Chakram
written by Chris Manheim - Producer
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 10
SD: This is the first episode after "Fallen Angel” and Xena’s lost her memory.
Chris: Only a part of her memory. The dark part.
SD: What is the "dark” part?
Chris: For Xena, it’s an actual attack against someone else. Anything that had to do with violence was wiped away when she returned from her journeys to Heaven and Hell. Now she just can’t fathom why people would fight.
SD: I liked the bit where you showed her change of mindset with the so-called "riddle” - What's a warrior without a weapon? The innocence on Lucy’s face was startling. She remembers Gabrielle, but she doesn’t remember Ares.
Chris: Ares is all dark.
SD: Gabrielle didn't lose her memory.
Chris: No, she didn’t.
SD: But she’s got some violence in her, especially now.
Chris: She does. But having her keep her memory and needing to fight to protect Xena served the practical purpose of reducing Lucy's fighting to accommodate her pregnancy.
SD: I was surprised Xena didn’t remember that she’d been dead.
Chris: Xena’s chakram was the dark chakram. Without that, there wasn’t anything to contain her dark side to remind her of what had happened to her. Her death was based on the violence in her life and that had been removed. That’s why when she touched the chakram embedded in the wall, her memories were triggered.
SD: Were the dark and light chakrams invented for this episode or had the idea of two chakrams been discussed before?
Chris: We had talked before about someday doing an episode based around the origin of the chakram. This show gave us some information about that. We learned Ares gave it to Xena and that he stole it from Kal. I don't think we ever thought about a light and dark version before this storyline came up.
SD: Not something you could look up in a book and say, “Hey, there’s a light version of the chakram we could use in a story.”
Chris (laughing): Nope.
SD: Xena took the light chakram off the altar, brought it out to the fight outside the temple, but she couldn’t use it. She dropped it. She wasn’t able to kill until Gabrielle was directly threatened.
Chris: And, even then, it was almost inadvertent. She lashed out with it instinctively. And then, she was horrified at what she’d done. She struck out at Kal not realizing what would happen - that she'd kill him. Ares played on that by saying to her, “It's not your fault. It’s okay.” She was stunned someone died at her hand. Until she melded the two chakrams together, symbolically bringing herself into balance, she couldn’t kill.
SD: The series of expressions that washed over Lucy’s face as she finally made the decision to put two chakrams together said it all - confusion, fear, doubt, resignation, determination and, finally, resolution. It must have been incredibly hard to make the decision to bring darkness back into her life.
Chris. She did it beautifully.
SD: We still don’t know when Ares gave Xena the dark chakram.
Chris: It was when she was under his tutelage.
SD: Someone pointed out that in “The Reckoning,” Xena says she’s never seen Ares, but she has the chakram already.
Chris: Unless he didn't appear to her in his real form.
SD: Which we saw him do in “Ties That Bind” when he came to her disguised as her feather. He’s a shape-changer. And, at the same time, you hadn’t settled on how she got the chakram.
Chris (laughing): Right.
SD: So, Hind’s Blood can kill a god, the light chakram can kill a god — anything else lying around they should avoid?
Chris (smiling): It’s possible.
SD (laughing): That’s a very portentous gleam in your eye. The priest was burned to death when he picked the light chakram off the altar. But Xena is so pure, she can take it off without being harmed. Then she drops it outside the temple and Amarice picks it up without being incinerated.
Chris: Once it’s taken off the altar, it’s fair game for anyone. That’s why Ares tells Xena to give it to him.
SD: Whoever removes it from the altar neutralizes it? At that point, it’s like a knife - the gods could handle it safely, but they could still use it to kill.
Chris: Yeah. That’s why Ares and Kal needed a pure person to get it, but then they would take it from them to use themselves.
SD: If there was an earthquake and it rolled off - that wouldn’t count?
Chris (laughing): Probably not — we didn’t make up a rule covering that eventuality.
SD: After being raised from the dead, Xena is a pure soul. Gabrielle’s awfully nice herself. Some would say naturally a lot purer than Xena, but she couldn't touch it and neither could Eli who would seem to be the purest of the three.
Chris: Neither could Eli's friend Kalib who was the purest of the monks. In all these people there were touches of violence. Xena, at that point, was completely washed of any dark, evil, violence.
SD: Was Kal a real god from mythology?
Chris: No, he was made up. Although it didn’t make it into the script, the early discussions had him coming from a Slavic or Balkan country. Where they had their own local gods. And he was their God of War. Although he and Ares knew each other.
SD: My favorite scene was the one on the balcony where Xena is praying for guidance about taking her dark side back into herself. And the irony of Gabrielle convincing her this was necessary to be able to do good in the world. Building on the theme of Xena making the hard decisions so that other people don’t have to. And it reflected so many discussions you and I have had about the necessity of evil as well as good.
Chris: That scene was actually added when we ran a bit short. It was a nice moment.
