The Ides of Xena
Xena writer and executive producer R.J. Stewart reveals what’s in store for the sixth season of the show as he prepares to bid farewell to the Warrior Princess once and for all. Interview by Joe Nazzaro.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 17
It’s hard to believe that after six years and hundreds of adventures, Xena Warrior Princess Princess is finally hanging up her chakram and heading off to the Elysian Fields with her companion Gabrielle. Not in the literal sense, of course, but barring a last-minute change, the sixth season of Xena will be the show’s last.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s any lack of good stories to be told. Among the highlights of season six are adventures in North Africa, Scandinavia and Japan; encounters with Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beowulf and an unseen warlord named Gurkhan. Throw in memorable appearances by Odin, the Valkyries and a former God of War named Ares and you’ve got one ass-kicking season of excitement!
Once again, the architects of these adventures are series co-creators/executive producers Rob Tapert and R.J. Stewart, who took a just-rehabilitated Warrior Princess from a three-episode arc of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and turned her into a fully-fledged cult icon. For Stewart, the reality of finally ending his long association with the character is only just beginning to sink in. “I have such mixed emotions about Xena,” admits the writer/producer, speaking from his office in Studio City, California. “On the one hand, six years is a great run, and being a show runner for six years is quite a load, so I wouldn’t mind lightening that load a bit. But on the other hand I love the series. It’s been such a great run and it’s sure going to be tough to wake up one morning and know that it’s not around anymore.”
At the time of this conversation, in early December 2000, season six is about halfway through production of its 22 episodes, although the development of the year’s scripts is obviously a good deal further ahead than that. “Let’s see,” says Stewart, reaching for a nearby schedule, “right now, we’re finishing up episode 14 and starting 15. The scripts through to episode 16 have already been written; I just have to do a polish on those last two.
“As far as the last six episodes are concerned, I have no scripts, but two of them are about to be delivered, and I will write the last two,” Stewart says of the final instalments, which may make up a two-part finale. “So there are only two scripts that remain to be developed. We’re in pretty good shape right now, and the workload is beginning to lift.”
It seems almost churlish to enquire about the final episodes of Xena considering those scripts have yet to be written, so let’s side-step that issue in favour of a more generalised question: are the producers planning to conclude the series in a very final manner, or will it be more like the end of Hercules, with a somewhat open-ended storyline? “It will certainly be more like Hercules,” Stewart says, “but exactly what form that will take is still being debated.”
As in previous years, Stewart sat down with Tapert to map out some of the major story points for the year. Although season six doesn’t necessarily follow a long-term arc, there are still a number of sign-posts that were created during pre-production. “Certainly the thing we both knew, and that we each came up with coincidentally, was that we were going to do the Ring saga, featuring the Valkyries. Rob said, ‘I want to do a whole Norse thing with Sleeping Beauty and all that stuff.’ So it was a marriage of the two concepts, and that’s how we worked out that trilogy.
“Rob also had a scene he wanted to work out about Gabrielle’s warriorhood - that is, her questioning herself and wanting revenge, which we did in one episode. So we had a good idea where we were going with that.
“It’s not always that way,” Stewart admits. “One day, Rob and I were on the phone and we realised, ‘Hey, we’re not coming up with any ideas!’ So I sat down and wrote eight ideas and kept working on them for a couple of days and then faxed them off to him, and from that we were able to piece together a couple of other ideas. But when you’re in the six season of a show, the ideas aren’t popping out quite as easily as they were earlier on.”
Adding to Stewart’s initial difficulties was the fact that he had to start virtually from scratch in developing a new writing department for season six. He had already lost one of his mainstays early in season five when Steven Sears went off to create the new Sheena series, and Sears was eventually followed by Chris Manheim, George Strayton and Tom O’Neill at the end of the fifth year. That meant putting together an entirely new writing staff, which the producer recalls was both scary and challenging at the same time. “I think anybody who does this job has to enjoy challenges,” he comments, “because it’s an almost impossible job. Even when you have a terrific staff as I did with Steve and Chris, it can be pretty scary. But I think we pulled it off, and the season is going along pretty well.”
