Between The Lines
written by Steven L. Sears - Co-Executive Producer
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 07
SD: What story did you want to tell?
Steven: We were exploring aspects of Indian philosophy and Rob wanted to do something with Mehndi painting. We hadn’t attached it to any story, we were just discussing Indian themes.
I had always been intrigued with a notion of mine that children are born with the knowledge of the universe. It’s just something I play with. It’s as close to God as we can be because we’ve just come from that source.
However, the first thing adults do is teach children language which limits what they know to what they can describe with that language. When a child is babbling, its expression has no limits because gibberish has no boundaries.
Then Rob mentioned doing an episode with a woman who no one understands, but who understands everything. Which went perfectly with what I thought about children. Somewhere in the midst of that spiraled out the idea of doing “Between The Lines.” The idea of a woman who would be considered insane by the rest of the people in her group. This idea wasn't played up heavily in the episode, but it was in the script. Most of it had to be cut for time.
SD: What is the Mehndi?
Steven: It’s a henna application that wears off after time and has to be reapplied. The Mehndi has a whole philosophy of what the lines mean - the idea that one line may look like many, but it’s still just one line carrying a path.
SD: Is the Mehndi a philosophical principle or does it actually have power in some cultures?
Steven: In some cultures, it does have power. But it's the philosophy and belief that gives it power. A line on a piece of paper is just a line. What you feel about that line gives it the power.
Most people see the Mehndi artwork and think, “Oh, that's the tattoo Madonna has.” It's not that at all if you believe in its powers.
SD: Who is Naiyima?
Steven: Naiyima comes off as being totally insane because she is constantly glancing around, picks invisible things out of the air and talks in rhyme and riddles that don’t make sense. Because of that, she can’t communicate with us. We’re structured and she's not. She is a person who carried that wisdom from childhood all the way through life. Consequently, she became a Darsham.
SD: Naiyima going off as a ball of light is because she's a spiritual being?
Steven: I put Naiyima to a higher spiritual power. We used the ball of light because I wanted to physicalize it. I wanted the audience to see it. She chose that time to leave her body because it was unnecessary to her.
SD: What is a Darsham?
Steven: A Darsham is connected to the higher power. Although this wasn’t shown, people feel at ease around a Darsham. They feel at peace. Many Darshams in India do not have a lot of money and would not be understood here in the U.S., but they are revered as holy in India. In their presence, things feel wonderful.
In the back story, Naiyima was married to a man who died and she had to go into the fire with his body. In some cases, women back then did this voluntarily. Because she was an “idiot,” she had to be helped. That's when Xena and Gabrielle arrive.
SD: What did the Darsham want with Xena?
Steven: Okay. We all go through our Karmic Cycles. The idea is that you want to progress until you no longer have to repeat living. The unresolved part of you lives again and, hopefully, progresses to higher and higher states. The negative side being that you can go the other way.
We don’t know anyone who can use the idea of reincarnation for their own purposes. If you knew about my past or future lives and could use that against me, then you have power. Alti is that kind of person.
SD: Who is Alti?
Steven: Alti had learned how to use people's pain in their immediate past against them. She would touch them and they would relive that pain. When she was killed, that part of her that was unresolved, which was almost all of her, passed through to the next part of the Karmic Cycle with eyes open. She knew, even though she was in the body of Khindin, that she was Alti. She saw that she had just been using the pain of one lifetime and here, in India, where people believed in reincarnation, she could use the pain of all a person’s lifetimes, past and future. That's what Naiyima was trying to stop. As Alti’s life cycles continued. she would become ever more powerful.
SD: Is Alti immortal?
Steven: Alti is not immortal. Her evil is. And once Naiyima realized Alti would never progress to a higher plane, Alti had to be taken care of. And the one person who could do that is the person who had defeated Alti before – Xena. Xena was the chosen one.
SD: Naiyima says to Gabrielle, “Tell Xena she has to bring the evil back to the present day, where she is strong again.” The second “she” refers to Xena?
Steven: Yes.
SD: Arminestra is a really “good” Xena. And the Xena we know still has a lot of the dark side still in her. Do you need the dark side of Xena to kill the baddies?
Steven: Here's my interpretation. Arminestra, in that world, is the greatest peacemaker who’s ever walked the face of the earth. She has solved countless conflicts between nations that said they would die before giving in to each other. It was her gift and her power because Arminestra is getting close to being a Darsham. So, in her presence, there is a peaceful feeling.
But Alti is aware of her past lives and her evil and is utilizing it and Arminestra can't defeat that. If Naiyima had been there, it might have been a different story. But Alti has gained tremendous power in the future. We don't know who would have won a battle between Alti and Naiyima.
Xena is told to bring Alti back to the present because this will diminish Alti’s power to some extent by taking away some of her lives and the knowledge that comes from having lived them. Which levels the playing field between her and Xena.
