Orphan of War
written by Steven L. Sears
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 26
SD: What story were you looking to tell? Was it time to give Xena a child?
Steve: “Orphan Of War” started with two things. Every writer I know has a job jar of ideas they put aside. Things they might like to write about someday. Perhaps something they see in the news. There was a story that I’d read quite a while ago which was made into a movie with Halle Berry about a woman who was a prostitute, a crack addict, lived on the streets, a very rough life. She got pregnant. She couldn’t take care of the child. So she gave the baby up for adoption. Five years later, this woman had cleaned her act up, off drugs, off the street, had a job. She went to find her daughter and found her with wonderful, loving parents. She wanted her child back and it became a huge court battle.
I remember reading news articles at the time that said a lot of people thought she should get the child back because it was hers. And I thought that was wrong. I believe by doing that you rob the daughter of its childhood. You’re telling her the last five years were a lie, they don’t count. These people who loved and raised you don’t mean anything just because they're not your blood. So that news article was in my job jar.
One day, Rob (Tapert) came into my office and said he'd like to do a story about Xena having a son. Right when he said that, the article I’d read clicked into my mind. I told him I had a great idea for an episode. Because in “Orphan,” the crack mother is Xena. She’s the one who had that lifestyle and had to give up her child.
Now, the moral question here is does Xena have the right to then ask for her son back? To reveal to that child that everything the child knows about his mother and who he is is a lie. He knows about his father, Borias. But he doesn’t know that Xena is his mother. In fact, I wanted to take it to another level. Not only does he not know that Xena is his mother, he hates Xena because he blames her for the death of both of his parents. That's what the heart of that episode was.
There were so many things that came out during that story that we carried on into other episodes. Solan, Dagnine, Xena having a son. It’s one of my favorites and the directing and portrayals were wonderful.
SD: How come you included the Centaurs?
Steve: We like them, (laughs) In “Hooves & Harlots” we'd already developed the myth about the fact that Xena had had some interaction with the Centaurs and they hated her. That was a natural leaping off point for me. For one thing, I guess I pulled the Centaurs into the Xena fold with “Hooves.” But I like to make connective tissue for the hardcore fans. For them to be able to trace certain histories and genealogies throughout a series. I could bring in a group of creatures or people the audience has never heard of before. That would work fine, but I'd have to explain the background. Here I already had this built-in history with the Centaurs and one of the points I wanted to make about Xena as a person was that she was very smart in giving the child to her worst enemy because no one would ever expect the child to be with them.
SD: She could have given her baby to the Amazons.
Steve: She could have. That probably would have been a more Amazon-centric story because you have a male (her son) in with the Amazon Nation that they would have to revere. A completely different story.
SD: Totally forgot that's a female nation. (laughs)
Steve: Right. This one worked for the practicality of Xena. If she knows that child will be used as a tool against her, then what do you do? You give it to the one people who would most benefit from that tool, but you let them know you're giving it to them.
The other thing about the Centaurs within this particular story is that this is also Borias’ son. They don’t look at the child as Xena's son. Not when she hands the baby over. Kaleipus makes that point. “The son of Borias will be raised as my own.” Kaleipus couldn’t deny Borias' heritage when he saved the Centaurs from Xena’s army, but he could have denied Xena's heritage.
SD: Did we learn about Borias in “Hooves” or in this episode?
Steve: This was the first mention of Borias.
SD: At the beginning of this episode Xena tells Gabrielle the story of Borias and the Centaurs and her army?
Steve: Right. And Borias became a major character later on.
SD: The Ixion Stone - your invention?
Steve: Nope. Ixion is a real mythological character. Pretty much as I stated it in the episode. He was the father of the Centaurs. Looking at my research here, Ixion is counted among the Lapiths, a people living in Thessaly. Centaurs and the Lapiths are both descended from Peneus, the God of the River. As I remember, Ixion committed some horrible crime and Zeus had to intervene. And Hera and Ixion joined together and the Centaurs were born.
SD: How about Ixion’s choice to make the Centaurs wicked or noble?
Steve: Zeus didn’t like Ixion cause he “did the dirty” with Hera and bound him to a wheel for all eternity.
SD: Ixion was a Centaur?
