To Helicon and Back
written by Liz Friedman & Vanessa Place
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 15
SD: There's been heaps of Amazons in Xena's sixth season and they made another appearance in “To Helicon And Back.” Are you fans of the Amazons?
Liz (laughs): Apparently not, because we sure killed a lot of them!
SD (laughs): Good point.
Liz: We're generally pro-Amazon. I think that would be our stance.
SD: I saw a line in the script that said about the landing on the beach scene, “As much carnage as television will allow.”
Liz: I think they went past that.
SD: What story were you given to tell?
Liz: This story actually fused two ideas that Rob had. From the time Xena started, he always wanted to do a version of the WWII movie They Were Expendable - people trapped in an unescapable situation. And he was interested in doing Xena's version of Saving Private Ryan.
He also liked the idea of Xena being faced with a demi-god who was angry with her because of what she had done to the Olympians.
SD: Xena’s killing of the gods in “Motherhood.”
Liz: Right.
SD: Had you seen the fifth season and the episodes leading up to the finale and were you aware of what they’d done to the gods?
Liz: We weren't actually. Rob and R.J. (Stewart) gave us a quick summary of what had been going on and I saw some shows at the beginning of this season.
SD: By the time you wrote this episode, Varia had become a popular character. Did they give you a list of characters they wanted you to include?
Liz: Yeah, they gave us a list and said we could have any of these people.
Vanessa: With brief character descriptions of who they were and what they had done.
Liz: And we’d read a few scripts that Varia was in and thought she was the most interesting person to put through the wringer. To take her to a new level of what being Queen of the Amazons meant.
Vanessa: And we also were aware that there had been some underlying tensions between her and Gabrielle.
SD: Your episode picked up directly after “Path Of Vengeance” ended.
Liz: Yeah. We read that script while it was in development.
SD: Varia was a queen in training in that episode. You had a chance to take her up a step?
Vanessa (laughs): And then knock her down.
Liz (laughs): We're fond of knocking characters down.
Vanessa: Resurrection being more fun than just letting people live.
SD: What did you want to do with Gabrielle in this episode?
Vanessa: She was Tom Hanks with some George Patton mixed in, I think.
SD: Although Gabrielle became more of a warrior during Xena’s pregnancy and since then, this is not what is really inside her - leading people in battle and to their deaths.
Liz: Right. We were interested in the idea of seeing what happens when you put Gabrielle's feet to the fire. It’s one thing to say, “I will pick up a sword and I will defend myself or my friend and I will battle against the forces of evil and lay my life on the line.” It’s a very different thing than being a commander. A favorite line of Vanessa and myself from Patton is, “It's not about dying for your country, it's about making the other bastard die for his.” In leading the Amazons, she's got to be willing to send individuals to their death.
Vanessa: And she can't pause and bemoan that fact.
SD: The scene that illustrates this most graphically is on the beach right after the landing. Gabrielle sends an Amazon out to draw the fire of the enemy to give the others a chance to get to cover. The director of this episode, Michael Hurst, at one of our conventions, said that neither he nor Renee thought Gabrielle could order someone out to die, but the office wanted to make this strong statement about leaders having to make tough decisions in war. In your version of the script, you had Gabrielle give the order?
Liz: Yes, because what's the choice?
Vanessa: I think we probably wrote a version that was a little harsher because of our feeling that the circumstances were so extreme that Gabrielle would make the hardest choices. But I also understand the decision to temper that just a bit.
SD: They tempered it in the aired version, by having Gabrielle say, “Can you do it?” instead of making it a direct order. But she still picks the person to go.
Another change I noticed from the script was in the scene where there is a debate about whether to leave the wounded Amazons behind when they took to the rafts. The script has Xena saying they need to leave the wounded behind and Gabrielle pointing out that they’ll be killed if they don’t take them along. In the aired version, it’s Gabrielle arguing to leave the wounded.
Liz: Oddly enough, it changed and then went back to almost exactly what we had originally written.
Vanessa: We had it at first that Gabrielle said to leave them behind. Then it was changed to Xena saying it and then it was changed back again.
