Any Xena:WP fans on the boards?

[JanewayRulz!]

Oh Greg, Amazon has links to new and used versions of your "Irreverent" Xena. http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Unauth...1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286244701&sr=1-1-fkmr2

Another Xena tome, this one by Robert Weisbrot, "The official guide to the xenaverse" is explorable online and the pages on Lucy's casting as Xena are just (to me) unbelievable. http://www.amazon.com/Xena-Warrior-...85491360/ref=pd_cart_recs_1#reader_0385491360 The part I especially like, is how Lucy tried out for Hippolyta in "Hercules & the Amazon Women", only to have the role be handed to Roma Downey (of "Touched by an Angel" fame) while she was relegated to the Queen's "henchman". The author quotes one of the producers with being so impressed by her "magnestism and menace" when he saw Lucy striding about in the dailies, that he told the sound techies to make it sound like she was walking in heavy boots, no matter what she wore. I also like how Zeus describes Lucy (in her first Amazon role).... "this one is all fire!"

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Her next Hercules role evidently was quite different, and David Eick was hot to have her play Xena but still his fellow producers balked and handed the job to Vanessa Angel (They didn't want a "foreigner" to play Xena, so they went with a Brit instead???) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0029502/ but she literally dropped out at the last moment and the producers were forced to go with Lawless for the Xena character in the Hercules trilogy. Thank the gods!

Shades of Kate Mulgrew replacing Bujold after major filming started on Voyager! (Yes I DO have to relate everything I do in relation to Janeway. Its in the contract I signed when I picked this name. )

 

[Greg Cox]

Thanks for the plug. For the record, I also contributed a short story, "Bard and Breakfast," to a paperback anthology titled THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS.

One of my lasting regrets is that I never got a chance to write a full-length XENA novel, but at least I managed to squeeze in a short story . . . .

 

[JanewayRulz!]

^^ Very kewl!

 

[Forbin]

For everyone's amusement, I present my timeline chart showing when people and events mentioned in Xena or Herc actually lived or occurred. From this we can determine the exact time period Xena lived - somewhere between 1250BC and 1227 AD.

 

[saturn5]

For everyone's amusement, I present my timeline chart showing when people and events mentioned in Xena or Herc actually lived or occurred. From this we can determine the exact time period Xena lived - somewhere between 1250BC and 1227 AD.

I think when it comes to historical accuracy Xena doesn't really worry about it too much

Yeah, without Xena I don't think we'd have had Buffy. The shows appreciate that and even reference one another. One theory is even that Callisto is the Slayer of her age which allows her to fight effectively against demi-god Xena

 

[Forbin]

I think when it comes to historical accuracy Xena doesn't really worry about it too much

Ya think?

 

[God Magnus]

I watched Xena religiously from S1 all the way to the end. Someone mentioned up in this thread that the tone of the show shifted a lot, and I think that was part of the enjoyment. I think it's a bit jarring if you watch the episodes back to back on a DVD, but if you only saw it once a week, it was kind of fun having a dramatic ep one week, then a silly ep the next at times.

I spent a good chunk of the 90's crushing on Lucy and Renee and was very happy to see Lawless have something of a career after the show. Seeing familiar faces pop up nowadays who were on that show also makes me smile.

I was very unhappy with how the show ended. It's not so much the story but rather how rapidly it happened. It all felt very forced and not organic at all. It is funny to think however that in the "canon" of Xena (which let's face it, can be considered fast and loose in some respects) she might still exist in "our" age!

 

[saturn5]

I watched Xena religiously from S1 all the way to the end. Someone mentioned up in this thread that the tone of the show shifted a lot, and I think that was part of the enjoyment. I think it's a bit jarring if you watch the episodes back to back on a DVD, but if you only saw it once a week, it was kind of fun having a dramatic ep one week, then a silly ep the next at times.

I spent a good chunk of the 90's crushing on Lucy and Renee and was very happy to see Lawless have something of a career after the show. Seeing familiar faces pop up nowadays who were on that show also makes me smile.

I was very unhappy with how the show ended. It's not so much the story but rather how rapidly it happened. It all felt very forced and not organic at all. It is funny to think however that in the "canon" of Xena (which let's face it, can be considered fast and loose in some respects) she might still exist in "our" age!

Yeah we used to have what we called YAXI (Yet Another Xena Inaccuracy)

Remember not only do we have Xena's descendants/reincarnations running around the modern world we also have her and Gabby's clones plus the reincarnations of all the other characters working for Renaissance Pictures AND Ares and Herc (and presumably Aphrodite, Bliss etc) in the modern world.

I thought Friend in Need was a good ending although when the camera pulls back and you see Gabby standing on the deck sailing off into the sunset alone....