Joining Stewart for season six were Emily Skopov, who had worked on a number of dramatic shows, including Crisis Center, Pacific Blue and The Client; and Joel Metzger, a veteran of such drama series as The Outer Limits and Sliders. “We read a script of Emily’s and liked it, and I had her do a script for us. We needed to get somebody on staff quickly, so she wrote a first draft that had some good dialogue and we hired her. And then Joel had done a nice Cleopatra 2525 episode for us, so based on that we hired him as a staff writer and went from there.”
Another addition to the writing team was Melissa (Missy) Good, a veteran of Xena fan fiction, who was initially commissioned to write two freelance scripts, including the season opener, Coming Home, and Legacy, and has since been approached to do a third later this season. “Rob wanted to try a fan fiction person. I actually thought it was kind of a strange idea at the beginning, but he asked Steve Sears, who’s very Internet-connected, and he recommended Melissa Good. And I think it turned out great.
“She did a very good job on the first script she did for us and we really appreciated the work that she did. She had a nice feel for the emotional qualities of the characters, and then we gave her Legacy to do, which had a stronger story, and she responded much better to that. Coming Home was a much weaker story, which was our fault. I think she had a lot more problems with it, and I had problems trying to rewrite it. So it was a troublesome one, but the episode turned out okay, and that’s all you really want.”
As usual, Stewart also wrote several season six episodes himself, including Who’s Ghurkan?, in which Gabrielle and Xena’s search for Gabrielle’s niece leads them to the door of the mysterious and powerful Ghurkan, and The Rheingold, the opener of this season’s Norse trilogy. “I’m very pleased with it,” he notes of the trilogy, which consists of the episodes The Rheingold, The Ring and Return of the Valkyrie. “In some cases, we backed ourselves into an expositional corner, so I would wish there was less exposition, but I think some of that was necessary. Other than that one criticism, I think they turned out to be terrific episodes. I think they’re really good showcases for Xena and Gabrielle. They’re good stories, they look great and they’re really good entertaining television.”
Stewart is happy to preview some of the other episodes coming up this season. “Dangerous Prey is about a guy who loves to fight the greatest warriors in the world and defeat them,” he reveals. “He kills one of the prime Amazons and then hears about Xena and comes for her. It’s kind of thematically similar to the old movie The Naked Prey, and I think Renee did a great job directing it.
“The Last Centaur is Joel Metzger’s,” Stewart continues. “Xena comes face to face with the children of two people she knew back in the old days, before she went to sleep in the ice caves. One of them is the centaur child of Ephiny, and the other is the child of Borias. Xena owes a debt to both Ephiny and Borias, but they’re in this horrible blood feud and she has to figure out how to resolve it - kind of like our presidential election!
“When Fates Collide is by Katherine Fugate, who came to us and requested to do a Xena because she loves the series so much. That’s one episode that I won’t tell you much about because it would give the surprise away. This was actually an idea I had that Rob gave a really cool twist to, and we gave it to Katherine to do.
“To Helicon and Back is written by Liz Friedman, who was one of our producers before she went off to be a writer,” says Stewart. “She actually went off to work in the trenches and built up a body of work that we could read to prove she’d come a really long way, so we brought her in to do an episode and she and her partner Vanessa Place have done a really good job.
“Path of Vengeance is another one that Joel is doing, in which Eve finally gets her comeuppance. The joke I used to make with Xena when I came on was that she was a villain on Hercules and then she got an order of 22 episodes and became a good girl. One of the main reasons I designed the character of Callisto was actually to force Xena to deal with the repercussions of her past. Callisto is somebody whose life she ruins, so she comes back to haunt her.
“With Eve, it bothered Rob and I that Eve had basically turned Christian, or rather, our make- believe, loving version of Christian, and she really doesn’t have to pay any price, although some people yell mean words at her. So this is where the Amazons, who she’s had some problems with in the past, try and get retribution.”
Stewart is quick to point out that comedic episodes are still very much a part of Xena, and there are a few in the works for the current season. “We’ve got Old Ares Had a Farm, which is about Ares and what he does when he doesn’t have his godhood. How does he cope with that? Bearing in mind that Xena feels somewhat indebted to him because of what he did for her daughter and for Gabrielle, that’s a fun episode, with them trying to rehabilitate Ares.
