Is There A Doctor In The House?
written by Patricia Manney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 24
SD: You knew about Xena before you wrote this episode?
Patricia (laughs): Yes, I knew it intimately.
SD: May I ask why? Many people may not know who you're married to.
Patricia (laughs): I'm married to Eric Gruendemann, one of the executive producers of Xena and Hercules. When he went to New Zealand to produce the first Hercules telemovies, I went with him. I had been a vice-president of production and development at a small production company and was leaving my job because I had hit the glass ceiling. They weren't going to let me move up and produce on my own. I was negotiating to run a big production company when Eric got a call from Rob Tapert saying, “Hey, I'm going fishing. Can you be me for two weeks?” (In her best Rob T. imitation)
SD (laughs): That's how it started?
Patricia: That’s it. Rob went fishing and Sam was busy pitching Hercules to the Universal brass. So Eric was Rob for two weeks and sat in on all the meetings. By the end of the two weeks, Sam turned to Eric and said, “I'm not going to do anything on these shows and Rob has his hands full with Mantis. We’ll give you the money, you go and come back with stuff in focus?”
SD: “Stuff in focus”?
Patricia: The original telemovies had virtually no supervision, compared to most network fare. (laughs) Eric was pretty much on his own down there because Sam and Rob were busy with other stuff and Universal wasn't that strong on the project. It was part of the telemovie Action Pack. No one thought anything good was going to come out of it because so many of the other shows that had been developed in the Action Pack block had tanked. Some never even got produced. I don’t think the John Landis project even went into production.
I thought this was going to be a six to nine-month gig. Just doing the Herc telemovies. But that’s a long time to be away from each other. I didn't take the job up here with the production company. I decided I'd be with my husband for the length of the Herc movies. I've learned that, in Hollywood, marriages often don't survive because of location work. So, I went down for what I thought would be about nine months and it turned into seven years, a new career and two children. (laughs)
SD: So the situation was bad news/good news. Bad news, they don't think there's much hope for success with the project. Good news, you get to run the party on your own.
Patricia: Exactly and that became a lot of fun. And to their credit, everyone down there did an incredible job with not a lot to work with.
SD: I love the walls made of chicken wire and aluminum foil.
Patricia: My favorite were the apple boxes that Rob Gillies got from the New Zealand Apple Board. He would take these boxes and would turn them into the giant stone blocks of the castle. He would spray them gray. All those enormous blocks that look like they were made by a bunch of Egyptians were apple boxes. (laughs) Rob Gillies was such a genius. He was so creative with 39 cents and some spit.
SD: Were you writing scripts before you did this episode?
Patricia: When I went to New Zealand, I was not allowed to work because of the visa situation. My husband had a work visa, but I had a visitor visa tied to Eric's. I could live with him for as long as he was down there, but I was not allowed to work. I started writing out of boredom. I'd been a movie executive for many years, so I had worked with writers. But I had never written a script on my own. I decided to see if I could. Soon after I arrived, I started working on a screenplay. I finished it and sent it out to some of my agent and executive friends. They said, “My God, you can write!” (laughs)
I'd known Rob Tapert for so many years through Eric - he started working with Rob and Sam on Darkman - and we had a really good relationship. Rob trusted me and would ask me questions and advice about the projects he was working on because it’s what I had done for a living. Rob said, “Why don't you write something for the shows?”
I knew Kevin Sorbo would have to attend NATPE and would be out of a certain number of the shows. That meant they had to come up with a Hercules episode without Hercules. I, being a close friend of Michael Hurst and knowing his unique abilities, came up with a Prisoner of Zenda story which became “King For A Day.” That proved very successful. Michael was dynamite in it. Anson Williams directed it and did a wonderful job.
When I started to write “King,” I was pregnant and I didn't tell anyone at Renaissance. Nobody there had children and they were all of a rather male-oriented persuasion. I didn't want anyone to think I couldn't write the script.
SD (laughs): Xena's pregnant in the episode “God Fearing Child” and she witheringly says to Ares, “I'm pregnant, not brain dead.”
