Legacy
written by Melissa Good
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 22
SD: As a freelance writer on Xena, what elements were you given to use in this episode?
Missy: There were a couple things they needed to put into “Legacy” for production purposes. One was that they wanted it to take place in North Africa because they were already working on what they thought, at that time, was going to be a North African desert-type episode. Economically, it would be better to have two similar in location so they could film them back to back. The other episode was “Who's Gurkhan” and they wound up not filming it in the desert. Best laid plans.
SD: What elements did you want to include?
Missy: I began the story meetings asking what they wanted because this was my first script for the show. I didn’t want to come in with preconceived ideas. What did they need in my episode in terms of the storylines before and after mine? During the first story meeting, Rob said he visualized a chariot race. He asked me to come up with a storyline that would incorporate such a race along with some other elements.
SD: I've seen the episode - there were no chariots. (laughs)
Missy (laughs): No, but the first beat sheet I wrote was called “Two Women In Search Of A Chariot Race.” I submitted that with a joking title and it wound up that’s the title my contract was written under!
SD: How about the title “Legacy”?
Missy: When we began to talk about how to shape the story, one of the elements was how was Xena remembered 25 years after her death? What was Xena's legacy? What memories remained? Obviously, for the Romans, the memories weren't that pleasant. (laughs) So that was what I titled the second beat sheet. It stayed.
SD: Here are some of the fans’ thoughts on the title.
Michael Martinez: “Legacy” seems to be mostly about Gabrielle's attempts to live up to the legacy she has created for herself. She and Xena were out of the picture for 25 years. In that time, Gabrielle became a great legend. She never expected that to happen. She was always used to being in Xena's shadow. Now people think of Gabrielle as a great warrior bard. That’s a very heavy burden to live up to.
Debbie Lomberg: I think it has to do with the legacy of Xena and Gabrielle that had grown over the 25 years they were gone. From the reactions of the nomads, it seems their legacy had grown and spread enormously in 25 years. In part because of the scrolls written by Gabrielle.
Hawk Falco: Primarily, I see it as referring to the nomadic tribes' use of Gabrielle's scrolls as inspiration. This is Gabrielle’s legacy. Then there is the progression of Gabrielle's life path from village girl to bard to warrior. This could be seen as her personal legacy and the legacy of her relationship with Xena. Finally, there is the life of the young heir of the nomadic tribe who Gabrielle killed. His is an aborted legacy which will never be realized.
Missy: That’s amazing. It was called “Legacy” because that’s what we were exploring. We’ve moved them ahead in time, now let's see what both their legacies have become. And let's see what Gabrielle’s stories have done for Xena. Xena's legacy is certainly different for the nomads than for the Romans. The nomads have this overwhelming impression of Xena as this wonderful warrior. The Romans think of her as Caesar’s whore.
Another thing we talked about is that whatever decisions she’s made, Xena’s always right. And Gabrielle's always right. They’re both “white hats.” The question came up, could Xena do something that wasn't for the greater good? Would she make a decision to put Gabrielle above the greater good of these people? And how would Gabrielle feel about that? The Gabrielle story arc during “Who's Gurkhan,” “Legacy,” and “Abyss,” was examining her increasing use of, or wanting to use, violence and this would fit right into that exploration.
SD: Early on in the episode, Xena and Gabrielle talk about what she’s becoming.
Xena: “What’s with the desert boy?”
Gabrielle: “He wants me to teach him how to use the sals.”
Xena: “He’s picked a great teacher.”
Gabrielle: “It’s kind of strange being thought of as a warrior more than a bard. Guess I’ve come a long way.”
Xena: “Is that a good thing?”
Gabrielle: “Yeah, it is.”
Does Gabrielle regret what's happening to her? What's your take on how she's feeling about herself?