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Yeah, but they never stopped having it both ways *cough*, did they? What with all the hot and lusty hetero sex with hunks like Caesar, Borias and so on, juxtaposed with subtle eroticism of her relationship with Lao Ma; and of course, while the romantic subtext in the Xena/Gabrielle relationship was more and more pronounced as seasons went by, the whole Xena/Ares thing was also becoming more sexual and more in the focus of the show (in season 1, he only seemed interested in her as a warrior, the sexual attraction would only later cross from subtext to the main text). Kind of like a gender-flipped version of the situation from Shakespeare's sonnets. (If you'll excuse the comparison - I don't actually take Xena:WP that seriously.) One of the most famous "lesbian" TV shows of all time wasn't really lesbian, but a very bisexual show.

As someone who isn't familiar with Shakespeare's sonnets, what in the name of Zeus are you talking about?

I was a huge XENA fan during its original run, and even wrote an entire book on the series (now sadly out of print). As much as I like BUFFY, XENA was there first and I sometimes wish it got more credit for that.

Well, to be fair, Buffy - the show - was based on the (very bad) movie from 1992, 3 years before Xena started...

Besides, Buffy - the show - was essentially more about the horrors and dangers of things like high school, college, growing up, relationships, and real life in general... while Xena, well, wasn't - it was very escapist, even though it did deal with some of the similar themes like violence and redemption.

I'd agree with that. Plus, the writing on Buffy was just stronger. The humor was funnier and the mixture of comedy & drama was more fluid & natural.

Thanks for the plug. For the record, I also contributed a short story, "Bard and Breakfast," to a paperback anthology titled THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS.

One of my lasting regrets is that I never got a chance to write a full-length XENA novel, but at least I managed to squeeze in a short story . . . .

It's a shame that they aren't writing any new Xena novels. Heck, it's a shame that most of these franchises aren't able to maintain their tie-in novels once the series is done. (Star Trek & Star Wars are the only ones that kept it going for the long haul. There have been some decent spurts of Indiana Jones & James Bond books. Doctor Who kept the flame alive very well during the drought from 1989-2005. Unfortunately, ever since the show came back, they stopped doing novels with any of the previous Doctors.)

 

[JanewayRulz!]

I watched Xena religiously from S1 all the way to the end. Someone mentioned up in this thread that the tone of the show shifted a lot, and I think that was part of the enjoyment. I think it's a bit jarring if you watch the episodes back to back on a DVD, but if you only saw it once a week, it was kind of fun having a dramatic ep one week, then a silly ep the next at times.

I spent a good chunk of the 90's crushing on Lucy and Renee and was very happy to see Lawless have something of a career after the show. Seeing familiar faces pop up nowadays who were on that show also makes me smile.

I was very unhappy with how the show ended. It's not so much the story but rather how rapidly it happened. It all felt very forced and not organic at all. It is funny to think however that in the "canon" of Xena (which let's face it, can be considered fast and loose in some respects) she might still exist in "our" age!

Yeah we used to have what we called YAXI (Yet Another Xena Inaccuracy)

Remember not only do we have Xena's descendants/reincarnations running around the modern world we also have her and Gabby's clones plus the reincarnations of all the other characters working for Renaissance Pictures AND Ares and Herc (and presumably Aphrodite, Bliss etc) in the modern world.

I thought Friend in Need was a good ending although when the camera pulls back and you see Gabby standing on the deck sailing off into the sunset alone....

You need to watch the extended version of FIN, friend. The director CORRECTED that in the director's cut, so the last we see of them, they are together on the boat. They also put in several cut scenes & lengthened others to make things more understandable.

Speaking as someone who did sit down and watch things back to back, I liked the extreme swings from drama to comedy, especially when they went too slapstick (Fishsticks) and I could speed through the ep and wash its taste out of my mouth with the next one immediately after.

As for our 2 women existing in "our age", I didn't exactly like the retelling of the Gabrielle story in "Soul Possession", but I did very much appreciate the fact that they finally got Xena out of Joxster's body and Joxster out of Xena's body..... (You know, that line sounds soooo wrong on soooo many levels, ) It seemed such a cheat to finally get the two of them together after 2000 years, and yet still not have "them" together.

Edited to add a cute video.... Xena 3000:

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I love the line about "your great, great, great grandaughter."

Regarding the "rushed aspect", I didn't notice it so much, since I was watching "back to back" and everything felt rushed. I do have to dispute something I read somewhere... perhaps Whoosh? The columnist felt there was no "theme" to season 6, as there had been 1-5, but I disagree. Season 6 seemed to cement (for me) that these two were not just good friends, they indeed were a couple. There were many allusions to that fact throughout the season, the trilogy of the Rheingold being the most serious as Xena faced competition from both Beowolfe and Brunhilde, the funniest being the interaction Xena and the Virgin sacrifice in "Many Happy Returns" (She falls against Xena's breasts and Xena says, "Whoa, these are spoken for.) and the most poignant being in that same ep, when Gabrielle reads the Sappho poem.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I hated that last episode so much. What a terrible series finale. The tone was completely out of sync with the rest of the series. It was so dark (in terms of cinematography and story) and full of boring characters we'd never seen before. The last episode of Xena should have been a joyful event that took advantage of the excellent supporting cast. Instead, we got some pretentious wannabe samurai epic that was a complete failure as an entertainment and wasted its cast of characters. It was sort of like "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was to "Star Trek"...if "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" didn't have any good parts ( it has a few, despite generally being uncomfortably different and less engaging/character-oriented than the series it was supposedly based on).