Patricia (laughs): Exactly. They assume the worst psychologically which for some people is the truth. (laughs) I certainly hadn't become incapacitated although I did have absolutely horrible morning sickness while we were doing notes on the script. I remember having to continually eat almonds while on conference calls to calm my stomach.
Rob was very happy to have someone who wasn't on staff write a non-Herc Hercules because there is a pecking order when you're a freelance writer. Freelancers never get the plum assignments. And no one who's a staff writer wants to write the shows that don't interest them like a Hercules episode without the star.
I got a call from Rob after doing “Ring” and he said, “I need to do a four and a half day shoot for Xena and it cannot be a bottle show because I've already done that.”
SD: “Bottle” meaning clip show?
Patricia: Right. Ideally he also wanted it to be in one location. And it had to be as exciting as any regular Xena episode.
SD (laughs): He didn't want much, did he?
Patricia (laughs): The average Xena episode shot for seven, eight days and he wanted to do one in only half that time. And then he said, “I may use it as the season ender.” At that I said, “Okay, Rob, now you're really pushing it!” (laughs)
SD (laughs): Not only did it have to be exciting, but it had to make the audience want to tune in for the next season.
Patricia: Exactly! Then he added, “Right now, ER is the hottest show on television and… could you kill Gabrielle for me?”
SD: Oh wow!
Patricia: That's all he told me. Those were my parameters - 4 1/2 days, one location, ER and kill Gabrielle.
SD: Did he say he also wanted you to bring her back to life at the end?
Patricia: Don't forget, as my husband loves to say, death is just a beginning in these shows.
SD: Renee has mentioned that she had no idea Gabrielle was going to last past the first season.
Patricia: That could have been a possibility. Rob didn't tell me to kill her off permanently. He just wanted her to die and then he wanted to see what I would come up with. Hence, “Is There A Doctor In The House?”
SD: One of the most popular shows in the series.
Patricia: Well, thank you. To this day, I'm amazed Lucy consistently says this is her favorite show. I think I know why. I tend to write to the melodramatic. I go for the emotional jugular and don't let go. That's wonderful for an actor. There's nothing they enjoy more than knowing they can really let fly.
SD: The resuscitation of Gabrielle is one of the most favorite scenes in the series.
Patricia: I'll tell you something interesting about that scene. I was just learning how to use the internet and I typed my name in and I found a fan review of “Doctor.” They said that scene was a ripoff of The Abyss. What's funny is that scene is actually about my mother.
My father's father had open heart surgery 30 years ago and lapsed into a coma. He was not coming out of it. The doctors gave him up for a goner. My mother, who didn't particularly like her father-in-law, couldn't bear to see the agony on my father and his brothers' faces. And she has always believed that people in comas are not oblivious to the outside world. It’s like you're at the bottom of the ocean and you're looking up through the water and you can't get through.
She started shaking my grandfather on his ICU bed and yelling in his ear the names of his family members. Screaming at him! The doctors and nurses came and were trying to pull her off him. She yelled at them, “If you want him to live, leave me the hell alone!” She continued screaming and shaking him and ... he woke up!
SD: Incredible!
Patricia: That’s where that scene really comes from. And the irony is that my mother was doing it to a man she had no love for. (laughs) Of course, Xena and Gabrielle really do love each other. If I were in that situation, I would be willing that person back with everything I had. I would not let that person go without a fight!
SD: The other ingredients In this episode were war, prejudice and medicine.
Patricia: Bosnia was going on at the time of the writing of this episode. I was a big believer, as is Rob, when you do fantasy and science fiction, it is imperative that you incorporate modern-day events and concerns into the story because that's what grounds fantasy and science fiction for an audience - what makes it powerful. That’s what made the original Star Trek so brilliant. Gene Roddenberry took every sixties issue, including the Vietnam War, and drove it home.
Now it was Bosnia and Rwanda and countless other genocidal conflicts worldwide. It seemed to be the historical norm that as countries were starting to break up, infighting and civil wars were erupting. So many of these wars were on a religious or tribal bias which seemed inconsequential to the outside world, but, to the people within, they were everything. It was before our involvement as a country and what was going on was incredibly tragic. That hit home for me and I wanted to incorporate those struggles. Even if a viewer didn't immediately think, “Bosnia, Rwanda,” it was hitting them at a subconscious level.
