Coyle On Coyle
The writer on each of his Hercules and Xena adventures.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 10
HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS
The End of the Beginning
“I originally pitched a Xena episode with Autolycus and the Cronos Stone and a frozen village, and to my surprise they called a couple of months later and wanted to do it as Hercules! At that point they were already in the middle of shooting the Golden Hind trilogy, so they said, ‘Why don't we use this time travel thing as an opportunity to revisit Serena.’ So that’s how that story developed.”
Regrets, I've Had a Few
“Rob originally wanted to do a story about Young Atlas and Young Hercules together. I wasn’t terribly happy with it and came up with this idea of the first time Herc's anger and strength got the better of him and he accidentally took a young kid's life. Everybody agreed that it was a better emotional story than Young Atlas was, so that’s the one I wound up doing.”
Stranger in a Strange World
“Rob wanted to do a ‘Bizarro World' episode, with alternate versions of all the regular characters, and as I worked with it, it just got whackier and whackier. It involved some dramatic elements, such as lolaus having to assassinate the Sovereign, but I turned it into a comedy and we committed to Xena and Aphrodite and Joxer being in it. Lucy only had two days to shoot that episode, so I had to cram all her scenes onto a few sets.”
If I Had a Hammer
“Pygmalion was a classic legend that hadn’t been done, so we just put a twist on it. This body-building character has a flirtatious relationship with Herc, but he’s not returning her advances, and the story grew out of that.”
Armageddon Now, Parts 1 and 2
“I developed the entire two-parter, and Lucy was going to appear in the second half and we had Ares and Callisto and we locked down all these actors. I developed this huge time-travel scenario, but there was no time to have me write both halves, so Gene [O’Neill] and Noreen [Tobi] took a crack at it, and then Jerry Brown did a heavy rewrite on part two.”
War Wounds
“That was a satisfying script in the end, but it was kind of herky jerky, because Hercules isn't quite where he should be in it. Instead, it’s divided between him, lolaus and Nebula.”
Top God (story credit)
“It’s not a show that’s close to my heart because I didn't originate it. I brought in the elements of the teenage kid being tempted by drugs, and did the story, but suddenly got pulled back onto Xena and wasn’t able to finish the script, so Gerry [Conway] took it over.”
Genies & Grecians & Geeks, Oh My!
“We intended the genie to be [US comic/actress] Sandra Bernhardt, and in fact, that’s how I pitched it to Rob: they find Aladdin’s lamp and a genie pops out, and it’s Sandra Bernhardt and she's going to take no guff from these guys. He thought it was great and she was willing to do it, but in the end she wasn't available, so we wound up with a Kiwi actress.”
Norse by Norsewest (story credit)
“I drafted a two-part story involving Brunhilda and the Valkyries, who were Odin's personal warriors, but Rob wasn’t happy with it. So we ended up scrunching my two halves down into what became the first half minus the Valkyries. Gerry Conway took it over and chose to do Ragnarok for part two.”
Sky High
“I came back that season with a bunch of potential storylines, including Wages of Fear, the classic French movie about a truckload of nitro glycerine being driven up a mountain. I thought it would make a terrific Hercules episode, and somebody said, ‘Why don’t you develop that?’ I also wanted a woman in the mix because it was such a macho testosterone-driven show, so I brought in Ephiny.’’
Stranger and Stranger (story credit)
“That was going to be the big 3-D episode. I was dubious, because it involved huge expenses and shipping equipment all the way to New Zealand, but Rob had this vision and wanted to do a 3-D episode. He also wanted to make this a sequel to Stranger in a Strange World, and Lucy was going to be in it and the Sovereign would be back, and that’s when we would spring lolaus 2. The 3-D aspect of it got yanked very late in the process, after the script was already written. I did many drafts of the story, and was tired, frankly, so they thought Gerry could come in with a fresh outlook and he did a great job with it.”
The Academy
“I was looking for some crossover potential, characters established on Young Hercules that could be paid off on Big Herc. I came up with the idea of doing the Academy, with Herc going back to school and winding up taking over. Rob didn’t see that as a heroic adventure - Herc in charge of a bunch of snot-nosed high school kids - but everybody else seemed to like the story idea so we won him over!”
Be Deviled
“It was originally supposed to be Callisto’s sister who came back from Hell to redeem her sister, but when Hudson was unavailable it became Jeremy Roberts, who’s a terrific actor.”
XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS
Ten Little Warlords
“One of my earliest pitches involved an Agatha Christie Ten Little Indians scenario, and that was combined with some other elements, such as Ares losing his sword and becoming mortal, and it turned out to be a very successful episode.”
A Necessary Evil
“I was told, ‘We really want to do a show where Callisto teams up with Xena and they're forced to join sides because they have a common enemy.’ They had this character Velasca from The Quest, which was one of the emergency episodes, so they brought a lot of elements to that story and then I put them together.”
The Execution
“My original story involved a warlord in jail on the eve of his execution who calls Xena into his cell. He tells her that he got away with all these killings that he was never brought to justice for, but ironically, the one that he's been sentenced to die for is one that she herself committed. He wants her to help break him out to do one last humanitarian thing involving his daughter. That all changed to involve the Tim Thomerson character from another episode.”
Sacrifice, Part 2
“They were planning this big two-part finale, and to kick it off, they brought me into the meeting to ask me where I had left off with Armageddon Now. Originally, I was going to do part one, but the story went through the usual process of being pulled apart and put back together again. At some point, it went through a complete flip-flop, where a lot of the events that were in my half were pushed into part two.”