Missy: For me, Gabrielle's a lot more complicated character even more so than Xena. Because Xena, even though she has a very rich background, is fairly straightforward. And through the series, she doesn’t change as much as Gabrielle. Whereas Gabrielle has run the gamut from being an innocent and going through the Rift and going through the peace phase and then going through “Ides” and the demise of the Gods. She’s gone through a lot.
At this point, it was an open question - where does Gabrielle see herself going? Does she want to become a warrior? Does she not want to become a warrior? We had a lot of discussion as to what the eventual outcome of her inner dialogue was going to be.
At the beginning of season six, they already knew they were going to do “Helicon.”' Was Gabrielle going to go back to a more peaceful role? Was she going to step back from being a warrior? I still don't know what the good answer for Gabrielle is. We know what the eventual answer was in “Friend.” I'm not 100% convinced that was the right answer for her.
SD: At the end of the series?
Missy: Right. I think, in “Legacy,” when Gabrielle's thinking about just how far down that warrior path she's walked, I think she's ambivalent about it.
SD: What you just said about the end of the series, how did she end up in your eyes?
Missy: She's taking on Xena's mantle and going out to be a warrior for good.
SD: Is she going to be a warrior tempered with who Gabrielle is? Is she bringing her own sensibilities to the warrior skills she learned from Xena?
Missy: We don't know. Hopefully, if there's a movie, we'll find out. But does Gabrielle eventually become a warrior? Is that where Gabrielle really wants to go? I don’t know if that was the right answer for her.
SD: Would you have wanted her following the path of peace?
Missy: No. I don't think Gabrielle was ever a peace person. That was probably the most aggravating part of the series for me. (laughs)
SD: Remember when Gabrielle being a peacenik came up at the convention and Renee said to the audience, a bit wistfully, “You didn't like that, did you? I did.” And Lucy patted her sympathetically on the knee.
Missy: Gabrielle's always been a fighter. She hasn't been a warrior, but she's been a fighter from day one. To watch her standing there, doing nothing, was probably as frustrating for Gabrielle as it was for us. (laughs)
SD: And the reason the actor enjoyed it was because it was something different for her to play with.
Missy: Sure.
SD: But if you believe Gabrielle is a fighter, why wouldn’t learning the lessons of her warrior mentor, Xena, please you?
Missy: Because she went off into a direction of violence. Basically, at the end of “Friend” she was embarking on the way of the warrior. So, for Rob, that was where she needed to go. And I don't know if that was the answer for Gabrielle.
SD: What's the difference between being a fighter and being a warrior?
Missy: I think a warrior fights because they love to. A fighter fights because they have to. Xena's a true warrior - she loves and revels in battle. Gabrielle isn't. She fights because she has to, to protect other people, to protect herself - but she doesn't enjoy doing it the way Xena does.
SD: And, although Gabrielle's future wasn’t shown on the screen, both Lucy and Renee felt Gabrielle was a warrior combination of Xena and Gabrielle. A step up from Xena, I suppose, is the way they were looking at it.
Missy: Hopefully some day we'll find out.
SD: Who named Gabrielle the Battling Bard of Poteidaia?
Missy: R.J. did. Which I thought was cute.
SD (laughs): We should do a shirt. Gabrielle was pleased at the adulation she was getting from Korah and Kahina as the Battling Bard of Poteidaia.
Missy: Sure. You have to understand, it's post-”Ides,” Gabrielle has settled into what she thinks is the way of the warrior. And they've pretty much left her bardic legacy behind. Here it is coming up again. Gabrielle finds out that 23 years later, she's remembered as a bard. She's not remembered as a warrior.
SD: They spent a fair amount of time during the series showing Gabrielle being a bard. It wasn't consistent, but they kept bringing it up. It tickled her to know the Collected Works of Gabrielle are still being read.
Missy: Exactly. That's flattering to her.
SD: It is ironic that Korah wanted Gabrielle to teach him how to fight, not how to write. Was that there from the beginning? Because I know how strongly you feel about Gabrielle being a storyteller.