SD: Because these wars seem eternal.
Patricia: It is eternal.
SD: People start out defending their own rights and freedoms and they end up destroying the same rights and freedoms in other people that they want for themselves.
Patricia: Precisely. You can see my political persuasion very clearly. (laughs) The medicine came from Rob's desire to utilize the popularity of ER and one of my favorite shows growing up was M*A*S*H. Here they were in the middle of killing and their job was to help people survive regardless of what side they were on. Regardless of your own personal feelings about the right to live of the combatants. I always thought that formula as a dramatic construct was incredibly powerful. And I just loved the idea that Xena was the founder of Western medicine. (laughs)
SD (laughs): One of the fun, ongoing aspects of the show.
Patricia: We already knew she had unique talents in healing with her pinches and karate chops. But what I did was, I ensconsed myself in the Auckland Public Library and started studying the creation of Western medicine from Hippocrates. And what was available during his time, like cobwebs, for example. Cobwebs contain a chemical which was used, thousands of years ago, as a coagulant. That's why they placed them in wounds to stop the bleeding.
I tried to see what I could come up with. The least successful thing, in my opinion, was inflating the lung with the bladder. I think she would have simply blown into the reed during the tracheotomy. Especially when you see the really cheesy plastic bladder we ended up using. That still makes me go, “Ewww!” (laughs)
SD: I did wonder if you knew about ancient medicine or did you read up on the debates of healing back then. That it was the gods vs. human skills.
Patricia: It's always been God vs. human interaction. That is the eternal medical debate - how much is faith and how much is physical interaction. Frankly, I think it's a false debate. I think you have to have faith to want to live and someone has to help. Back then, much of healing was faith-based in the sense that you did carry your child up to the altar and lay it down and wait for something to happen. Hippocrates and his fellows were pretty cutting edge for that time. While there were always healers, to give what they were doing a set of rules was radical in Western civilization.
Let's face it, Xena plays fast and loose with history, etc. As a history buff myself, I’ve always been interested in the people who make the big changes. People like Hippocrates, at that point in Greek civilization, were making those changes in how we thought about ourselves, our bodies and how to take care of them.
SD: One of the questions people asked was how come Xena knew more than the healers.
Patricia: It's the difference between idealism and pragmatism. Xena was a soldier and soldiers have to be the most pragmatic people on earth because, for them, it’s about survival. There is an endgame that is extremely clear. If it’s about survival at any cost, you do whatever is necessary by any means necessary. It simply seemed natural for Xena to behave in this manner. It was consistent with her character, with how people would behave in battle. Certainly someone as battle-hardened as Xena.
SD: Xena also said to the healers, “The gods don’t care if these men live or die.”
Patricia: That's the theme running through Hercules and Xena. The idea that you could worship these Greek gods, but, frankly, they could care less. And that's consistent with Greek mythology. The gods were incredibly flawed. They were as flawed as human beings. The only difference was that they had power that human beings did not. And the foibles of the Greek gods were the lessons you applied to yourself.
SD: And, back then, people believed the gods walked among them.
Patricia: Right, they were very approachable, they interacted with man on a daily basis, sometimes in human form, sometimes not. And they simply had more power to achieve what they wanted to achieve often with the same mistakes and disasters as human beings. The difference is that they had ultimate retribution, whether it was right or not. It was a continual theme throughout the shows that one has to do for oneself. One cannot rely on the gods. Taking it closer to home, God helps those who help themselves. (laughs)
SD: I’ve found, from the mail that I’ve received, that’s something that resonated with the audience. Not only did Xena believe in taking care of business, that's also what the show taught people who watched it.
Patricia: I’m sure you’ve heard this from so many people. We would get letters that would make me cry. If anything humbles me more, it was the letters we would receive from people saying, “I watch Xena and I now know that I have the strength to leave my husband who beats me.” Or, “I watch Xena and when I grow up, I'm gonna get my mommy away from my daddy who hurts her and I’m never gonna let that happen again.”
