Past Imperfect was another ep about which I have divided feelings. How best to explain..? Certainly this was not a "feel good" ep... the whole ep, for me at least, was dominated by feelings of tragedy and futility. In the scenes set in the past all the pain and effort led up to the birth of Solan and Xena's giving up of him to Kaleipus - and how could we ever forget for a moment where that led to? - The boy was barely grown when his life was arbitrarily cut off as a result of all that Dahak drivel... What a waste! What a tragedy! Of course life is often like that - full of sound and fury, and more to the point, endless labour, striving and pain, and ultimately signifying nothing, it often seems. And the parallel story in the present was completely overshadowed by the dread of the crucifixion prophecy... sure there was a siege and a battle, and Satrina was defeated (for now)... but essentially it was all a lot of harsh, unpleasant effort to put things back to where they started - a state oppressed by anxiety and dread. I mean I frequently feel my own life's like that - but it doesn't exactly leave me feeling cheered and convivial.
And for me at least, within this basic framework of tragedy, futility, anxiety and dread, there wasn't really a whole lot in the way of pleasant distractions along the way... Satrina as a new villain was, frankly, a little bit on the boring side, I found - I mean she didn't really *do* anything! She doesn't fight, she hardly acts at all... her forté is low cunning and duplicity - but that hardly makes for spectacularly dramatic TV. And even as a duplicitous schemer she was pretty darned low-key... perhaps it's just me - did other folks actually find her frightening? Or interesting?
And Borias, I'm sorry to say, got on my nerves in this ep. I can quite acknowledge that he was more morally advanced than Xena, and most of the time when he was disagreeing with her, he was essentially in the right.... but still he came off (to me, anyway) as a patronising prat! He reminded me of those irritating, clingy, unwanted boyfriends who always seem to think they know better than the "little woman" herself what's better for her, and who keep pawing her without being invited in the meantime. As I say, I'm sorry... I don't think he was meant to come off this way, and perhaps my point of view is a bit unfair, since he was, as I say, basically right much of the time - but I can't help the way I feel, and I found all his "my son, my son" whining, and his generally disrespectful attitude towards Xena offensive and aggravating.
So, the ep was dominated by tragedy and dread, Xena was mostly suffering and miserable, Gab was unhappy, Borias was aggravating, Satrina was fairly boring... not a lot of "gee I loved that" moments to take to the bank (one or two... see below). And yet.... having said all these largely negative things, it's not really true that I feel negatively overall about the ep - not at all. It was well written, at least in the sense of being coherent and compelling, and drawing the characters and their situations well... and the writing was even structurally quite interesting - the parallel between the fear and dread in the present, and the duplicity, pain and ultimate tragedy in the past was quite well worked out. Where it possibly fell down was in failing to provide the audience with attachment or relief - but then you could perfectly well argue that a writer had no responsibility to do that (although I think applying such an argument to too great a degree in the medium of a popular TV show could be a rather dangerous thing...) What we had was essentially tragedy without catharsis - a world dominated by regret for the past, and fear of future loss and pain... but without the explicit working out on screen of any element of the tragedy to its cathartic conclusion (well, unless you count Borias' death - which did have some feeling of catharsis about it... but this was rather weakened by the fact that he'd been so irritating throughout the ep)... still, it seems to me that the major plot elements were Solan's birth, and Xena & Gab's trying to come to terms with the shared knowledge of the crucifixion vision - and one of these led to a terrible, absurd, futile tragedy which we all are all too aware of, but which was only a haunting off-screen presence in this ep - and the other just hovered and simmered as an oppressive threat, without really coming any nearer to any kind of resolution. Altogether, I'm not sure how many eps this dark and unresolved I'd want to cope with. But then again, the acting was excellent throughout (well maybe Satrina could have been a bit more focussed and attention-grabbing...), and the direction was tight and yet fluid, clear, yet briskly paced - better than competent, certainly (if not always exactly lyrical or moving...) And there was really nothing in the ep that seemed out of place, or wrong.
In the end then, I guess I'm saying that this was basically a well written, well directed, well acted ep, whose themes were perfectly true to life and appropriate to character - and yet because its twin stories, in past and present, were so dominated by unrelieved, unresolved tragedy and dread, mostly it left me feeling as Xena appeared to feel - drained, depressed and apprehensive. And I didn't have Gab to stroke my hair at the end, either... :(
***
Random jottings:
I finally saw the new logo they're using on the promos with this ep - the orange background with the X of light cutting across it... very nice.
