The last time I watched Xena Warrior Princess with commercial breaks was June 18th, 2001. Since then, fans have waited to see a new chapter of her story on the big screen, or at least, to see her existing stories replayed on the big screen, but in the 24 years since that last aired episode, I’ve never seen that actually happen…until just this last week! Two episodes of Xena were shown at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon, with commercial breaks, using ads from the 1990s, when they first aired.
One might ask why bother doing that when you can watch them ad-free in the comfort of your own home, but having now gone through the process, it’s a whole different experience seeing them with an enthusiastic audience, plus, having to wait for 2 minutes of commercials before you can see a cliffhanger resolved restores the original pacing of the show, giving you some extra time to absorb what you’ve seen, and to prepare for the next plot twist. Hearing the audience pick up on every little detail means you get a much fuller appreciation for the story: a lot more of the show’s humor emerges, and the dramatic moments hit a little harder. This is true of any theatrical release, but we’re not used to that in a (non-sports) tv show, unless we’re watching with friends or family. TV in its earlier days was much more communal, with only one tv set in the house, and fewer channels to choose from. Much of my experience watching Xena was solitary, though I spent many hours discussing it after the fact in online forums, which were just emerging when the show first started airing, in 1995.
So it was a very different experience this last weekend to sit in a crowded theater sharing these episodes for the first time with others. They were presented by Rerun Theater, a group that collects vintage tv episodes, matches them with era-appropriate commercials, introduces them to the audience beforehand, and offers a commemorative poster for each showing. It’s a poignant experience to compare the image of women in the commercials with the non-traditional ground-breaking characters in Xena, providing a cultural snapshot of the show’s context, and how the show would eventually make its own impact on the culture. You could hear the audience snicker or gasp as each commercial came on, and there was a lot of conversation to be overheard as we all left the theater.
For myself, having waited 24 years to see Xena on the big screen, I asked myself beforehand why these two particular episodes were chosen. I wondered why they didn’t choose the pilot instead, or one of the more cinematic two-part episodes later on that more closely resembled the kind of martial arts films that Hollywood Theatre often showcased. Having now seen them back to back, I think they were a good choice, especially for first-time viewers, because they provide a lot of exposition, and help give a taste of what we’ll see in the coming seasons.
Callisto, (Season 1, episode 22):
Callisto opens with a scene familiar to Xena’s past life, a village being ransacked by warlords, led by a woman calling herself Xena. We later discover this person is actually Callisto, a former survivor of one of her raids, and is now carrying on Xena’s crimes in her name, daring her to stop her. It sounds psychotic, but it’s the closest thing to justice that Callisto can imagine, given that the alternative is letting Xena find redemption in good deeds and making amends, while her own life has been forever scarred. Callisto had her parents taken away from her by Xena, and no doubt sought the safety of other warlords who could teach her their ways. If there is no justice, then the next best thing is to learn to use Xena’s own force against her, and that means using her tactics. There’s no future in her strategy, but she doesn’t believe in the future anyway, outside of Xena, the all-powerful force in her life, to whom she’s drawn like a soulmate. It’s as if she feels Xena is the only one who can understand her, and so she has remade herself in Xena’s image.
This is demonstrated at their first encounter, when Callisto becomes one of the few who can successfully catch Xena’s signature weapon, the chakram, and carry it as her own. The chakram seems to be a weapon powered by the will, and certainly, Callisto’s will for destruction matches Xena’s when she first received the weapon as Ares’ student, many years before.
It’s interesting to see that Callisto’s preferred method of torment is to crucify villagers, something that her reincarnated self, Livia, will do 25 years later, in season five. Callisto seeks satisfaction in an act of mutual destruction with Xena, after which, she craves only oblivion in death. As we’ll see, seasons later, she never finds it. It takes two lifetimes to finally achieve some kind of lasting peace, after which she truly does become soulmates with Xena, when she is reborn as her child.
Callisto aired near the end of season one, as the writing staff was preparing season 2, in which the show would begin to develop its character arcs, and introduce elements that would dominate the rest of the series. The show’s seemingly casual episodic approach pretty much ends with Callisto, and her story would be woven through the others in one form or another until very near the series’ end.
