown by someone out of shot, I would imagine - I've seen *lots* of rats in my time, and taking flying 4 foot leaps is not usually part of their behaviour...) And Xena fights them off with her teeth! I don't know exactly what reaction they were going for in this shot, but I was *howling* with laughter myself! You go girl! Show those pesky rodents who's meaner!
And Gabs turns up in her "healer" outfit (which I liked - although it didn't look too calculated to sooth the fevered...) "What would you know about loss?" "A few things." Still loving that dialogue!
Didn't Gab's attacking Porky with the broom defeat the whole point of her plan? I mean, she hadn't had time to find anything much out yet, so how could she possibly know that she'd be able to do anything meaningful in the few minutes that such an action would buy her. It made no sense at all to me...
So Gab finds the "hole", calls to Xena, and tosses the chakram. And then she's captured. The narrative timing seemed very odd to me here. Gab gets captured. She's taken to the commandant. They talk. Porky knocks Gab out. Subsequently she walks out to the scaffold to be hung, whilst Porky is welcoming a new group of prisoners. Presumably all this must have taken quite some time... it felt like hours, if not a whole day to me, rather than minutes. And yet Xena doesn't seem to have made any attempt to get the chakram until Gab is actually on the scaffold! Did this seem *totally* out of synch to anyone else, or is it just me?
Anyhow... Xena grabs a dead rat by its tail in her teeth and flings it at the chakram. That has *got* to rate as one of Xena's most improbable feats, right along with jumping onto Cecrops' ship! You just try flinging a dead rodent (or suitable substitute) 40 feet or so into the air with your teeth whilst lying hog-tied on the ground! And not only that, but the chakram then falls with *perfect* aim and severs Xena's handcuffs! A couple of inches higher - chakram right in the back; a couple of inches lower - well let's not even speculate!
I liked Thelassa's refusing to order Gab's death. OK, it was obvious. But I still liked it.
But how the heck did Xena get out of the pit - even with her hands free and the chakram... she was something like forty feet down, the trapdoor was solid and bolted, and the door to the room above was locked??
And so to the finale. Which I thought was rather a cop-out all ways round.
Ursina kills Porky, which gets him done for without anyone else having to dirty their hands (and it was pretty obvious that he wasn't going to survive the ep). But this seems just a bit *too* convenient. And then suddenly the guards become the "good guys" and the prisoners the "bad guys". Duh? Excuse me?
Gab has a good go at defending Thelassa, but she can't take Ursina, and gets knocked out for the second time in the ep. And even Xena had quite a time taking down Ursina... although the spectacular fight ends rather anti-climactically with U. being tossed onto a heap of something and not getting up...
And then, as Gab says, sap up the wrap up:
"My ability to do good had been crippled - the evil Xena, she did that to me... don't let her do it to you."
"How about it Xena?" "What" "Forgiving yourself." "Gabrielle, that's not for me. But I won't let that monster that I used to be, the one that's sleeping so close to my heart, destroy all the good I can do now!" "Not as long as I'm around!" Roll credits.
Well, ok. But didn't you feel dissatisfied with this ending? For example, what is Thelassa going to do now? Is she going to continue as commandant of Shark Island? She exits swirling her cloak with two armed guards in tow, so it kind of looks like it. But if she's going to "do good", where is that going to take Shark Island?
My feeling on rating this ep is very split. For the earlier part, something like the first three quarters, I'd say it's a great ep - it raises classic questions, it has terrific dialogue, and it really connects you with the feelings of its characters. Sure it has the usual ration of absurdities, anachronisms etc. - but that's the Xenaverse.
But this ep just raises too many questions it can't answer, too many issues it can't deal with, and too many expectations it can't live up to. So the ending is no better than "ok". It fudges both the character conflicts and the social and moral questions it has raised.
So let me just turn for a moment to the "social and moral questions" that I think this ep raises. How should society and the individual deal with "crime". What is the role of punishment? Of revenge? Of reparation? Of atonement? Of rehabilitation? Why do prisons exist, and what do they really achieve? Are there alternatives? Obviously, we could spend a very long time discussing these issues, but let me just suggest a few points....
When society deals with a crime, what is being achieved? Is the primary function deterrence - visiting a visible punishment upon the criminal in order to deter others in future from committing crimes? Certainly many societies have thought so, and so do many in today's society. And what is justice? Is it "just" that a criminal should experience pain and misery because they have brought pain and misery on others? Or should we rather strive to see the role of society as being to endeavour to bring "criminals" back to being useful and functional members of society? If so, is "punishing" them helpful? What about brainwashing them? Would that be acceptable, if it rectified their "criminal" tendencies?
And if an individual has committed a crime, how should they deal with it - assuming, for the moment, that they acknowledge that what they did was truly a crime, and feel guilty about it? Should they seek punishment, because that is their "due"? Somehow the only way to "wash out" their crime? Does this really make sense? Or should they avoid "punishment" as being simply counter-productive, and attempt to put their energies into positive actions to "make up for" their guilt? Is justice a question of treating everybody the same? Can justice be determined by "weight" - your crime "weighs" this much, therefore you must make up for it with this many good deeds or this much punishment?