SD: Having Gabrielle argue for leaving the wounded really illustrated the leader's conflict and especially what these circumstances were doing to her. And Renee played that moment so well.
Vanessa: Yeah, it was a nice moment. Especially at the end where she kind of catches herself in what she's saying.
Liz: Even though it wasn’t exactly as we wrote it, we were really pleased with the final version. We're respectful of the fact that, as writers, you can't write something you don’t believe in. And I understand that's also the case for actors. If Renee felt it just wasn't Gabrielle, she's the one who knows.
Vanessa (laughs): We're also really sorry we made them run up and down that hill so many times.
SD (laughs): The last time Gabrielle walked up the side of the hill to sit and talk with Xena, Renee really looked as if she was thinking venomous thoughts about you two.
Liz/Vanessa (laughs): There was a lot of hill running.
Liz (laughs): Running up that damn sand is no fun.
Vanessa (laughs): It's really different when you're sitting in your chair typing it.
SD: The comment was made, “In war, there are no good choices, only lesser choices of evil.” Something that Xena has dealt with before in episodes like “The Price” - Xena falling into the glory of the cheers of her men after the battle, throwing the axe into the fleeing man's back.
Liz: Doesn't that episode hold up great? I loved that one. We looked at it while writing our script. We wanted to show those same types of situations for Gabrielle.
SD: Amazons can only go to war under an Amazon Queen?
Liz: That's the law.
Vanessa (chuckles): We don't make this up.
SD: Certainly Xena would have been the better choice to lead them.
Vanessa: Except I think if you have a newly united nation, having an outsider lead it would probably give the feeling they couldn't make it on their own. We need to unite under one of our own. For example, the American army doesn't go into battle under a British commander no matter how good he is. And there are still lingering tensions between the Amazons and Xena.
SD: Right. Because of their past history.
Liz (laughs): When you try to exterminate people they sometimes hold a grudge.
SD: A fan commented on the final image of the show. The camera pulled back from Xena, Gabrielle and what was left of the Amazons to show three arrows stuck high in a tree. It reminded them of “Adventures In The Sin Trade,” and Xena’s slaughter of the Amazon leaders when she impaled them with tree branches.
Liz: Oh really!
Vanessa: That's an interesting visual.
SD: How did the bad guy come to be Bellerophon?
Liz: We knew that he…
Vanessa: …had to be a demi-god because no one else could potentially beat Xena.
Liz: Right. And I think Rob and R.J. were interested in him being the son of Artemis because she was the head of the Amazons. I know that many people on the web feel Artemis is the Virgin Goddess, but let's say that people's reputations don’t always represent behavior. (chuckles)
Vanessa: It's one of two things. Either Artemis has a back story she’s not talking about or perhaps we're speaking metaphorically.
SD: Also, Xena had to be able to defeat him so he could only be half-god.
Vanessa: Ultimately, yes.
Liz: We did a bit of research and Bellerophon is famous for a story involving him and Pegasus. He is supposed to be a demi-god and his mother is unknown. That gave us a way to use a character with his toe in the waters of mythology, but it wasn't running directly in the face of a definitive story.
And here's a weird trivia fact for you. Do you remember the Young Hercules episode, “Dad Always Liked Me Best.” It was the one where Hercules meets the other half-son of Zeus who's a bad guy. Vanessa and I wrote that and the actor who played Lucius, a demi-god, in that episode, is the same one who played Bellerophon. Apparently this actor and our fates are linked. (laughs)
SD (chuckling): Did you see Varia walk blindfolded out of Bellerophon's castle with her hands manacled together in front of her. Some fans wondered why she didn't reach up and take the blindfold off.
Vanessa/Liz: (laughs)
Liz: Bellerophon had injected her with a hand-numbing drug.
Vanessa: Actually, perhaps that's what tipped Xena off that all wasn't as it appeared to be.
SD (laughs): I thought it was just a cool visual.
Liz: It was.
SD: When Gabrielle rolled the Amazon off the raft and into the water to distract the shark, it wasn’t clear if she was dead or alive.