Missy: I think Korah saw more of himself in Gabrielle than in Xena because Xena’s kind of scary. He got the idea Gabrielle was a warrior not because he knew of her tales of battle, but because he saw her fight. And because he saw someone who could fight very well and who was not the biggest person on the battlefield. He figured, here's someone who can teach me.
SD: And she was a writer. She was like him.
Missy: He saw himself in her.
SD: “Left a few details out of those stories,” Kahina says. Do we think Gabrielle whitewashed Xena in her stories. (laughs)
Missy (laughs): Possibly. History is written by the victors. They tend to put in things that are complimentary and they leave out the unsavory aspects of what they've done. Would Gabrielle be any different? I doubt it. She loves Xena, Xena's her best friend. Even though they've had issues - scrolls being used inappropriately (laughs), she sees Xena through her eyes. She would tend to paint Xena with a kinder light than perhaps, say, Caesar.
SD: And if the details of getting to the heroic end are a little messy, you would leave them out.
Missy: Gabrielle would definitely leave out how rough Xena could be when she had to.
SD: After Korah's death, Gabrielle says to Xena, “I never thought I'd see you washing blood off my hands.” But she’s had blood on her hands before. For example, when she killed Meridian. How is this different?
Missy: I think, in Gabrielle's mind, this death was different because when she killed Korah, she was going by what now are her instincts. And her instincts were wrong. With Meridian, there was no intent to murder. Whereas here, she’s killed an innocent. She's made a horrible mistake. She used a warrior’s instinct and that's the shock that hits her. She’s thinking, “This kid idolized me. But I saw what I thought was an evil figure attacking Xena based on what are now my instincts and I killed the wrong person.”
SD: In this episode, Xena lies to the nomads to protect Gabrielle. And it’s not a little white lie either. It's a potentially very dangerous lie that could result in the slaughter of the tribes.
Missy: Rob made a point that we're not going to make this gray and fuzzy. This is not going to be, “Well maybe Xena was lying.” No. Xena lied. He told me, “When you write it, make it really clear that she is deliberately lying to protect Gabrielle.”
SD: Why did he want to make that clear?
Missy: I think he felt Xena was a little too squeaky clean. And Xena does have a dark side. I think to take Xena's dark side away is to take away an integral part of who she is.
SD: Xena betrays the nomads' position to the Romans to save Gabrielle. Is it right for her to do that?
Missy: No, but that is what Xena does because she is of the opinion it is important enough to her to save Gabrielle. She does not think Gabrielle deserves to die for killing Korah. In that sense, Xena is right. Gabrielle's sacrifice would only satisfy local custom. It wouldn't bring Korah back. Xena makes a value judgment and it was the right decision for her. She had to do something to stop this. Xena’s thoughts are, “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it later. Right now. nothing matters but saving Gabrielle.”
SD: It’s very selfish.
Missy: She is a selfish character. It's not a bad thing to say about the character, but she is selfish. She can be very vindictive. Which is another point I tried to make when she sent that captain with the message for Caesar at the end. In the battle, she stabs him. She sends her regards to Caesar.
SD: She's selfish where she's the most vulnerable - her love for Gabrielle. That means the most to her and that's gotta be the toughest area in which to do the right thing.
Missy: Yeah. When you're dealing with affairs of the heart, it's very difficult to make analytical judgments. You can't always say this is going to be best for the other person. And Xena has a history of doing that. She wants to do what's best for Gabrielle, but she wants to do what she believes is best for both of them.
So, yeah, it was a selfish decision on her part and it put the nomads at great risk. But that was Xena's choice because it was important to her for Gabrielle not to make that sacrifice. And it really was selfish because, when it comes right down to it, it's Gabrielle’s choice if she wants to make that sacrifice and Xena took that choice away from her.
SD: There was such irony in Gabrielle mistaking a scroll for a knife.
Missy (laughs): Yeah, wasn't that horrible?
SD: Of all the things it could have been, it was a scroll.
