Dahak! Anatomy of an Apolcalypse
Everything you always wanted to know about Hope’s demonic father… but were too terrified to ask. By Gary Gerani.
The Official Magazine: Issue 04
At the conclusion of “The Deliverer”, the shattered remains of an ancient temple built to serve the “One God” look suspiciously like Stonehenge, one of the most musical and enigmatic wonders of the real world (see separate sidebar). But the Druids did not necessarily worship an evil god, which is a common misconception. And Stonehenge itself predates both Druid and Christian religion by thousands and thousands of years.
So, you may ask, what is really going on here? What manner of entity is this Dahak - the “One God” of the temple - and how does he specifically relate to producer Rob Tapert’s overall creative plan for Xena?
“What I was trying to show is that Dahak is something that has been here for a long time; it is part of the universe,” explains the writer behind Xena’s most fearsome supernatural challenge, Steven Sears. “Zoroastrian religion mirrors Christianity, almost identically. Which means of course that you could refer to Dahak as being Satan. According to Zoroastrian belief, Dahak is ‘the evil scourge that will cleanse the Earth,’ which is simply another way of describing the constant, eternal battle between light and dark, good and evil… all that good stuff.”
Certainly dark forces have invaded the Xena/Hercules storylines before, but all were related to the Greek gods and adhered to the tenants [sic] of that particular mythology. “We’ve said many times that Xena and Hercules are set during the twilight of the Greek gods, which means we’re witnessing a diminishment of their powers,” amplifies Sears. “If we had started the series earlier, we would’ve been dealing with the Titans. Now the Titans were defeated by the Greek gods, mythologically. And the Greek gods were in turn basically defeated by monotheism, which took over three fourths of the globe. So Dahak represents that type of a downfall for Zeus, Hera, Ares and the rest… which is why they’re so worried about him.”
On a more practical creative level, continues Sears, “We developed Dahak to introduce two things: a new, evil element to the series, but also one that is readily identifiable to anyone who watches the show. Because it’s a very simplistic and easy-to-understand; it’s evil. The pantheon of Greek gods we write stories about are not, really. Ares isn’t evil. He and the others simply have their focus. It’s up to us to determine whether their focus is correct or not, whether it’s good or evil. Ares actually does believe he can bring peace to the world. Sure, you’ve got to break a lot of eggs, you’ve gotta kill people. But bringing peace to the world in his mind means that ‘I am the absolute ruler of Heaven and Earth, and therefore there’s nothing to fight about’. Well, to a lot of people that’s a dictatorship, which could translate as evil. But with Dahak, there’s no distinction of that at all; he is definitely an entity of evil with a capital ‘E’... period.”
Coming up with this ultimate negative force was an interesting process. Sears knew he wanted some kind of all-powerful supernatural threat, something that could be developed not only on Xena, but Hercules as well. He looked carefully through mythological history to see what entities “fit” into the creative tapestry woven by Rob Tapert and the other Renaissance visionaries. “Zoroastrian religion was ideal,” Sears concluded. The monster-demon Dahak was exotic, thematically correct and obscure enough to appear fresh, in keeping with Xena’s imaginative tradition. It was so obscure, in fact, that Tapert couldn’t find it in his own texts and asked Sears to fax over his original reference (“Are you sure you got that name right, Steve?”).
Sears promptly began shifting through the particulars of this ancient religion, adapting elements that worked and dancing around a few that didn’t. “To use Christian terms, one of the “demons” of Dahak, which basically is represented by every pestilence that can crawl across the Earth, every evil, scourge, disease, or famine, was named Khraftstar. Khraftstar, of course, became the High Priest of Dahak featured in ‘The Deliverer.’”
A High Priest in (almost) human form, unlike his foul master. “Dahak can ride the line between taking human form or not,” explains Sears, emphasizing a conceptually important aspect of this entity. “I had played with an idea where Dahak does finally assume human shape. But the problem with that is that it actually diminishes his power, because people might begin to associate too much with it, as opposed to it being this intangible, mystical being. Dahak does indeed make a few appearances, but it’s mostly representational. Khrafstar is a person; Dahak is an environment, a presence.” In the religious texts, the Big D is actually represented as a foul, three-headed dragon, something not too dissimilar to King Ghidorah, one of Godzilla’s favorite sparring partners.
So far, the key image “standing in” for this mother (father?) of all monsters on Xena has been fire… an ironic reversal of classic Zorostrian belief, which views fire as sacred. “That’s an association we’re making with the audience, of fire being basically evil,” offers Sears. “To put it in Christian terms, it’s hellfire. Personally, the thing about fire that I like symbolically is that fire is something that’s very pretty, it’s very seductive. You can stare into a fire for hours and see all kinds of images in the flames. You could, if it weren’t for those little warning signs called pain, walk right into a fire, because in a way you’d like to, it’s so beguiling. But that’s exactly why it’s so deceptive, so dangerous.”
As we all know, the Season Three cliffhanger offered Hope in the form of Gabrielle, insuring that Dahak and Dahakian storylines will be with us for some time to come. “Dahak’s contribution to the series is not episodic,” clarifies Sears. “To define episodic: we start off with Xena, offer up a villain and Xena defeats the villain. These villains frequently come back, like Callisto, and they wind up being defeated many times. But Dahak doesn’t ‘think’ in an episodic level; he thinks of a grand plan. And at this particular moment in time Dahak happens to be winning. When you look back at all the episodes that featured the concept, you’ll notice that Dahak has never really lost… he’s always moving forward.”
As is the Xena series in general, much to the delight of its demanding audience. “Somewhere in the back of Rob Tapert’s mind, I know he has his vision of where the series would go in its perfect arc,” concludes Steven Stears. “An ultimate evil threat is going to pertain, because Xena needs to fight the greatest odds. And Dahak is being set up for doing that.”
So take a deep breath, fellow Xenites. The One God is here to stay. And after the Greek immortals are literally history… well, then it might be our turn.