Steve: It depends on which mythology you read. The Lapiths are, supposedly, people, but other references I read were that Ixion was, in fact, a Centaur. I expanded upon that. It came out fairly easily having the Ixion Stone be the thing everyone was looking for. The story really wasn’t about the Ixion Stone. That was just a contrivance. The story was Xena and her son. I had to find something that would be the mission, but something that I could explain in two or three sentences which I managed to do.
SD: Was the stone part of the myth or just Ixion?
Steve: The stone was my own take on the story.
SD: She could have had a daughter.
Steve: Rob’s very good at trying to play the opposite of what you might expect. He may have thought everyone will expect a daughter so let’s give her a son.
SD: I’m trying to place this in the timeline of Xena’s life. Had she gone to Chin yet? Met Caesar?
Steve: Julius Caesar was first. He turned her into power with hatred. Then she met Borias and then on to Chin.
SD: Xena was really, really vulnerable in the flashbacks when she gave up the child even though she was in her evil period.
Steve: She was evil, but you have to understand what she was doing at the time. This came out later on in “Past Imperfect” where we dealt with Xena giving birth. Even without that, just consider the fact that her army is at war with the Centaurs and is in a position to destroy them. Her army has never been defeated, that is a part of her legend. Xena values that power above everything else except for her son, at the moment when she gives him up. She’s invincible, that’s her security. So what is she going to do? Xena makes a decision to withdraw because of this child. She has an opportunity to destroy the Centaurs and she doesn’t take it. She’s going to walk away, retreat. That’s a huge thing for Xena’s reputation and she’s doing that because of her son and her love for Borias. That confuses her. That’s why she's so open and vulnerable at that moment. She doesn't know what’s going on inside of her.
SD: It isn’t part of the episode, but do you think Xena got pregnant by accident or choice?
Steve: Good question. My thought has always been that it wasn't so much an accident as something that wasn’t cared about. If she got pregnant, that’s just fine. That’s the way it goes. Having a son or daughter was something she didn't care about one way or the other. When it finally happened and it became a symbol of Borias and herself, it meant a lot more at that point.
There’s always the thought of whether it was a power play on her part to try and manipulate Borias. Or whether it was a need she had. Or whether it was a higher calling in order to force these changes on her - whether it was fate or destiny.
SD: We didn't see Borias in this epise, but you must have been thinking about him. How did you visualize him?
Steve: Marton Csokas was not what pictured. (laughs) I love the fact that we ended up with Marton. I think he did a great job. But when I was working on this story, I had pictured Borias’ looks as being much more clean-cut and blond. I saw him more in the mold of Kevin Sorbo. The typical hero look. In my mind I was thinking who else has Xena been attracted to. Marton brought in an edginess that worked much better when you consider where Xena was coming from.
When Xena met Hercules, she was ready for a change. When she met Borias, she was still in that “bad boys attract me” stage. And he certainly was Heaven forbid he should become a good guy and suddenly he did.
SD: I thought David Taylor, who played Solan, did a good job.
Steve: I did too. That line, “You’ve just met your greatest enemy,” is one of those lines I look for that can be amusing, but because of the way it's said and the conditions around it, you realize this is absolutely serious. And when a child looks at Xena and says, “You’ve just met your greatest enemy,” that's almost absurd. Except you see her reaction and you wonder why this is affecting her. You can’t dismiss it. This kid has something going on. And, of course, the next reveal is, “That's my son.” It sets up the premise of the episode. “Here’s my son who hates me. Who thinks of me as the ultimate enemy and he doesn’t know who I am.”
SD: Was Borias the first person Xena loved?
Steve: Not just loved, but respected. He stood up to her and for reasons that were better than her reasons. His reasons for not destroying the Centaurs were not just so they could all live in happiness. His reasons are totally pragmatic and make sense. And what he said was that he wanted to spend the rest of his life loving her. He was willing to stand up to her to get that. He saw something inside Xena. She was his path. She realized, at that moment, that her path was the wrong one.
SD: What part did Solan play in the future redemption of Xena?
Steve: I look at it as happening in stages. After Caesar and before Borias, Xena was a mass murderer. Killing people was like clipping her toenails. After Solan, she was still power-oriented, but she had now a quality you could call mercy. She understood and made a distinction between somebody dying for necessary expedience to her goals or just killing them because she didn't give a rat’s butt. Certainly the association with Solan played an important part.