What better thing could you hope to achieve? Writing television may be my job, but the most profound thing anyone can hope to achieve is to affect someone's life in a positive manner. And if a show as fantasy-oriented as Xena is capable of doing that, then you're humbled by that power.
SD: And it’s not even a drama. It's an action-adventure show. My gosh, you had to have at least 10 minutes of fighting out of the 40 minutes of the show!
Patricia (laughs): Right!
SD: It’s extraordinary the impact this show has had. Okay, Mitoans and Thessalians, are they real towns?
Patricia: Thessaly was a real Greek state. I'm not sure about Mitoa. I enjoy putting real stuff in. Galen was an ancient doctor. Democritus was a Greek philosopher. Hippocrates invented the Hippocratic oath.
SD: There were Amazons in this episode.
Patricia (laughs): That was because Eric and Rob were so fond of Danielle Cormack. We wondered who would be an effective prejudicial people. In this case, it wasn't so much the Amazons as it is the Centaurs who are not understood, often troublemakers, live by their own code and never really fit into the Greek mythological society.
SD: They were certainly easy to spot in a crowd which is always an advantage when you're trying to stigmatize a segment of the population.
Patricia: Yes, they were. And how outrageous for a character to give birth to a Centaur. And how much fun was Richard Taylor's (from WETA special effects house) little Centaur? (laughs) It was such a fun little puppet and so amusing to see them take a one-week old baby - God bless the parents who let their child be the baby Centaur.
I was not too far off from giving birth myself when we went into production on this episode. I would sit there and watch the real baby being put into the Centaur suit and think to myself, “Never in a million years would I give birth to a baby and hand it over to play a Centaur!” (laughs)
SD (laughs): They built a little Centaur suit?
Patricia: There were two Centaurs - a mechanical one and the baby in the suit. Ephiny's belly was a completely fabulous prosthetic by WETA. And T.J. Scott did a remarkable job directing the episode. He took it to edgy places I didn’t think possible. Hence the controversy over the show from the studio and sponsors' points of view. God bless Universal for supporting the episode, making it a sweeps show and an end of season finale because we had sponsors dropping out right and left.
The cut that aired was toned down. The original was incredibly graphic. It was bloody and violent. Eric used to say, “I see. War isn't hell. It's just heck.”
SD: War’s okay, but no blood. Things sure have changed on television. It's especially ironic when you realize what's been shown on ER since “Doctor” aired.
Patricia: Right, which defeats the purpose telling people war's actually quite a serious thing. T.J. did a fantastic job putting it in people's faces. You have to remember, we're talking 1996 which doesn't sound very long ago, but incredibly graphic television has escalated over the past five years. I was stunned watching the Caesarean section scene because I didn’t realize it was going to be so graphic. And I believe they backed off a little bit, but T.J. really went for the jugular.
The irony was that when I finally gave birth to my first child, I had a 30-hour labor and then an emergency Caesarean. I'm laying on the operating table and Eric is sitting by my head. In New Zealand, they don’t use any drapes so you get to watch the whole thing up close and personal. (laughs) I lift my head and I see my abdomen being sliced open and my husband said I was muttering, “I promise, God, I will never write about C-sections again. I promise, I promise.” (laughs)
SD (laughs): “Oh God, don’t let it be a Centaur.”
Patricia (laughs): Right, right!
SD: It looks like the only part removed entirely was Xena's cauterization of the soldier's leg after she amputated it. There are stills of that scene, but it's not in the show.
Patricia: Right. The set itself was so fantastic. It was in one of the warehouse stages. They pumped so much smoke into it and Eric, because I was pregnant, would only let me stay in for five minutes every hour. Interestingly, Danielle was pregnant as well. She wasn't as far along as I was, but she was only allowed in when she was actually shooting a scene. So Danielle had real method-acting going on. (laughs)
Smoke was pumped into the set to allow you to see shafts of light. You can't film light unless it has something to bounce off of. Smoke particles create a reflective surface that the light can penetrate and bounce off of. That gives you the shaft of light effect. And it creates a much more claustrophobic atmosphere.
SD: You made reference to Gabrielle's Right of Caste from “Hooves and Harlots.”