Much like fans of "Enterprise" prefer to disregard "These are the Voyages..." and think of "Terra Prime" as the series finale, I make "Soul Posession" my personal series finale and will never watch that boring, depressing, joyless, poorly written two parter again. Yeah, "Soul Possession" is one of those jokes of a meta episode where we don't even get the real characters but rather their hokey reincarnated 21st century selves, but it heavily features Ares and ends with Xena, Gabrielle, and Joxer walking off together, happy and feeling all is well and will continue to be in their world. That's good enough for me, and the way it should be.

 

[DevilEyes]

Yeah, but they never stopped having it both ways *cough*, did they? What with all the hot and lusty hetero sex with hunks like Caesar, Borias and so on, juxtaposed with subtle eroticism of her relationship with Lao Ma; and of course, while the romantic subtext in the Xena/Gabrielle relationship was more and more pronounced as seasons went by, the whole Xena/Ares thing was also becoming more sexual and more in the focus of the show (in season 1, he only seemed interested in her as a warrior, the sexual attraction would only later cross from subtext to the main text). Kind of like a gender-flipped version of the situation from Shakespeare's sonnets. (If you'll excuse the comparison - I don't actually take Xena:WP that seriously.) One of the most famous "lesbian" TV shows of all time wasn't really lesbian, but a very bisexual show.

As someone who isn't familiar with Shakespeare's sonnets, what in the name of Zeus are you talking about?

Shakespeare's sonnets (although maybe not all written with that intention) are structured in the way that suggests that they are about two different love interests (so to speak): 1-126 are supposedly dedicated to the "Fair Youth" and 127-152 to the "Dark Lady". There's one sonnet where he says he has two loves, one is the young man who represents the better part of himself, and the other is the woman who represents his baser nature and the worst parts of himself. Opinions are divided on whether there was an autobiographical background for all that, or if it was just trying to be original and subvert the sonnet conventions, or maybe both at the same time (and it was also possible that the first 126 are just him being sycophantic to his noble benefactor to whom they are thought to be dedicated to, but that's another matter, so nevermind). Traditionally, sonnets were supposed to be about idealized, platonic heterosexual love: the poet expresses his adoration of a woman who is described as fair-haired, beautiful, virtuous, angelic and so on. Shakespeare pretty much does that in the first 126 sonnets, only they're not about the woman, but about a young man (ostensibly his noble benefactor). It basically comes off as homoerotic platonic friendship, but with so many romantic overtones that it seems to go beyond what you'd think of friendship (which has sparked all those academic debates on Shakespeare's sexuality). By contrast, the sonnets about the Dark Lady, while they're about heterosexual love, are far more warped and nontraditional, very sexual and more of a lust/hatred/obsession. Instead of describing how wonderful and virtuous she is, as traditional sonnets do, he describes how awful and immoral she is and how bad she is for him, but how he is irresistibly drawn to her not despite it, but because of it.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

I would have guessed "Many happy Returns" would be the preferred finale over FIN... but that's just my interpretation.

I did like the finale, but then again I didn't fall in love with these characters over a 6 year period, so I wasn't as emotionally attached as 1st runners would have been. Also, from the Youtube music vid world, I had been spoiled as to what was going to happen in the end, so that probably blunted its impact a fair amount.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I think "Many Happy Returns" and "Soul Possession" both would have worked as finales. I doubt I'd be more emotionally impacted by the series finale if I'd been watching the show from the start. Ultimately I found it to just be a cheap way to try to get feeling out of viewers, it didn't feel natural or necessary, much like the end of "Star Trek: Nemesis".

 

[EJA]

I'm more of a casual fan of the show. There are some episodes I liked, and there are others that I think are terrible and dull. I like Lucy Lawless as Xena, though to be honest, there were times I fancied Renee O'Connor's Gabrielle more.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

"Early years" Gabrielle, or later years?

 

[EJA]

I thought both versions were nice.

 

[Forbin]

Renee had an amazing metamorphosis through the course of the show. From cute, baby-cheeked kid to beautiful hard-bodied woman. She amazed me in later seasons with her athletic prowess and martial arts skills.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

^^ That's why I wondered which Gabby they preferred over Xena. She really DID become a Warrior Queen in her own right, and not just a sidekick that needed to be rescued all the time. I guess in a way, that was one of the reasons I prefer "Many Happy Returns" over "Soul Possesion" as an alternative finale, because the 2001 (?) version of Gabrielle wasn't the ass kicking Amazon Queen that the ancient version had been.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the producers getting the "right souls" in "the right bodies" in "Soul Possession". Sure it was cute/funny to see a confident Joxster channeling Xena's spirit, but ultimately it was just "wrong".

Edited to add...

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[JRS]

One more Xena fan here also
I actually watched both Xena and Herculas, but liked the first better..maybe because the stories where bit better and Lucy Lawless was perfectly cast
I am planning to buy the complete series on DVD at some point. It will be fun to watch it after such a long break