“There’s also one that Chris Black wrote for us,” Stewart remarks, “which was a pitch of mine and we’ll see how well it turns out. I’ll take all the blame for it if it doesn’t work and Chris’ll get all the credit for it if it does! It basically has reporters reporting on Xena. That was my pitch, and Chris took it and made something really nice out of the script. I think it’s coming together well, but it’s a really bizarre one, and. like I said, I’ll take the fall for it if it sucks. It does have the convention of having what appears to be a modem newsman tracking Xena around.”
Stewart reveals that Xena and Gabrielle may go to Japan in a two-part episode planned for later on in the season. “We haven’t decided why yet,” he notes. “Rob and I are working on it together and we have a couple of ideas, but we haven’t decided which ones to use.”
If this indeed is the final season of Xena. Stewart has no shortage of other work to keep him busy for the time being. He’s still writing and executive producing Cleopatra 2525, and there’s also the pilot script for a series called South Camelot, which he’s been working on when time permits.
“I did a bit of reworking back in October, and we’re sort of waiting to hear what’s going to happen with it,” he explains. “Right now I relish the inactivity, because it finally gives me a chance to get ahead on Xena. Cleo and South Camelot are sort of on hold at the moment, and that’s not a problem because it means I can almost see the end of the tunnel as far as the Xena workload is concerned.”
There’s also the possibility of Stewart collaborating with Tapert on a future series, having worked together in creating Xena and Cleopatra 2525 for Renaissance. “We haven’t talked about it a lot, although we’re certainly on great terms and could go that way. I’m sort of backing off a little bit, because I wouldn’t mind some down time. But I would also really like to be more successful, so if there are more two-hour movies, that’s great, but if there’s some down time, I wouldn’t mind that either.”
When Xena wraps production, there’s one aspect of the series that R.J. Stewart will miss more than any other: “The fun of thinking in this world, living the lives of these characters, Xena and Gabrielle. It’s like they’ve been my friends and I’ve been riding with them for six years, so I’ll miss that,” he admits, “thinking like they think, saying what they’re saying...
“Those two characters - that’s the thing I’ll miss the most.”
SIDEBAR: The Best of Xena
With Xena coming to an end after six seasons, it seemed an appropriate point to ask R.J. Stewart which episodes he considers his personal favourites. While some producers have a bit of difficulty reeling off a top five list without poring over possible contenders, in this case, that’s not a problem. “The reason I’m able to jump to it right away,” explains Stewart, “is because I was talking to my wife the other day about which were my favourite episodes!”
1/ The Price
“I think it’s a great show, and everything about it works. It shows that raw backstory side of Xena; it doesn’t have flashbacks, but it shows us that she had this experience with the Horde that scared her and hardened her. It’s the only time that we’ve seen Xena scared, and I think it was excellent story-telling.”
2/ The Debt
“The Debt had a grand scope to it, and I think it could stand alone as a movie. It’s really a unique show, and I think the size of it is so amazing. It’s a tribute to the people in New Zealand and to Rob and everyone else that they were able to put that on the screen. Plus writing it was as much stimulation and fun as I’ve had since I’ve been here, because I got into mysticism and brought in some of my philosophical ideas, such as coming up with the idea that the husband is Lao Tzu. So I just went wild with it.”
3/ Callisto
“This is a terrific episode, and it also introduced Hudson [Leick], who was so good to our series. I think she’s just such a charismatic, dynamic performer and I love her.”
4/ Remember Nothing
“This is from the second season, and the episodes I’m talking about are mostly from the earlier seasons. I think some of that has to do with nostalgia rather than a critique of the later seasons, but I watched Remember Nothing with my two sons, who liked Xena but were into other things too. They watched it and got really involved. These guys are young adults - Chris has got children, my grandchildren, so these are not teenagers. But they were totally riveted and the episode was terrific storytelling.”
5/ Ides of March
“Once again, this is great television. We were consistent to a theme the whole year, and I think we finished it up right. So I really like that episode and how it turned out. And season four was a fun season, particularly with the way it ended.”