SD: You made her very honest with Solan. She tells him the good and the bad about Borias as well as about herself. She could have white-washed either one of them.
Steve: No, she couldn’t have. Because she so wanted to tell him the truth, she couldn’t go halfway. If she would have white-washed anything at this point, that would mean she had already made the decision never to tell him the truth.
The option to tell Solan she is his mother is still open for Xena. She’s still struggling with that. Therefore, if he asks anything, she will tell the truth. And the real question is if he had turned to her and in some brilliant insight had said, “Are you my mother?” what would she have done? A part of Xena was hoping he would. She was not going to lie to him about anything. But she wasn’t necessarily going to reveal certain truths. Therefore, anything he asked her, she was going to be honest. Even to the third person perspective of Xena.
SD: Had you made the decision when you started the story whether or not Xena would tell him she was her mother? And was there any discussion about that?
Steve: There was discussion. I’d already made up my mind that that would have been wrong, as I said. I also think it was more heroic for her to rise above her own desires and realize, “I love this child so much I’m going to put what’s best for him first.” Xena looked around and saw everything he had in the Centaur village and she realized she would take all that away. I couldn't imagine her being the hero if she said to him, “I am your mother.” And if she had told him, he truly would have been her adversary. His anger and resentment toward everyone would have caused him to leave the village and run away.
SD: Where did the name Kaliepus come from? And Dagnine? Borias?
Steve: Kaliepus came from the old merry-go-round music which was calliope music - the calliope horses.
I think Dagnine came from Dagwood, but I can’t remember why. I really liked that character. What I wanted was to make him not your typical heavy. Rather the kind of guy who is a little quirky, but really dangerous. I still chuckle at some of the ways the actor delivered the lines. You never knew what was going to come out of Dagnine’s mouth, but he was absolutely serious. One line that I liked was when he was talking about what he had to do and he says, “I’ve got so many things. I’ll have to make a list.” (laughs) It’s a funny line, but absolutely practical. In his mind he’s thinking, “Now that I’m going to be this god, I can do everything I've ever wanted to do. I gotta prioritize!”
I believe Borias came from Borax. I don’t remember why, but that rings a bell in my mind.
SD: It gave him an extra dimension.
Steve: The thing that makes a villain dangerous is when you actually like them or, at the very least, understand them. We don’t have to care about a stereotypical villain. But when you think, “This is the kind of person I’d like to hang out with, but he’d kill me!” That’s a dangerous character. I try to put that into villains - something that’s human.
SD: It’s ironic that Gabrielle berates Xena for abandoning her son and then, a year later, Gabrielle has to give up her own child.
Steve: The important thing is what Gabrielle says to Xena, “I don’t know what it’s like to have a son.” In fact, what Gabrielle is saying is that I’m not in that situation so I don’t know what it's like to have to make those choices. Later on, she makes that choice. But at least at this particular time, Gabrielle acknowledges that.
SD: Xena says to Gabrielle, “You don't understand.” And Gabrielle responds, “I do understand. Any woman would.” I wasn't certain what Gabrielle understood.
Steve: Any woman understands the maternal instinct. For the vast majority of women, there's an understanding of the bonding between child and parent that the woman has that men don't have. Men have a different idea. If you put a hundred women in a room with a child, you’re gonna find ninety-nine of those women are just going to coo and make faces at the child. Do the same thing with men and they’re going to be looking for the ninety-nine women to take the child out of there! (laughs)
SD: Gabrielle is quite harsh with Xena as they argue about Xena's decision not to tell Solan she’s his mother. Were you giving her the Devil’s Advocate lines?
Steve: Yes. Everything that Gabrielle was saying makes sense to a lot of people. And I wanted to make sure that side of the story was on the board. She articulates the other side of the argument. Xena, in this episode, made the right decision according to me, to the writer. However, I would be remiss in character construction if I didn’t voice the other opinion - and voice it convincingly. Gabrielle does just that. Even at the end when she says, “I was wrong.” What she’s saying is, “I was wrong to not be there for you. But I still disagree with you. Still think you are wrong in making this decision.”
Gabrielle kept her integrity. But everything she says makes sense. That line where she says, “I don’t know what it’s like to have a son, but I know what it’s like to have a mother.” That’s a convincing argument. She was giving voice to the other side of the coin and also leaving the audience in some doubt about what Xena’s final decision would be.