Patricia: Yes, R.J. Stewart put that in.
SD: General Marmax - he became a focal point for the story of the war, the story of Xena and Gabrielle and Ephiny's story. You used him to further each of these plot points.
Patricia: There were two conflicts going on. The “A” story was the war. I needed a character who was going to represent the change in thought and then in action of what Xena was trying to accomplish. The “B” story was the medicine. And there, Galen had to come the furthest. It’s not Hippocrates. He immediately understands a healer when he sees one - Xena. Galen has to make the largest leap from pure faith to “I accept, please save my patient.”
General Marmax had to be shown in every way possible that what he was doing was going to be a fruitless enterprise. From the very moment Xena injures him, he's on an educational track. Everything he encounters has to continue to lead him to his eventual change of heart. Because, let's face it, most people don't change their mind about anything unless something really traumatic happens. And that's the essence of drama. The trauma for Marmax is seeing all the beliefs that he has held destroyed, one by one.
SD: Gabrielle tells General Marmax a story about Artemis changing King Tiberius into a deer. Is that a real myth?
Patricia: It's actually a myth in every culture where the warrior becomes the hunted and learns the lesson of peace. Or gets a taste of his own medicine. In fact, the same time I pitched “King For A Day,” I also pitched a “hunter becomes the hunted” Hercules story. I think that's where I took the story from. I think I had lolaus turning into a deer. (laughs) It's a classic Joseph Campbell example of something that is found in every culture.
SD: Had you read Joseph Campbell?
Patricia: I really got into mythology with these shows. I had never read Campbell until I moved to New Zealand and I became an ardent Campbellite because his ability to distill the essence out of human behavior, dreams and desires is very profound. These are archetypal stories we repeat over and over again. And, in Hercules and Xena, we repeated them over and over again too. (laughs)
SD: As the shows were airing, there were many fans making references to Campbell. That’s where I first heard about him.
Patricia: I have no idea if any of the other writers were into Campbell, but I certainly was.
SD: Gabrielle lost a lot of her innocence in this episode.
Patricia: This episode took place at the end of the first season of Xena and it's very easy for everyone to forget where Gabrielle began. She was this fresh-faced, young, plucky little girl in her long dress and long hair, scampering after Xena in a charming puppy-dog manner. She had to lose her innocence down the road. You can’t live with a murderous warrior without losing your innocence. (laughs)
In television, that has to be done gradually. You can't shock your fans into a characterization which they feel is not true to the character. When you're having a character grow, you have to do it carefully, in stages. At the end of the first season, Gabrielle's still not able to kill anything, but she realizes the only thing she can do is come to grips with the environment she's placed herself in. She's got to get used to it. If she doesn't come up with a coping mechanism, ultimately, she'll go crazy.
SD: When Ephiny says that Phantes was killed by Mitoans, Gabrielle asks why. When a patient dies under her hands, she does not want to give up. She later asks Xena why he had to die. She goes out to save a little boy, gets attacked and almost dies because of it. These were steps you laid out for the growth of Gabrielle in this episode.
Patricia: Let's face it, it's a lot to stomach. If you were dropped in the middle of a MASH unit, in the middle of a war, how would you come to grips with it? It would happen one moment at a time, because that's all you can do. And, yes. the accumulation of trauma and experience may eventually hit you, but you're only experiencing it one moment at a time.
SD: When you write, do you drop yourself into that character and look around at your story?
Patricia: Yes. I definitely try to put myself in their shoes. I try to imagine how I would speak with their voice. I act it out in my head. I have a writing partner, Belinda Todd, who I work with now on our present TV projects, and I write with my husband. When we write together, I very often will get up and talk it through as though I’m acting it out at the same time.
I've never been formally trained in improv and I don't even pretend to be able to do it as many of my friends can, but within my own mind. I’m trying to come up with the truth of the character. I don't like watching stories where I don't buy how the character has gotten to where they've gotten to. If it happens too quickly or in too pat a manner, I feel cheated. I want to see the struggle. So I try to internalize, if I were Gabrielle, how would I behave.