The Worst of Xena
Okay, we’re all big fans of the Warrior Princess, but let’s face it, most of us can point to at least one episode that’s not up to the usual high standard. Bearing that in mind, we asked Stewart if there’s one episode that should be forever expunged from the minds of Xena viewers…
“There might be one if I thought about it,” the producer concedes, “but I’m not going to do that because it would point a finger at somebody who was involved with the show. I’m always the guarantor of the scripts, and I’m involved with everything, so if there’s anything that sucks here, I should get as much blame as anybody else. But even so, if I pointed a finger at one and it was a script I didn’t write, or it was a particular director, or maybe someone wrote a terrific script but it was screwed up somewhere else down the line, someone is going to blame that person for it and I don’t want to do that. We all have blood on our hands when it doesn’t work.
“I guess the safest thing to do is point to one that I wrote, but hell, I don’t want to do that either! Let’s say that it was a production snafu, but here’s this show that is produced as well as anything on television week in and week out, so how unfair would it be to point out the one episode that didn’t work? So that’s why I’m reluctant to do that.”
SIDEBAR: Carry On Cleo
Much of R.J. Stewart’s time over the past two seasons has been divided between his writing/producing duties on Xena and the new half-hour futuristic action-adventure series Cleopatra 2525. Starring former Hercules and Xena alumni Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt and Jennifer Sky, the series takes place several years in the future, where mankind has been driven underground by massive robotic beasts called The Bailies.
Now in production hiatus midway through its second season, Stewart is largely pleased with how the series has turned out. “There were things about the 22-minute form that we were still learning,” he admits (upcoming episodes have been upgraded into the standard one-hour format). “I think it’s very important that we base each episode on the three pillars of action, character and humour and not get too ambitious with any one of those three. If the action is too ambitious, the show becomes wall-to-wall gunfire. If the heart story is too ambitious, it’s very hard to pay it off. If the humour part is too ambitious, it becomes just jokes. So it’s really important to balance it out.
“I’m generally pleased with most of the episodes we’ve done,” Stewart acknowledges, “but the ones that maybe had a few flaws are the ones where we lost that balance. A couple of the shows were just shoot-em-ups, and at least one of them tried to have an emotional theme that I thought was set up wonderfully but didn’t work because the show was over too soon. But generally I’m happy with it. It’s certainly the series we intended to make.”
As for the reaction from the fans, “We’ve heard from hard-core SF people who don’t like it, but other than that, we’ve had a very positive response,” he points out, “both personally and on the Internet, plus in ratings and demographics. The people who haven’t liked it, haven’t liked it in the sense that they thought of it as silly sci-fi, and of course that’s the kind of sci-fi we’re doing. So there are people who just don’t think it should be made at all.
“I don’t know what constructive lesson we can take from that except to stop making the show, which is not going to happen.”
SIDEBAR: South Camelot
It seems hard to believe that Stewart has been able to find any spare time between working on Xena and Cleopatra, but the prolific writer has actually managed to create a pilot script for a possible new genre series, called South Camelot.
“TNT liked the script quite a bit and wanted me to come in,” he explains, “but Rob and I agreed that I would get the sixth season of Xena off to a nice start before returning to work on it. TNT was a little disappointed, but they're still very very interested in it, so I don't think it hurts us too much.”
Regarding the show's premise, “It takes place in a 21st Century American inner city,” Stewart reveals, “but it's a retelling of the Arthurian myths in that milieu. The concept is, the myth never took place; it's taking place now in the middle of this urban environment.
“I've couched the script very much in real terms, so it's as realistic as possible, but the knights are a gang who have a very mediaeval ethic, and they live by a certain code. Merlin is a street magician, and the question is: is his mystical power stronger than the magic would suggest? Morgan Le Fay is a manipulative woman who's in control of Melihan, who is a villain from Arthurian mythology, who's like a gangster in this story. I think I introduce Lancelot in a very interesting way, as a man who's converted over to Arthur's side when he falls in love with Guinevere. So the series does play out that love triangle.
“I think the appeal of the series will be on three levels,” Stewart explains. “First off, it's a good action melodrama. Secondly, there's a sexual intrigue that's almost like Melrose Place. I jokingly called it ‘Melrose Place with fights.’ And then there are the mythological elements, which will pop up from time to time. So I'm very excited about it, and so is TNT.”