Missy: We thought a lot about what he would be carrying. Maybe he's carrying a knife? And I said, “The only thing I can think of he would be carrying that would look to Gabrielle like a weapon would be a rolled up scroll.”
SD: Was that an initial aspect of the story - that Gabrielle would kill someone?
Missy: I do believe that was always part of the story. As a matter of fact, in an earlier version of the script, Gabrielle kills desert boy in the teaser.
SD: Before she’s met him?
Missy: Korah was part of a conspiracy that was trying to kidnap Gabrielle from the Roman city. He and a group of his mates snuck up on her and jumped her as she waited for Xena, after their discussion with the Roman legate, and she ended up stabbing him in self defense. However, due to the arc we were doing for “Gurkhan”/”Legacy”/”Abyss,” I was asked to make it more of a soul searching type of error for Gabrielle to really think about.
SD: His death had more of an impact because we got to know him and his admiration for Gabrielle before he died.
Missy: Yeah.
SD: Here we have Gabrielle deciding she should trade her life for Korah's. Is it right for Gabrielle to decide that her life must be spent in payment for another’s even though she killed him because she didn’t recognize who he was in the sandstorm?
Missy: That’s exactly what Xena did at the end of the series, didn’t she? She traded her life for those souls. (laughs) I think Gabrielle deserves to have the choice. I think everyone has the right to choose what to do with their own life.
SD: So Xena had the right to leave Gabrielle at the end of “Friend”?
Missy (laughs): No.
SD (laughs): You can't have it both ways.
Missy: Gabrielle's choice to leave Xena in this episode, in my mind, is equivalent to what Xena does at the end of the series. I don't know that either of them is right. But Xena did not allow Gabrielle to make that choice. Gabrielle had the power to not allow Xena to stay dead in “Friend” and she chose not to use it.
SD: Someone made the comment: You can make the decision to accept this punishment because it’s the law and you agree the law should be upheld and you agree that you're responsible. OR, maybe the thought of letting someone else punish you is easier than the thought of tormenting yourself with the memory for the rest of your life.
Missy: I think with Gabrielle you got a little of both. She was looking at this both ways. She did kill this young man who had a lot of promise. She was responsible for that. There's no way she can escape being responsible just because she made a misjudgment. And, that's a lot of guilt to bear. Even if you leave the nomads and never have to think about that again, it's still a lot of guilt. The other people she killed, even Meridian, that was part of a huge plot. There were extenuating circumstances.
We really worked hard not to have extenuating circumstances in this episode. It's a plain and simple case of “Gabrielle did the wrong thing.” And that's tough to live with.
SD: I’ll be curious to see if Renee has thought about this.
Missy (laughs): I heard they had a lot of time out in the desert to think.
SD: We talked about the fact that Xena's selfish. But the greater good was mentioned in the episode. You’re someone who knows, without having to reference it, what that phrase refers to. Did you put that in there deliberately?
Missy: Gabrielle says to Xena, “What about the greater good?” And Xena says, “In everyone's life, there's something that goes beyond the greater good. That's what you are in my life.” I wrote that to make the point that Xena made a conscious decision to put Gabrielle above the greater good. Now, was that a correct decision? That was one of the great things about the episode. There really was no right answer. You can't say Xena was right or Gabrielle was right. Everyone was wrong.
SD: A lot of selfish decisions were made, against the greater good, but the end turned out okay.
Missy: Yeah.
SD: Does the end justify the means?
Missy: At the end of the day, Xena and Gabrielle walk off together. But, when I was writing the episode, I really tried to take away the clear-cut decisions that Xena frequently has to make. Often her decisions aren't moralistic ones. Some guy is trying to kill her, she kills him. It doesn't require a lot of soul-searching. Or she threw the chakram at Gabrielle, but it was to keep Gabrielle from killing Eve. That’s pretty clear cut.