SD: Speaking of intriguing moments, Ares tries to push Eli aside in the temple and he can’t. We see a moment of fear cross Ares’ face.
Chris: There has been a prophecy that the Twilight of the Gods will come. Eli's from a whole different faith and there’s a sense this man is the cutting edge of that time. I thought Kevin and Timothy played that moment really well.
SD: The change in Gabrielle making her more of a warrior - would that have happened if Lucy hadn’t become pregnant? What were the plans for Gabrielle after their time in India?
Chris: The way the episodes have been playing out, Gabrielle was growing to have more strength. The reason Amarice stayed around so long was because we were looking for a new, younger, more naive person who could make the type of mistakes that Gabrielle used to make. That was an element of the show we hated to lose because it generates conflict and stories, but Gabrielle has outgrown that role.
However, her way is still the way of friendship, support and service which is a point I was making not so long ago when we were talking about another story. I said I thought Gabrielle would feel a certain way because she feels they need to be of service. She not only supports Xena - she believes they need to be of service to the world.
SD: What's the difference between the Way of Friendship and the Way of Love?
Chris: I think with friendship, you support whoever your friend is, whoever you feel is your path partner. And if they want to go into battle, you’re right there beside them kicking ass. But love doesn’t allow for fighting. It only allows for compassion and understanding.
SD: What about Gabrielle’s speech in “Callisto” about stopping the cycle of hatred and violence?
Chris: I think Gabrielle has realized that may have been a little naive on her part.
SD: I can’t make up my mind between the value of stopping the cycle of violence and the value of fighting for the greater good.
Chris: I think, honestly, that is the way of the world. Notice when Xena put the two chakrams together, she got back in balance. But that allowed for the dark as well as the light. The light alone did not bring her to herself. For one thing, it isn’t her Way. As good as it sounds, when Gabrielle used to talk about stopping the cycle of violence, she didn’t know the world the way she does now.
SD: One fan mentioned that Gabrielle has become harder, stronger, wiser and sadder.
Chris: She’s all of that now.
SD: Violence is the result of greed, selfishness, hatred. That’s what you have to stop.
Chris: That’s true, too. You need to go to the source. Then there wouldn't be violence.
SD: Maybe that’s what Gabrielle is learning. She needs to go after the source of the violence, not the violence itself.
Chris: Yeah.
SD: In the beginning of “Paradise Found,” Gabrielle was questioning Xena’s dark side.
Chris: It’s all about integration. I just don’t think you can be all one or the other and function in the world very well. Maybe if you went away and lived in a monastery, but then you’re not having an impact on people. And Xena’s all about people and the impact she has on the world.
SD (laughing): That was a great line Xena had in the hot tub scene when she’s talking to Joxer about his love for Gabrielle and what he should do about it — “Of course, you could just kiss the girl.”
Chris (laughing): It reminds me of that song in The Little Mermaid, “Just kiss the girl.”
SD (laughing): I wondered why I heard music every time I said that line. I haven’t seen that movie in ages.
Now, about this Joxer/ Gabrielle thing. Did this come about as a natural progression of Joxer. The first sign we had of it was at the end of “A Comedy Of Eros.” And it showed up again in “The Quill Is Mightier.”
Chris: I love unrequited love. There’s just so much heart there. And it took Joxer a while to realize what he was feeling. He didn’t just meet Gabrielle and it was love at first sight. He palled around with them for some time and then discovered himself falling in love with her. I think his feelings for Gabrielle are a natural outgrowth of his character and it's natural for Gabrielle not to be in love with him in the way he wishes. We play a lot with that this season.
SD: Ted plays that part well.
Chris: Bittersweet.
SD: Now that Xena has a new chakram, how do you explain the old one that shows up in Ares' tomb in “The Xena Scrolls”?
Chris (laughing): Oooo! Good question. And I don’t have an answer yet.
SD: The new powers we saw Xena use in “Purity” and “Back In The Bottle” - the force field, throwing lightning bolts, sucking the air out of a room long distance - are they going to stay?
Chris: She can do that in Chin. She doesn’t seem to be able to carry those powers outside Chin. She tried in “One Against An Army” because Gabrielle was dying and couldn’t muster them up.
SD: If Jennifer Sky hadn’t gotten Cleopatra 2525, would her character have ended in “Them Bones”?
Chris: Only temporarily. We wanted her to settle down someplace, but then we assumed we'd pick her up in other adventures. She would show up somewhere with Xena and Gabrielle.
SD: But she's not an Amazon.
Chris: No. Which I think makes sense given who the actress was and the way she played it. That wasn’t how we had originally designed her character. She was really an Amazon when we conceived her. But you look back now and it seems to have turned out naturally.
SD: She was supposed to be an Amazon?
Chris: Yes. It was only in the last few months we made this turnaround — that she had been lying about her background.
SD: Just a wannabe.
Chris: Yeah.
SD: Hoping no one would notice she didn’t know the correct Amazon dance routines.
Chris (laughing): Right.