*
Well I'm glad Xena finally told Gab about the crucifixion vision... although I was a bit surprised - after all in Crusader, the last new ep we saw, Xena was so determined to keep it from Gab because she thought it could only cause Gab pain. I didn't really agree with that decision, and said so... but I didn't expect Xena to reverse it almost overnight, as it were. And of course the problem is that, now that it's out, it's going to be a *constant* source of friction between them... it does indeed add to the tension and pain that Gab was already feeling, and Xena's constantly fretting and trying to put Gab into protected situations only aggravates Gab further (and one can see Gab's point of view there...) Really, if things are going to continue like this for the entire remainder of season four, it's going to get *very* wearing, on X & G, and on the audience!
*
How come Xena always seems to know about entire armies on the warpath which everyone else seems to have overlooked entirely?!
*
So the town gets bombarded with explosive shells! And not only that, but they whine as they come in too!! (Artillery shells whine because of their shape and the speed with which they descend - I don't see *any* reason why flaming balls fired from catapults would whine... but hey, it's less egregious than zippers and flush toilets!)
*
And we got the "Where's my little girl?" / gormless child frozen in the middle of the battle routine again... how many times have they done that one now?? And why did neither mother nor child get a credit? It seemed to me that when the "shell" exploded behind Xena, she sort of stumbled and arched her back in the blast, and then a couple of seconds *after* the blast, she flew up into the air and hit the gate, for no very apparent reason... maybe these were special anti-gravity shells!
*
Dagnine was a surprisingly dignified and restrained evil lieutenant this time, compared to how twitchy and off the wall he was in Orphan Of War... I guess he must have gotten madder after all those years (younger too...)
*
Why would firing a bunch of explosive, incendiary shells into the city serve, as Xena said, as "an opening volley to force people back into the city"??
*
Err... Xena is nine months pregnant, and "the men" don't know??
*
Bad Xena is certainly looking badder and badder in these flashbacks.... but I was a bit surprised that she would characterise her motives as "wealth and glory" (by implication, in saying that these are no longer Borias' motivations...) - it somehow seems shallow, and not to really fit in with her character as we've seen it.
*
The jump cut from warlord Xena calling in Dagnine to talk about feeding poisoned grain to the Corinthians and then flinching from the pain of the child she was carrying to present-day Xena talking about the pain and loss of those times and being comforted with a stroke on the shoulder by Gab.... that jump really brought home most immediately the strangeness of the continuity between bad and good Xena, and the considerable ground that has to be covered by Gab's love and acceptance of her partner.
*
BTW - didn't you figure out pretty early on that the leader of the attacking army was a woman? There was something about the *really* ostentatious way everybody kept saying "he" that just made it obvious!
*
Did anyone else get the impression that the hospital in Actus appeared to be run by Mother Theresa's order of nuns?
*
"You're next in command, and you don't have any battle experience...?" Well *there's* a surprise!!
*
How come Xena can recognize every known poison by taste? (I know, I know.... "many skills"!)
*
What was Gab's look in response to Pasicus' "She's amazing!" comment about Xena supposed to mean? I mean, it could have just been "Oh no, there goes another one!" - but somehow it was a very twisted look, almost doubting.....
*
How did the guys under the water breath for all the time Xena and pals were wandering around the shore? I didn't see anything like straws - and besides, surely someone as alert as Xena would have noticed that old trick?
*
Isn't Gab's skirt a lot looser than it used to be? I mean, it really flaps around when she fights now, leaving no doubt as to the colour of her underwear (*not* pink like the dolly's...)
*
So the (very strange) four fingered mountain that features in the background of the crucifixion scene is near Actus! Doesn't this mean that X & G would do well to get as far away from Actus as possible. And BTW, where the heck *is* Actus? When last seen, in Crusader, they were in Phoenicia... I can't find any trace of any actual place called "Actus" or "Aktus" anywhere in the world.
*
I'm a bit confused about how the whole Ixion Stone / Destroyer Of Nations thing worked out... I guess since Xena never did get the Ixion Stone (somehow Borias got hold of the stone and concealed it in the sword that passed to Solan - or at least that's what I believe we found out in Orphan Of War), Alti's prophecy of Xena's destiny didn't really work out. But then I guess that was because Xena made a decision to withdraw her army and leave her son with the centaurs - so essentially Xena changed her own destiny. So... Alti hardly scored 100% in the past on the predictive front....