Prometheus (Season 1, episode 8):
The next episode, Prometheus, was aired much earlier in season one, #8, just a few episodes before the pivotal Hooves and Harlots episode, in which Gabrielle’s first great story arc begins, as heir to the Amazon throne, an arc which will last about as long as Callisto’s, through nearly the end of season six. Soon, Gabrielle will learn to wield a weapon, but in Prometheus, she’s starting to feel like a fifth wheel from her lack of fighting skills. During one battle scene, she just cringes by the wall as the rest of them fight. By the time Callisto comes around, she’s able to handily beat up Joxer, who prides himself as a great warrior. So this episode sets up her dissatisfaction as Xena’s comedy relief, and is no longer content to just be Xena’s chronicler, but her genuine sidekick and pupil. Xena still sees her as a bard and chronicler, however, and the first hint of a story arc is given when Xena makes it clear she needs to plan for the future by attending the Athens Academy of Performing Bards, something Gabrielle will do later this season.
This episode is one of only two with guest-star Hercules, from Xena’s parent show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Xena began on that show, and now in its eighth episode, it once again is pulling viewers from HTLJ to take a second look at Xena, to see how it’s coming along, and it’s just in time for Gabrielle to indicate she’s ready to step up, learning a few lessons from Hercules’ sidekick, Iolaus himself. To capture these new viewers, both couples seem to pair up romantically, and Gabrielle brings up the subject of soulmates, with Iolaus. Clearly, she hasn’t been around him long enough to have such feelings, but given her youth, the intensity of their adventure, with lives at stake, and Xena’s emotional reunion with Hercules, the man who restored her faith in heroism and forgiveness, and it’s understandable that strong feelings would take over—and just as quickly dissipate. For the Hercules viewers, though, it’s a signal that they’d better keep an eye on things over on Xena’s show, because these gals are obviously going to be relevant in their lives, especially if they’re hinting about becoming soulmates!
Savvy viewers would know better than take this at face value, since anyone who dates any of these folks are doomed to become redshirts, but there’s no doubt the audience understands how these tropes work: once Hercules viewers get hooked on Xena, they’ll watch for their own reasons, and there’s no better way to establish one’s hero bonafides than to have them on an equal relationship footing with another hero. Instantly, Gabrielle is elevated to Iolaus’s status as action hero after she connects with him about it, even though she has yet to actually fight, and it won’t be long before she assumes the role in her own right. We’ll see this later on in season five, when daughter Livia manages to reach Xena’s level of accomplishment as a warlord, and then later, as a powerful force for peace, something we learn later Xena will accomplish in her next life.
There’s a bit of a reprisal of Xena’s first guest-shot on The Warrior Princess, when we see Hercules and Xena at odds over who gets to wield the sword that can free Prometheus. We eventually learn that releasing Prometheus is a death sentence for the wielder of the sword, and they are fighting for the chance to conduct a suicide mission, something they didn’t want to tell their sidekicks for fear they would want to talk them out of it. Here we also see a bit of foreshadowing of the questions in Xena’s final episode, in which Xena again has a secret agenda about her own possible sacrifice.
The title character, Prometheus, is a giant chained to a mountainside, and doesn’t really interact with the main characters. He speaks only with Hera, at the beginning, but there’s possibly some interesting subtext in how he’s presented. He’s not dressed like the usual Xena demigod, nor does he resemble any of the brutish giants we’ve seen. He’s bald, and wears only a brief white garment about his waist. If you’re familiar with classic science fiction movies, you’ll recognize this look: the title character in The Amazing Colossal Man.
It’s a story about a Lt Colonel who survives a plutonium explosion during the nuclear tests of the 1950s, causing him to grow indefinitely, driving him mad in the process. It can be a metaphor for the atom bomb’s power in the arms race. Here, Prometheus is being punished for giving mankind too much power in the form of fire, and healing, and certainly, atomic energy is a similarly godlike form of power. References to nuclear energy, and its ties to Oppenheimer’s quote from the Bhagavad Gita occur in various forms throughout Xena, and we’ll see more explicit forms of this metaphor repeated in season 6, in Send in the Clones (featuring the ominously named Alexis Los Alamos), and in the series finale, in which Xena seems to ignite an ancient form of the atom bomb in the ultimate battle against the armies of the demonic Eater of Souls.
These initial episodes are a good introduction to some of the character arcs and motifs that will be developed to great effect in future seasons. Some of them are quite heavy and profound, but they are quietly introduced and seem to grow organically before our eyes without ever weighing down the show with important messages, but never abandoning the universal concerns that the original myths illustrated with a similar effortless economy and light touch.