SD: And Xena brought the Mehndi back with her. And the Mehndi is Alti’s enemy?
Steven: Yes, because the Mehndi is the Truth. The power of the One. It's a connection to a Higher Being. So when Xena, Gabrielle and Naiyima fought Alti, it was the Higher Being fighting evil, not just the three of them. They were focusing the Truth through the Mehndi.
SD: Those special effects were beautiful!
Steven: I was very, very proud of our crew on that. It really turned out well.
SD: Does the Mehndi have a power of its own not dependent on who is wearing it?
Steven: It must be focused by who is wearing it. What's behind it is what counts. If you go down to Venice Beach and have it put on, that’s just a tattoo.
SD: So Alti can come back?
Steven: Yes. We stopped her only in that lifetime.
SD: Alti’s remark: “The spiritual power I was feeding on was nothing compared to this. Every person here has generations of power just waiting for me to take.” Is that because in India they believe in reincarnation and in Greece they don’t? You can't have past lives unless you believe in them?
Steven: Yes, because it's accepted in India. They “know.” In the Western world, we don't. A certain amount of ignorance acts as protection.
SD: Are you still reincarnated if you don’t know about or believe in reincarnation?
Steven: If you don’t know or don't believe, it doesn't exist. If you start to believe, then it will exist.
SD: So when Alti is in Greece, the idea of past lives and all the pain she can feed on isn’t there for her to discover.
Steven: Right. In the Greek world, they're limited to birth, death, Elysia, etc. That’s what Alti has to draw on. When she passed through several lives and ended up in India, where it’s accepted, then she became aware of it and she could access it.
SD: Were there any particular Mehndi designs you wanted to use?
Steven: We wanted the chakram design, but the rest were chosen by the makeup department down in New Zealand.
SD: If the Mehndi was painted on the bodies of Arminestra and Shakti, why did it stay on the bodies of Xena and Gabrielle?
Steven: Because it needed to. You could say that because the Mehndi was their transportation device, it travelled with them. You could also ask were those their physical bodies or their souls that were painted and that came out of the fire? And to that, I just have to say there’s a greater power at work.
SD: If Alti keeps showing Xena and Gabrielle how they die and Alti is not the cause of their deaths, why should they be afraid of her?
Steven: She never showed them their death. She showed them pain.
SD: Doesn't she say she's showing them their death?
Steven: That's her assumption. Death is painless, dying Is painful. That’s what she’s showing them. Showing Gabrielle her hands and feet being nailed is pain, but does that mean Gabrielle's dead?
SD: Xena says, “Fear is a flaw - a subtle flaw given us by the gods so that they can exploit us.” Your belief?
Steven: Yes. If you don't fear things, you can use your mind. If you fear things, you react. How many TV ads are based on making you fear something so you'll buy their product?
SD: Xena: “This way, no matter how we look, we'll always remember the women we were.” And Xena painted the symbol for “woman” on her foot.
Steven: It was a little fun thing. Obviously in their next lives they're not going to have that on their feet. Originally, the dialogue was Xena looking at her foot and saying, “There’s something missing. I know what it is.” And then she put the mark on her foot. The additional dialogue was something Lucy added.
SD: Naiyima said, “You, Gabrielle, you both walk apart together. Like lines of the Mehndi, separated but forever connected."
Steven: Right.
SD: Why the “blue” scroll?
Steven: Blue is a holy color. It was in deference to blue being an Important aspect of spirituality. The scroll itself was not blue.
SD: When Xena got her new outfit at the beginning of the show, it was radically different from her normal armor. She would have been very vulnerable in the blue outfit.
Steven: Gabrielle wanted them to experience the culture and if Xena was wearing her normal attire, they would have stood out too much and not been able to blend in and be closer to the villagers. This way, people would be more normal around them. Besides, they looked good.
SD: Can there be a Heaven/Elysia and Hell/Tartarus and also Karmic Cycles?
Steven: It works in my mind. There's a Heaven and Hell that are recycling centers. Parts of you split off when you die. It goes with the thermodynamic theory that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So, when you die, your personal energy still exists. But it may fragment. The part of your life that you just experienced may go to Tartarus or Elysia or Heaven and stay there. But another aspect of you that’s not resolved yet can continue in the Karmic Cycle.
SD: Could Alti have stopped Xena's Karmic Cycle?
Steven: For the sake of this story, yes. It was a danger Naiyima put them in by sending Xena ahead. This is not in the script, but it's something I had to figure out before I could write the story.
The big flaw here was that if Arminestra had never been aware of her past as Xena, she would have been killed portant to the Oneness. Sending Xena ahead was a huge violation. To send two souls there?! But when Naiyima realized the connection between Xena and Gabrielle and how much strength Xena draws from Gabrielle, she had to do it.