And, I need to be true to who Gabrielle is. She's a character I did not create. The job of any writer on a TV series is to service the pre-existing characters and take them in the direction the series wants to go.
SD: You liked Gabrielle?
Patricia: She's fun. Xena is a very dark show and if we didn't have Gabrielle, it would be relentless. Xena would become Clint Eastwood in all those Spaghetti Westerns. She'd ride into town, horrible things would happen and she'd ride out. We'd go, “Whew, I'm glad that's over!” (laughs) Like Hercules needed lolaus, but for very different reasons, Xena needed Gabrielle. She was idealistic, malleable, she was the audience proxy.
SD: The audience was able to travel by Xena's side through Gabrielle.
Patricia: Exactly. She brought those moments of levity and humor and release the audience desperately needs.
SD: I wonder how Xena would have grown if there had been no sidekick at all, if the sidekick had been a man or if the sidekick had been her own age? The pairing of Xena and Gabrielle was a blessing for the show and for the audience.
Patricia: It's a classic archetype. You've got the old gunslinger and the young pup nipping at his heels, wanting to be like him. The old gunslinger says, “Son, you don't want my life.” It takes living that life for the young pup to a) become a cynical hardened soul and b) to realize the lesson was, “Boy, was he right.” You can't have a character that is so deeply burnt by life without having another character that is so life-affirming and, ultimately, a joyful character. It's a balance and a counterpoint.
Going back to Joseph Campbell, there's a reason we tell these stories in the same way over and over again. There's a reason the old gunslinger has an idealistic kid who wants to walk in his shoes. Because that is the story of maturation, the story of growth. It's a story humans can relate to and allows us to relate to both sides.
If you're the cynical, old sod watching the story, you can look at the young kid and think, “Boy, has that kid got a lot to learn.” If you're the young kid, watching the same story, you're thinking. “Wow, I had no idea.” Even though the kid is traditionally the audience proxy, by virtue of the fact that most people have never been a battle-hardened warrior, you need someone to go along on the story with you and fight the battles, go through the trials and tribulations, and come out the other side. Without Gabrielle, I don't know how you could effectively tell the same stories.
SD: I can remember an older girl I knew when I was fifteen who had already started living the life I wanted to live and how I looked up to her.
Patricia: Every human being has this relationship with someone. It could be a parent, a teacher, a sibling, a friend. You're gonna have a relationship with someone who's gonna open up the world for you. Or you're going to have many relationships with different people who open up the world for you in different ways.
SD: Xena, throughout this episode, is the calm authority figure. Then Gabrielle is wounded and we see a Xena we have never seen before. We see the facade start to crack. One fan, Cheryl Andre, wrote: “When Gabrielle dies, Xena crumbles. The stoic warrior becomes almost hysterical with panic and fear. Her fight to save Gabrielle is not based on logic or even healing skills. It is an all-out assault on death by a very frightened woman.”
Patricia (laughs): Thank you! Tell her thank you for me!
SD: They told you to kill Gabrielle. Did you have any idea of the effect this was going to have on Xena?
Patricia: Oh yeah! No question. Because Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship was so close, all you have to do is put yourself in Xena’s shoes. Someone you love has been mortally wounded and you've done everything in your power to try to save them. They die anyway. And you’re not used to losing. You're not only not used to losing your loved ones, you’re not used to losing at all. This is personal.
You have to remember that when Xena goes out and she does stuff, while it may touch her, it's not personal, for the most part. When she’s saving a village or dealing with a god, even when it’s personal, it's not personal. This is deeply personal. Gabrielle is the only thing she has in her life that is purely good. Xena loves her. So, what would you do under the circumstances? All I could see was what I would do and that is fight beyond the point of fighting.
Xena is not someone who would ever give up. But when you have that kind of personality, what would happen? You would fall apart because this is not something you’ve known before. You’ve seen lots of death. You’ve caused lots of death. But this is something you never wanted to happen and you blame yourself.
SD: This is a relationship Xena’d never had before.
Patricia: Exactly. Xena’s on the verge of losing that person who, for the first time, is bringing good things to her life.