SD: This seemed like a difference of opinion that could put quite a strain on a friendship.
Steve: It's something that was unexpected for Gabrielle. She makes a point later on, when she’s talking to Solan, about “this is the only Xena I know.” What I was trying to get across by that is the fact that Gabrielle has heard the legends about what kind of a killer Xena was, how harsh she was in the past, how she did bad things to bad people. But those are truly legends. This is the person she knows. And, within that context, Gabrielle's mind has compartmentalized Xena’s past. What’s happening now is something she can touch and Xena’s decision surprises her. It’s like,”I wouldn’t have expected this of you. You’re not quite as up on the pedestal as I thought you were.”
Also, take into account this is a sensitive issue with Gabrielle because she came from a tight-knit family. She took them for granted. Keep that in mind about Gabrielle. That’s something that has preyed on her mind a little bit. We never did an episode where we said that out loud, but when she ran away from home she left her family. We showed a bit of that with her sister in “The Prodigal,” but we didn’t play as much of that as we should have. Family is something Gabrielle understands and it's not something you should toss away and dismiss.
In fact, we played more of what Gabrielle's thoughts were of leaving home with Perdicus than we did with Lila in “Beware Greeks.” And when she married Perdicus in “Return Of Callisto,” there was that discussion between them about Gabrielle wanting to go home.
SD: Gabrielle’s learning how to be a friend to Xena while keeping her own moral code. You could have had her saying to Xena at the end, “You're absolutely right in what you did. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” Instead you had her say, “I disagree with what you did, but I should have been a better friend.” That was a twist from the standard Hollywood fare - especially for the sidekick role. You had Gabrielle stick to her own beliefs.
Steve: She’s an individual. And the best thing you can do for a friendship is to be yourself. Admit you’ll be there for the person, but you can’t just give them carte blanche. That's not being a friend. It also separates Gabrielle from being a hanger-on of Xena. She’s not with Xena just because Xena gives her access to adventures. It’s more than that. If it were only that, Gabrielle would just be a puppy dog. Everything Xena did would be wonderful and great.
Early on, we had started the thread that Gabrielle would do things or make decisions that aren’t always what Xena would agree with. Sometimes it would be just because Gabrielle thought they were cool and she was afraid Xena would be like a mother and stomp on her fun. Other times, it would be because she had a conviction about something. But, in this particular episode, it’s pretty much out there that Gabrielle is her own person. She will stand up to Xena. She will speak her mind. But she's still growing and learning about this friendship. Gabrielle has to understand that her friend needs her. That's the important thing.
Really, in their first discussion about Solan, Gabrielle wasn’t trying to give Xena advice on how to work through this problem. She was telling her, “No, this is what you have to do.” And that’s where Gabrielle was wrong and she admits it. “You are in pain. How can I help you work through this?” As opposed to, “I don't care if you're jn pain. You do it my way.”
SD: Gabrielle keeps giving Solan hints that Xena is his mother. She can’t just stand back and let Xena decide to tell him. Why not?
Steve: Gabrielle’s agreed not to tell Solan. She does know that’s not her place. However, she has a huge curiosity about this son of Xena and how much he really does know. She's probably hoping she’ll hear something from Solan that she can go back to Xena and say, “You don’t have to worry, you can tell him because he feels this way.” She’s trying to fix this in her own way. In the process, however, she’s learning that she can’t. She’s not so much giving a wink and a nod toward Xena saying, “So what do you think of your mother?” She's not doing that. But she’s gotta talk about Xena as two different people in this process. Asking Solan about his mother is one thing. But asking him his perception of Xena is another. She’s trying to find out about this child and to help give Xena enough information to come to what Gabrielle thinks is the right decision.
Xena has the harder part. The scene by the graveside where she talks about Solan's mother and singing. When she says that she and Borias used to sing, that is as close as she’s getting to saying, “Don't you get it?” However, what Solan hears and why he runs away is, “How dare you think you can sing the way my mother could sing to me!” That last line Xena says, “I could sing for you.”
SD: Clever ending having Xena blow through the root tubes. (laughs)
Steve (laughs): There was a lot of discussion and unintended humor when we talked about that. I was trying to find a way for Xena to signal people from underground. I thought there are roots down there and if you assume a tree could be hollowed out slightly, Xena might be able to do that.