SD: That’s the line that Gabrielle says to Naiyima: “Can you see my Karma? Can you see how much Xena is a part of that?”
Steven: Right. That was how she convinced Naiyima to send her. If you want Xena to do this, she needs me.
SD: Where are Xena and Gabrielle now?
Steven: In “The Way,” we saw Xena finally accept the fact that she has a Warrior’s Way. That that is who she is now. She can't progress unless she fulfills what she is now.
Gabrielle is a little more confused. Her future life as Shakti is something she didn't expect. She expected to be Arminestra!
Xena has an “edge.” That’s something she has been given. She takes it for granted, it’s ingrained in her. What she's had to learn is that peaceful nature because she had it wiped out a long time ago.
Gabrielle’s the opposite. She has that peaceful nature. What she's had to learn is an “edge” because without it, the world would have destroyed her. In the future, what she finally achieves is the knowledge she needs. Right now she believes in ultimate good. She’s having to learn how to deal with the world. I tried to portray that Shakti was a very good leader. He was concerned for his people and willing to die for them.
SD: That’s the Gabrielle we know now inside him.
Steven: Gabrielle needs to recognize what her place is. She needs to accept all she is without thinking. The analogy is running down a path to get to the end and focusing on where you want to be and not where you are on the path now.
SD: And Xena realizing she needs to be a warrior now in order to be the peacemaker later on. Gabrielle said to Xena in “Paradise” that Xena's dark side saved them.
Steven: Xena doesn’t have a dark side. Her darkness and goodness are all one - the totality of who she is. Xena hasn’t accepted that. At the end of “The Way,” she is closer to accepting it. The moment you let go of it is the moment you own it.
Gabrielle still has ideals of who she should be. She doesn't realize that she may already be who she thinks she should be.
I haven’t talked to Renee about this, but there was an interesting choice in the fight scenes she did as Shakti. It looked like she was hitting people and not killing them.
SD: Using the sword more like a staff?
Steven: When Shakti’s body was controlled by the mental spirituality of Gabrielle, he couldn’t kill. Renee may have decided that Shakti’s essence was at odds with Gabrielle's and that was the conflict. So she only half fought. That would make perfect sense.
SD: Janice and Mel from “The Xena Scrolls” – are they descendants of Xena and Gabrielle or their reincarnated souls?
Steven: Believe it or not, I thought about this. There is no rule that says a reincarnated soul cannot enter the body of a descendant. So Janice and Mel happen to be that one in a million confluence of two parallel lives. Your soul and your genetic lines can go off in different directions, but there's nothing to say they can't come back together. The odds of them coming back at the same time in the same location? That's what made that episode so special. That’s what makes Xena and Gabrielle so special.
SD: Xena is known for going to many lands and experiencing many philosophies and religions. Is there a message there? And will it continue?
Steven: Well, first of all, we’re a television show. So we hope to be entertaining. But I think a lot of the fans will tell you that while we haven't always been entertaining, we've certainly been thought provoking. The truth of the matter is that we could have done Xena as a formula show, the same ol’ same ol’ every episode. Xena meet Warlord; Beat Warlord; have laugh. Great for the first season or so, but after that… yawn. I've been down that road on other shows and it's never fulfilling.
So when we first started talking about going to China ( “The Debt I & II”), we realized it was a chance to hear other philosophies, some of which are not only foreign to Western thought, but downright rejected. But go there we did. The same with the India arc. Obviously three episodes cannot do justice to the incredible richness and history of that culture and religion, but we wanted a taste of it. Why? Because it's not something that we see on American television every day. And it's fascinating!
I had never really considered going to India, but now, I'm really trying to get time to do so. I want to see all that I read in an environment where it's not considered one of those “wacky Eastern religions.” Where it is Fact. One of the most difficult things with writing “Between The Lines” was trying to interpret Eastern thought into Western perceptions. I had to use keywords to provoke similarities where I could. But. as I said, it just can't do it justice. It would require much more research than I would be able to show in 43 minutes.
It kinda reminds me of a letter I got a while back, second season, I think. It was a woman who would watch Xena with her young son. He would constantly ask questions about the stories we told or the way we portrayed the Greek gods. She would explain to him. After a while, she started to get a little annoyed that she had to explain the difference in time lines, the divergence from Homer and the like. Then, one day, he stopped asking and started commenting! He was being critical of the show. It turned out that he had decided to find out for himself and had started reading up on the classic mythologies! He had done this on his own! And I consider that a great letter. Because it means we were able to provoke a curiosity in someone that led them to discover worlds beyond their own.
Now, will this continue? I hope so. Because that is the driving force behind our characters. Their search for their inner peace is a search for all of us. And we, like Xena and Gabrielle, cannot allow ourselves to be limited by our own environments.