SD: In “Sins Of The Past,” Xena’s getting ready to commit suicide. Gabrielle brought her back to life. Gave her a reason to live.
Patricia: Yes. absolutely. And Gabrielle continues to teach her on a daily basis. It's not just Xena teaching Gabrielle, Gabrielle is teaching Xena about life all over again. Xena has become so cynical and sees the world as so black, she's unable to share in the joy of it anymore. And it’s the joy that keeps you motivated. If life were all terrible, we wouldn’t stick around.
SD: The fans were discussing Gabrielle's reaction to Xena’s death in “The Greater Good,” and Xena’s reaction to Gabrielle’s death in this episode. Gabrielle seemed the more emotionally healthy of the two.
Patricia: She is. By a long shot. Xena has issues. (laughs)
SD: Is it easier to be emotionally healthy when you're younger, more carefree, than when you're older and have gone through more of life's traumatic events?
Patricia: I don't think age has anything to do with it. In fact, Freud would say it's the exact opposite. (laughs) If you continue to evolve as a person, if you don't stagnate in your emotional growth, you’re going to come to things with a healthier perspective, a clearer attitude. That’s not what's at play in this scene. Xena finally has love in her life, hope, a reason to get up in the morning and not think, “Okay, who am I going to kill today?” And it's disappearing before her eyes.
Gabrielle has had a pretty amazing life. She’s seen some pretty horrible things. She's participated in some not very nice things. But, for the most part, she takes life in a more spiritually-centered manner. I think Gabrielle's a more centered individual. Xena may know more, but Gabrielle feels more.
SD (laughs): You almost wish they were real so you could ask them these questions.
Patricia (laughs): So you could call up Xena and ask, “Have you ever thought of therapy?”
SD: If you look at the way Xena’s life was written and structured, when she became a warlord, her emotions were cut off. Could that be why Gabrielle is more emotionally stable?
Patricia: Put yourself in Xena’s shoes. She’s a soldier. I've known a few soldiers and they're very compartmentalized if they’re, seemingly, mentally intact. If they cannot separate their violent experience from the rest of their life, they have an incredibly hard time integrating it and suffer terribly. Ironically, the compartmentalization isn't necessarily healthy. But, how else do you deal with things you should never, as a human being, have had to deal with.
Maybe Xena’s reaction to Gabrielle's death is her first release. She’s never had an opportunity to feel something like this before. She’s had years of traumatic experience. These are Xena’s first real consequences. She's lived her own personal consequences and she’s pushed down her feelings again and again. Here's a consequence she can’t take personal responsibility for and yet she is responsible. She brought Gabrielle into the war zone and put her in danger. Marmax makes that incredibly clear - a number of times. The guilt is enormous.
SD: Xena’s taken great risks before and always been successful. She led her village against Cortese and beat him off. She established a buffer zone around Amphipolis, whether the neighboring villages liked it or not, and that also worked.
Patricia: That’s what I meant before when I said Xena’s not used to losing and she’s not used to it being personal. If she loses a battle, she’s angry, but not traumatized. If she loses Gabrielle, that’s losing the world.
SD: Someone noted that Gabrielle changes what she can in life, but basically copes with it. Xena is always trying to bend life to her will. This time, she couldn't do that.
Patricia: Although, ironically, she does. (laughs)
SD (laughs): Literally!
Patricia (laughs): And invents CPR at the same time.
SD: Did Xena and Gabrielle's relationship change over the course of the episode?
Patricia: I would say yes. Not in a huge way. It’s the change anyone would feel if you almost lost the most important person in your life. There’s a gentleness in Xena at the end, a tentativeness. And I think Lucy played that beautifully. She's going to be more careful. Gabrielle has now been to the other side and come back. That changes you. And, it makes her one up on Xena. While Xena may have gone to Hades and such, that's a different kind of death than what I was positing, which was a real crossing-over experience.
SD: Xena visited death but always knew she was coming back?
Patricia: Right. Gabrielle’s had a profound experience, but deals with it in her delightfully, light. Gabrielle way. “I saw Uncle Merops.” (laughs) There's a sense of delicateness toward each other. That's human behavior. We are always very delicate with those we love and have almost lost.