I really worked so you could look at any one of her decisions and see it in a number of ways. And that was one of them. That was Xena saying to Gabrielle, “Yes, I made this decision consciously knowing I was putting you above the greater good of those people.”
SD: The greater good can have a one-dimensional definition without the moral complexities that can play a part in making such a decision.
Missy: And that's really not what the greater good is. The greater good can mean a lot of things. In this case, bringing the Romans down on the nomads was not the greater good. Now, I received messages from people of nomadic descent who said, “That's the first time we've ever seen presented in the American media an episode that is favorable to the nomads' viewpoint. We brought the nomads into conflict with the Romans and the nomads won.” So, was Xena's decision necessarily against the greater good for them?
SD: The Romans were coming to take over their land, but now that the Romans lost this battle with the nomads, got their noses bloodied.
Missy: The Romans never liked hard battles. As a matter of fact, Kahina was actually a great leader of the nomad tribes that rose up and joined the tribes together to defeat the Arabs. I researched her for this episode.
But I think, in Xena's mind, because she doesn't know what the outcome of the battle will be, she did it for Gabrielle.
I'm glad people were talking about this aspect of the episode. I wanted to write an episode complex enough that people would have to write long posts online to try and explain it. (laughs)
SD: Someone wrote: “Xena and Gabrielle embody the archetypes of warrior and innocent, but I think they've both grown and changed and even taken on certain characteristics that used to be strictly the domain of the other.”
Missy: I would agree with that about Gabrielle. I don't see Xena taking up poetry any time soon, (laughs)
SD: Is there anything Xena has taken from Gabrielle?
Missy: I think Gabrielle has taught Xena to see through other people's eyes. Before she met Gabrielle, she was very focused and only thought about herself. I think Gabrielle has taught her to see people a different way and how to relate to them. It's how Xena managed to get through to Varia. She began to empathize with other people. I think that comes naturally to Gabrielle. It didn't come naturally to Xena. Gabrielle brought her back in touch with her humanity.
SD: A warlord has to cut off his/her humanity.
Missy: You really have to because you're killing people all the time. You can't get too friendly with them. And lots of people want to kill you. Your underlings, for example. You must have some trust in them, but you also know they want to take your place. I don't think Xena trusts easily.
Xena's moved toward humanity and Gabrielle has maybe taken a step or two away from it.
SD: Gabrielle has been learning how to make her goodness work in the real world. It's like being in politics. You have to make tradeoffs. The end justifies the means again.
Missy (laughs): Gabrielle goes to Washington - wouldn’t that be a good sitcom. Senators would start showing up with sais poking through their chests.
SD: Who came up with death by polo?
Missy: That was Rob.
SD (laughs): What was he thinking?
Missy: That was funny. We knew Gabrielle was going to have to be sentenced to death. I wanted it to be frightening for Gabrielle. Because if she's chosen to make this decision, I didn't want it to be easy. So my choice was to have her drawn and quartered by four horses.
SD: Okaaayy. Did you ever tell Renee that?
Missy (laughs): It gets worse. Understand that I love Gabrielle.
SD: Sure you do. You want to tear her into four pieces so there will be more of her. (laughs)
Missy (laughs): That was my idea, but Rob said we can't do that for safety reasons. For one thing, it would be difficult to stage. So Rob said, “We'll bury her up to her neck and they’ll come at her and knock her head off.” Then, a couple minutes later, we’re talking about what actresses like and don’t like, and Rob says, “One thing Lucy hates is getting wet and Renee hates being buried up to her neck in sand.”
SD: How would he know that? They've never done that on the show before.
Missy (laughs): I'm just telling you what he said. I replied, “But you just said that's what we're going to do.” He goes, “Yeah, and you’ll get blamed.” (laughs)
SD: (laughs) I've gotta ask Renee how he knows this about her.