Prisons exist, I would suggest, largely because society doesn't know what else to do. If punishment and deterrence by means of mutilation, flogging etc. are no longer acceptable (see ATOTM), then how are "criminals" to be dealt with? Sometimes an economic punishment may seem sufficient. But if not, then society resorts to prison, since it appears more "humane", and at least keeps the criminals off the streets for a while. But what are prisons like. Almost universally, throughout human history, and across human geography, the answer is "terrible". Why? Human nature, essentially. You put a bunch of human beings into a system where one group of them are confined and their rights restricted whilst another group has power over them, whilst also being essentially "contained" within the system, and charged with "running" the place - the result of this is almost always extremely unpleasant. The "sadistic guard" syndrome is not just a joke - it's something very real, which it's hard to avoid. Liberal societies sometimes like to convince themselves that the purpose of their prisons is not punishment but "rehabilitation". This is a noble ideal. Unfortunately there is very little evidence that prisons have ever been created which actually promote it. On the whole, an individual is probably rendered *more* likely to commit future criminal acts by a spell in prison. So what's the answer? Is it possible to eliminate prisons from society? Probably not. But I would certainly suggest that one measure of how humane a society is is how small a percentage of its population it incarcerates. By that measure, American society is one of the least humane in the world, and becoming more inhumane year by year....
Well... sorry to wander so far from Xena into some of the grimmer areas of reality there! But LUATD really made me think of these issues, and ultimately I was unhappy that for the most part it took them nowhere - one evil guard is killed by a bad prisoner, the commandant rediscovers the light in her soul.... then what? What happened to that little redhead who Xena helped???
Oh well, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. Indeed really, I'm not. I got three-quarters of a great Xena ep, and I certainly was left with plenty of feelings and plenty to think about...
Now, a couple of points about the folks involved in this ep:
The Judge no doubt looked familiar to you - he was played by Huntly Eliott, who played the First Citizen of Amphipolis in SOTP and Calicus, the Priest of Demeter, in AFOD. He was also in the HTLJ ep Judgement Day as the Town Elder, who led the pursuit of Hercules...
A less obvious connection was that Katrina Browne, who played Thelassa, was in WIR as Mendala, the warrior wife of Vercinix. She was also in the HTLJ ep Prodigal Sister as Siri, an Amazon who, not to say too much, was central to the plot...
Patrick Smith, who played the Healer, first appeared as Dolas, one of the guys who complained about being killed by Xena, in the dream-passage in Dreamworker. Rather more memorably, he subsequently appeared as Glauce, the sinister ambassador in Warrior...Princess.
Chris Sherwood apparently played a character called "Dexsel" (if you can read this name better, please let me know). He has previously appeared as Guard #1 in King Con. Dexsel (if that is indeed the name) was presumably the head guy of those arresting Xena in the teaser.
The rest of the cast don't seem to have appeared on X:WP before.
Natalie Dennis, played a character called "Clysetone" as best as I could make it out (again, *please* let me know, if you can figure out the spelling of this better) - this must have been the redhead in the prison... she has previously appeared on the NZ TV series Shortland Street and Bianca.
Gilbert Goldie, who played the Village Elder, appeared as a doctor in Heavenly Creatures, a made in NZ film about a real-life case involving a murder by two teenagers. This film was one of Kate Winslett's first major acting gigs, and personally I would highly recommend it (but with the
notation that it is based on a strange and tragic murder case, and may be disturbing for some).
Tanea Heke, who played Ersina, has no previous film or TV credits that I can find, which reinforces my suspicion that she is a NZ stage actress just making a move into film.
Hilary J. Bader wrote the Teleplay of this ep (but not the story). She has written three previous eps, BTDT, TQIM and FMN, but for all those she wrote the whole thing, both story and teleplay.
In this case, the story was written by Rob Tapert and Josh Becker. Josh Becker's only previous story writing credit was for Chariots of War. He directed COW, BF, Warrior...Princess...Tramp, AFOD, FHTBT, FF&G & ISAIH. Rob Tapert had story writing credits for SOTP, TXS, Destiny, The Debt, FF&G, & AITST; he also directed Destiny.
****
And what about "Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bridge"? Well... we never did find out who the Wicked Witch Of The West was, did we? *Could* it be Dahak? But I thought he wasn't supposed to be able to manifest himself in the physical world? Or could it be another destroyer (long fingernails could be a family trait...)?
I didn't much like this ep, to tell the truth. I wasn't that thrilled by the whole "twilight of the gods" plot anyhow. And then using that old "undoing the past" trick *AGAIN* seemed a bit much. I thought it was fairly dumb when they did it for the first time in Hercules And The Amazon Women, then they've done variants on it several times since, and this one was pretty close to the original... play the whole thing straight as a big tragedy, then just randomly undo it all at the end, and tack on a happy ending. Not impressed, really.
I did think Peter McCauley (who we know from X:WP as Talmadeus in TGG, and who was also Salmoneus' suitor in Men In Pink) did a good job as Odin. Although I was a bit dubious about the strange pseudo-Slavic accents that they had the Vikings and their gods attempt (at that rate, why doesn't Herc himself speak in a bad parody of a Greek accent?)