*
Re Xena's attempt to kill Kaleipus - surely when you're throwing a knife at someone, going "Aaargh" loudly isn't a good idea...?
*
Bad Xena said that after she won there was going to be a line of crucified bodies from Corinth to the Caspian Sea.... that would be a *very* *very* long line - the Caspian Sea is *nowhere* *near* Corinth... it's east of Turkey, east of the Caucasus, which in turn is east of the Black Sea, and even the Black Sea is a long way from Corinth. From Corinth to the nearest point of the Caspian Sea, as the crow flies, is about 1,700 miles!! That's an *awfully* long line of bodies!
*
I loved Gab's comment: "I'm going onto the battlements - I'm going to reinforce the men!" What was she going to do - nail planks to their spines??
*
Xena gets hit by a poison dart *again* - and it looked suspiciously like the same dart that was used to trick Baldur on Herc's Norse excursion!
*
I'm always interested to see if the stuff they throw into Xena scripts has any basis in the real world, so I tried looking up Santra Flower and Kala Root... I couldn't find any plant called santra at all. "Kala" is sometimes used to refer to the prickly salt wort or glass wort (more commonly kali), which was burned so that caustic potash could be extracted from its ashes, hence the Latin name "kalium" for potassium, from which the chemical symbol K is derived.... however there doesn't seem to be any particular record of prickly salt wort being used as a medicine or an antidote.
*
Didn't Satrina look like Najara when she first appeared, silhouetted against the tunnel entrance? I *would* have been surprised if it had been Najara.
*
BTW, is it just me, or did anyone else find that Satrina's name conjured up unfortunate linguistic echoes?
*
"I'll deal with Xena - she's in no condition to resist." Well, I already suspected this was a set-up by Xena, but as soon as I heard that, I was certain!
*
And how come *every* time we see Bad Xena she's getting blind-sided, duped and betrayed by someone?? I've remarked on this before, and this ep again was entirely true to form, with Bad Xena being *completely* fooled by Satrina! For someone supposedly so fearsome, Bad Xena seems to have been remarkably stupid...
*
Adding Satrina did at least put a new spin on things, and make the events surrounding Borias' death less predictable (given that we already knew that Dagnine killed him without Xena's permission - although previously she said that she had given the order that he was to be captured, whereas we never saw her give any such order this time...)
*
I really did find Borias' whole "my son, my son..." thing annoying - it seemed more like typical patriarchal ego-projection, rather than any sort of genuine concern for nurturing and protecting a new life. OK, I don't really like Borias much, so maybe I'm just biased....
*
Err... so is kala root a universal antidote, or was Xena entirely sure that Satrina was going to try and poison her with santra flower?? What if Satrina had learned about a *new* poison in the intervening ten years or so?
*
Presumably Xena explained the whole thing to Gabrielle off camera before she went to investigate the tunnel, since Gab seemed to know who Satrina was by name as soon as she saw her... But wait a minute, if Xena was just investigating the tunnel, how could Gab and the soldiers of Actus (who I noticed Xena referred to as hers) tunnel in and break through from the other end?? I mean, how did they know where to dig?
*
"Funny thing about destiny... you can't ignore it... you can't *rely* on it! Alti promised you one, didn't she?" Gab's questioning of the status of the crucifixion vision seems entirely reasonable, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, does it? Are we really going to speculate endlessly about this for the whole remainder of the season?
*
Now the scene where Xena hands over her baby to Kaleipus is something quite remarkable, since (I believe I'm correct in saying) it's the only time in the whole of X:WP where we've actually been shown *exactly* the same scene twice, but enacted completely differently. This raises some interesting technical and philosophical questions, apart from anything else... if we view the whole of the X:WP series as one continuous work of art, then how are we supposed to take being shown the same scene twice, and it's not appearing at all the same?? To some degree at least, it would seem that the show is explicitly declaring itself an unreliable narrator!! If they take that idea and run with it, who knows where we might end up! Of course in both cases we saw the scene as a "flashback", in terms of Xena's memory of it - so I suppose you could say that it's just Xena's memory that's unreliable. But it's not the first time the RenPics staff have explicitly raised the idea of fictive devices and unreliable narrators - for one thing, it's clearly inherent in the "meta" eps such as The Xena Scrolls, and on HTLJ, Yes Virginia There Is A Hercules, and this week's For Those Of You Just Joining Us (e.g. Sorbo / Herc's comment "But Iolaus lived for a hundred years!" when the idea of killing the little guy off on the show was raised...) So are we to take it that what we are seeing is just a consciously fictive *version* of events in Xena and Gab's lives, with the possibility of the version being revised constantly present??