Putting aside the jokes about blowing on the root, the thing that was important about that scene, was when Solan said, “We could stand here and fight. I saw you take them on.” Xena makes the joke, “Well, I certainly got us here, didn’t I?” She tosses that off as a joke, but the important thing is what Solan said to her. He's talking to her as a child would talk to their parent at that point in the story. “You can do it, come on!” That was something I put in deliberately. It's a small thing. Most people probably didn’t notice it. But it was a transition in the character. He was speaking to her as if this were his mother. “I believe in you now. You were my hated enemy.” But his reaction to her is not one of an enemy. That’s a child’s admiration.
There was a lot going on in that scene. When Solan had his arm splinted and Xena was holding him, obviously, the mother in her came out. Lucy was outstanding in that. She really played that mother/son feeling throughout the whole episode. Really did it well. And the music that Joe LoDuca put in - especially the final scene.
SD: One person wrote about an analogy between this story and the legend of King Arthur. They brought up Solan's sword sticking in a pile of dirt that could be Excalibur in the stone. And, at the end, Solan throws the sword into the lake as happened when Excalibur was thrown into a lake.
Steve: Not intended. The sword was in the mound of dirt, or dung, because I needed it to be there just out of Solan’s reach. And he threw it into a lake because I didn’t have a volcano. (laughs) The lake was simply convenient. For me, there was more of an analogy between the final scene of this episode and the final one in “Dreamworker” where Xena throws a stone into the lake. I'm trying to make connective tissue again for the fans.
I could have done many things with that sword, but there was a throwback to the feeling of that scene in “Dreamworker.” And there’s a lot of symbolism of the sword going into the water. It’s the idea that if Solan ever chose to go after that sword, it will still be there. It’s out of view, but he knows it’s there. Again, the lake is forever changed because the sword is there, just like a person is forever changed by carrying a sword. There’s also a purification of water. In my mind, Solan was doing that. He was casting off the sword to become something greater than a warrior.
When I was trying to come up with a name for Xena’s son, many times I look for people in Greek history or mythology which can match the qualities I'm looking for. The actual Greek character of Solon was who I was modeling him after. The spelling of her son’s name is not the one you find in Greek history. I spelled it that way because I wanted the name to be pronounced correctly. Solon was one of the first Greek philosophers of democracy. He was once a warrior like Socrates was, but became a highly revered person. He was a peacemaker who brought peace between several factions within Greece. He wanted to formalize law and the court system. Justice was his big thing. That eventually lead to the Athenian golden age of democracy.
SD: You have Xena say to Solan, “Sometimes you do things and they’re wrong.” She’s obliquely saying that giving up Solan was the wrong thing to do. Was she, at that point, about to tell him she is his mother?
Steve: Yep. Even if she’d made up her mind not to tell him, sitting there, knowing she was going to leave him and possibly never see him again, there was that moment of doubt about, “Should I tell him?” When Xena’s talking about leaving, I wanted the audience to think there’s a very good chance she might go ahead and tell him. She makes the decision not to. The question that should run in people’s minds is that if Solan hadn’t interrupted her, would she have told him?
SD: And then we have her walking away from him at the end. The look on Xena’s face.
Steve: Very powerful ending. Lucy played that very, very well. This scene took a long time to write because so much was going on. I had to write it in such a way as to fool the audience. Because, quite honestly, this scene could have ended right at the beginning of it. She could have just said good-bye and you would have known she was never going to tell him. Or she could have said, “I'm your mother,” and they hug and you fade to black. My thought was that since this story is about the relationship between Xena and her son, I wanted the audience to be leaning toward the television right up until the last second.
What I really wanted was to be able to write a scene that was compelling enough to have the audience yelling at the screen, “Tell him! Tell him!” After the episode aired, I got emails from some people who were “upset” that Xena didn’t tell him. And that’s a good thing. I’m glad. They had the same opinion as Gabrielle who wasn’t wrong in what she said. But Xena was the one who was hurting. She sums it up by saying, “You have things here which I can only dream about.” What she’s really saying is that you have more here than I could have given you and how dare anyone take that away from you. She can do that because he doesn’t know who she is or what she’s talking about.
SD: What did walking away from her son do to Xena?
Steve: We know what it did to her spirit. But when Xena walked away, for me, she walked away a true hero. She sacrificed a part of her because she loved that child so much.