Missy: I don’t think it had anything to do with Renee. I think he was just ragging me. Because he knew I'd freak out. It took a week before anyone told me they wouldn't really bury her. Renee would just be sitting on a chair in a box. I was terrified Renee would be cursing my name for the rest of my life. (laughs)
SD: The hot tub scene started out as a line in the script that said…
Missy: “... Xena and Gabrielle wash off the sand.”
SD: That's all it said?
Missy: That's all. They could have just flicked the sand off with a washcloth. But when fans saw that scene, I got mail that said, “You said you didn't put in any subtext!” I told them I didn't. And they'd say, “Okay, where did the naked hot tub scene come from?” It wasn't my idea. (laughs)
SD: How did it get in there?
Missy: I think it came from Rob. I remember during story meetings when we talked about that scene and someone made a passing comment about “That would be a good place to use the hot tub.” It was just a passing comment. I didn't think twice about it. Then I go over to New Zealand to watch “Coming Home” being filmed and they show me a tape of “Legacy” and, Io and behold, Xena and Gabrielle are in a hot tub! (laughs)
SD (laughs): Hey, they had one on set and you know Renaissance - recycle, recycle, recycle. (laughs) Gabrielle used a staff in the final battle.
Missy: That was deliberate.
SD: You tell me why you did it and then I'll tell you what the fans thought.
Missy: There were actually two reasons why I did it. The story reason was that Gabrielle was having a reaction to the fact that when she used her sais last time, she killed Korah. In her mind, she's falling back on a weapon she knows she can use, that she's familiar with, that she can fight with, that has a much lesser chance of her, unintentionally, butchering someone.
The real reason was because I love the way Gabrielle fights with a staff and I wanted to see it again. And I knew I wasn't going to unless I wrote it. (laughs)
SD: One person said, “It made a lot of sense to me that Gabrielle chose to fight with a staff in the last battle. If she’d used her sais, she would have had to struggle not to hesitate using them in the heat of the battle with the memory of killing the boy still so fresh in her mind.”
Missy: Correct. That's a very valid observation.
SD: What scenes were the hardest to write because of your own vision of the characters from writing fan fiction stories?
Missy: Actually, for me, when I wrote the scripts, I made no changes in the core of who the characters are. Choices of dialogue, of what they're doing, of action, that's where the changes were from what I’d normally write. I'd definitely have used different dialogue and a different story. But not the core of the characters. They manifested differently because of the medium it was for - a television script. And because of what Rob needed the story to be about. The externals were different, but not the internal core of the characters as I see them. That didn't alter at all.
SD: Do you see Xena as that bad and dark? And did you like bringing that part of her out?
Missy: I really do. And if I didn't think that part of Xena was so important, the ending of the series would have no meaning for me. Because, obviously, Xena believes that about herself. I think there are some very good things about Xena. But she’s done so much. It’s not like she turned a switch when she met Hercules.
SD: Steve always talks about a seed of goodness in Xena that was buried under the life she led.
Missy: I think there's a good side to her or else she wouldn't have been able to make that last decision in “Friend.” She would have chosen to continue living. What did those 40,000 souls really mean to her? I think absolutely there is a core of goodness to her. But if you ignore the fact that that core is wrapped in a shell of darkness, the character loses something. It's like when Callisto became an angel. It made a nice story, but you wanted to slap the crap out of her! (laughs)
SD (laughs): She was pretty boring.
Missy: It's like when Eve turned good. I liked Livia. When I was writing “Coming Home,” I really tried to put a bit of Livia back in Eve, otherwise she was a very uninteresting character to me. That dark side is what made her interesting. Xena's the same way. Xena does good things for good reasons, but Xena doesn't always do them with the same motives the rest of us might have because she has a dark side. She has a horrible past, a selfish nature and a mindset that makes her a very atypical hero.
SD: She brought the Romans down on the nomads to save Gabrielle and yet It may have kept the Romans from overrunning the tribes' land. Selfish motive, good result. But she wasn’t concerned about them, only about Gabrielle.
Missy (laughs): “Gotta get my woman out of the sandbox.”