Anyhow, apart from all this Postmodernism 101 stuff, it's really worthwhile to go back and watch the original version of this scene from Orphan Of War, and then re-watch the Past Imperfect version (yes, I'm urging you to go and dig out your tapes and do it, if you have tapes, and you haven't already done it!) The scene *looks* totally different in the two versions - in the old version Kaleipus is thinner and less grizzled, and Xena has big hair and is wearing an elegant looking black cloth cloak with silver fastenings, and no head covering... in the new version she has on her "barbarian" headdress with the metal disks, and a bulky, rough fur which leaves her arms bare... there's fog in the air (unless it's smoke), and she and Kaleipus both look cold... she looks *much* wilder in the new version. And here is the dialogue:
Original version, from Orphan Of War:
K. Stop right there! You won't get the Ixion Stone. All of us are willing to die to keep you from that power. And Borias, the man who betrayed Xena to become the greatest friend of the Centaurs, told us everything. He may have died at your command, but he will live forever in our legends.
X. I'm willing to withdraw my army.
K. (laughs) Xena, Destroyer of Nations, isn't known to bargain.
X. (reveals baby from beneath cloak) Take this child. He's my son, and the son of Borias. If he stays with me, he'll become a target for all those who hate me, and he'll learn things a child should never know... he'll become like me.
K. (takes baby) The son of Borias will be raised as my own.
X leaves.
New version, from Past Imperfect:
K. Stop there, Xena!
X. You got my message. I just wanna talk to you.
K. As you did before when you tried to kill me? It doesn't matter - you won't get the Ixion Stone. Borias, the friend of the Centaurs, has told us everything. We found his body in your camp. But his legend will live forever with our people.
X. (reveals baby from under heavy fur cape) Take this child. He's my son.... the son of Borias. If he stays with me, he'll become a target for all those who hate me... he'll learn things that a child shouldn't know. He'll become like me. Please....
K. (takes baby, lifts it up and looks at it) The son of Borias shall be raised as my own...
X leaves... groans and sobs as she is out of K's earshot...
I would say that there's no doubt that the reshot version is *way* more powerful and tragic than the original... Xena's pain is so apparent it just tears at you - but now you see also much more than just her pain at giving up her child at that particular point in time... you see the whole conflict inside her, building on Cortese, Caesar, Chin, Alti... and also we know the terrible fate (unfortunately in more ways than one) that awaits in the future for Solan and Xena and Kaleipus. So we feel the burden of pain and doom very heavily... and as we return to the "present" we are still afflicted with a sense of impending doom in the future (Solan's death, foreshadowed in the narrative past = Gabrielle's death, foreshadowed in the narrative present)...
Fade out on Xena's look of anguish and regret by the campfire, as Gab holds her and strokes her hair.......
***
Notes about the folks in this ep:
Well, did Satrina look familiar to you...? She certainly should have, since she was played by Catherine Boniface who played she who we all love to hate, Meridian, in The Deliverer and Gabrielle's Hope. Actually Catherine's first appearance in the Xenaverse was as a priestess in Comedy Of Errors! Apart from X:WP, she can be seen in the 1998 New Zealand film Flatmates, which also stars Kevin Smith (haven't seen it, so I can't say how good it is - but it certainly sounds worth a look... but I think it was made for TV, so I don't know if it is or will be available outside NZ).
Kaleipus was played by Paul Gittins... Now this is getting a little confusing - Paul Gittins was the actor who originally played Kaleipus in Orphan Of War, but last time we saw the big K, in Maternal Instincts, he was played by Jeff Boyd - I guess he changed a lot over the years .
Dagnine was played, as before in Orphan Of War, by Mark Ferguson (albeit in a slightly more subdued manner this time). Mark is quite a familiar figure in the Xenaverse - beside Dagnine, he also played the warlord Krykus in Hooves And Harlots and in Remember Nothing, and of course he gave us the villainous John Smythe in The Xena Scrolls. But he gets around with Hercules as well... he was in two of the pre-series Hercules TV movies, playing Hades in Hercules in the Underworld (yep, he originated the role, before Erik Thomson made it his own), and Prometheus in Hercules and the Circle of Fire; he also played Craesus in the HTLJ ep As Darkness Falls, which should be known to all Xena fans, even those not really into HTLJ, since it featured Lucy Lawless in the role of Lyla, wife of the Centaur Deric. Mark also appeared along with Lucy in the 1992 film Sinking Of The Rainbow Warrior (as Detective Neil Morris). He was also on the NZ soap Shortland Street as Darryl/Damien Neilson.
Marton Csokas once more reprised the role of Borias, which he has previously made his own in both parts of The Debt and of Adventures In The Sin Trade. But of course, we first saw him as the slimy Khrafstar (which I'm told in the original Iranian mythos actually referred to nasty, creep-crawly things) in The Deliverer, and reappeared in that role as part of the hate team in The Bitter Suite. Marton also did a stint on Shortland Street, as Dr. Leonard Rossi-Dodds. He also can be seen in the NZ film Broken English, as Darko, and did an ep of the Ray Bradbury Theatre (as did Lucy), playing Sid in the episode By The Numbers. He also appeared in the third season HTLJ ep The Promise, as Tarlus!
The ill-fated military commander Oaklin was played by John Manning... we've seen him several times before in minor roles - he was a Greek Scout in Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, a "Ranch Hand" (?!) in Ties That Bind, and a "Captain" in The Deliverer.
Pasicus, the inexperienced second-in-command who had to take over after Oaklin's death (or at least, would have had to, if Xena hadn't been there!), was played by Craig Muller... he didn't look familiar to me, and I can't find anything about him....
On the other hand, you probably found the Centaur Jareyd very familiar! Does "the priestess will see you now" ring any bells? ... Yes, Jareyd was played by Mark Webley, who was one of the guards outside the temple of Mnemosyne in Forget Me Not! He was also a temple guard in A Necessary Evil ("a dinar donation for the goddess Artemsis...")
And Paul McLaren, who played the Miner (the one telling the other guy to be quiet so as not to alert the guards), has also been seen twice before - as Streptus in Death in Chains, and as the "POW Leader" in Is There a Doctor in the House.
I don't believe we've seen any of the other minor players before - well not those in speaking roles at least. However I do have a question for all of you out there - the lead Corinthian prisoner, the one who got knifed first by Dagnine, looked *very* familiar to me, but I just can't place him... since he didn't speak, he didn't get a credit - but can anybody tell me who he was??
The ep was written by Steven Sears, who comes second, after R. J. Stewart, in number of X:WP writing credits (credited as "Writer" for Dreamworker, H&H, ACAOTPB, AFOD, TRCOT, TGG, OOW (notable as being the ep that told parts of the story retold in Past Imperfect), IS, The Price, Lost Mariner, TDHD, The Deliverer, The Bitter Suite, WIR, Sac 1, A Good Day... and also credited as "Story Writer" on Remember Nothing and The Quest, and "Teleplay Writer" on Destiny and The Quest. The ep's director was Garth Maxwell, who previously directed Mortal Beloved, The Execution, Lost Mariner and Forgiven.
***
The disclaimer was:
Borias' goose was cooked during the production of this motion picture.
***
And what about the Herc, For Those Of You Just Joining Us? Well this was one case where I almost wished I'd seen the Xena first and then the Herc (they transmit them the other way around in my locality)... FTOYJJU would have come as welcome comic relief after PI! And comic relief it certainly was - I really howled with laughter at some parts (most especially the alternative ways of killing Iolaus). Most implausible moment of the show - expecting us to believe that ROC's trim frame could somehow have been a disguise for the ample and none too restrained Robert Trebor!! But hey, reasonable believability was hardly the name of the game here...
As a side note, in the past, when I was more of a cog and less independent in my work, I've actually been on "motivational weekends"... and believe me, they're even more stupid and annoying than anything shown in this ep! I'm afraid I suspect that Scott Adams (the guy who writes Dilbert) is essentially right - only those with some sort of basic evil streak succeed in the "Human Resources" field.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this ep itself, I'm afraid it rather brought home to me how little I've like this season of HTLJ. Actually, I think it was bit unfair, since of all the actual clips they showed from eps, the *only* ones I felt at all positively about were the scenes between Herc and Morrigan... otherwise, they rather focussed on the Dahak drivel, and that stupid, pointless Norse plot, which made the season so far seem considerably more abysmal than it has actually been. My recipe for improvement is: more Morrigan (the best thing on HTLJ for a while), more Nebula (but not behaving like a wet noodle as she was on the last ep), less Dahak (zero, for preference), and no more use of the "oh we'll just go back and change the timeline" device (well ok, maybe they can use it just *one* more time, if they promise to use it to wipe out Dahak and all his friends and relations completely and permanently!)