Liz: She was dead. She was alive when they put her on the raft, but she died during the crossing. That was the third in a series of three shark attack scenes we wrote. I don't even know if they shot all of them.
SD: What were the other two?
Liz: The first one is after Xena went out the window with the guard and into the ocean. When she came up, there was a fight with the guard that ended up with Xena nicking his arm so the shark takes off with him.
The second one had shades of the USS Indianapolis story with the Amazons in the water getting picked off by the sharks
SD: What was the USS Indianapolis?
Liz: Do you remember in Jaws, Quinn was talking about going into the water with all these men during the war. They were there for about five days in the middle of the ocean. I don't know how many men were in the water, but I think over half of them were picked off.
Vanessa: There were some other scenes that didn't make it. There was one where we see how far Gabrielle has turned into thinking like a leader in battle. One of the members of Bellerophon’s patrol gets separated from his team and spots the Amazons. They wound him, but he's making noises. Gabrielle realizes his patrol will hear him and find their location and she wants to kill him to keep him quiet. Xena winds up putting the pinch on him instead.
Liz: They may have shot that scene and then not used it.
SD: With that scene you were trying to reinforce what was happening to Gabrielle?
Vanessa: Right. And also give her some sins. One of the things we were interested in doing is making her have some blood on her hands that would be harder for her to just wash off as Xena does. Where you can't just say, “Oh, it's okay.”
Liz: And even if she didn't go through with killing that man, I think for Gabrielle to realize, “I was ready to kill that guy in cold blood and my reason was I was protecting my tribe. But would the old Gabrielle have done that?”
SD: How do you view Xena at this point in the series?
Vanessa: From my perspective, part of the point of this episode is to show that not only has Gabrielle changed, Xena's changed as well. They’ve taken on bits of each other - for better or worse like in any long-term, close relationship. And, in that, they probably also have a deeper understanding of each other. I think Gabrielle, after having an experience like that, can't stand outside Xena and just imagine what her life is like - now she knows how Xena feels. And Xena’s instinct has been tempered with what she’s learned from Gabrielle.
SD: It seems ironic that Gabrielle has taken on the bad aspects of Xena and Xena has taken on the good aspects of Gabrielle.
Vanessa: But, on the other hand, I think this way you can no longer stand outside of someone and judge them.
SD: Hearing what I just said to you, I referred to what Gabrielle has learned from Xena as “bad.” That’s not exactly true. Xena makes the hard decisions. That's not necessarily bad. It may not be fun, but sometimes it’s necessary.
Liz: I think where you were right is that it's something Xena wishes Gabrielle didn't have to learn. She feels guilty about what Gabrielle has learned by traveling with her.
SD: Most of the discussion about this episode centered on “Varia's Choice,” as someone called it. Her giving in to Bellerophon’s demand that she kill Gabrielle in exchange for the lives of the Amazons. One person said, “Isn’t this a trade a leader might have to make? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Someone else saying, “The principles of the greater good never include telling lies to your queen and shooting a compatriot in the back.”
Vanessa: I think the fact that people are having those kinds of discussions about the episode is the most important thing. Because both sides of that argument have some validity. In one way, that one decision captures all the characters’ dilemmas - Gabrielle’s dilemma is do you sacrifice this person to save the group? Xena's dilemma is that, in a sense, she sacrifices Gabrielle by letting her go ahead and do things that are not particularly good for her. And Varia is asked to choose between Gabrielle and her fellow Amazons. Everyone is faced with the same problem.
Liz: Vanessa and I know that if we hit a plot point that can cause us to have a twenty-minute argument about whether the character is bad or good, weak or strong, that’s good and we put that in.
Vanessa: Through working together, we've learned that if there's any point at which a character's actions can be interpreted in one of two ways, that’s exactly what that person should do. Because that’s more realistic to me than having someone be all good or all bad.
SD: And that’s a good reason for an episode. Making the audience try to figure out where they themselves stand on an issue or in a certain circumstance.
Liz/Vanessa: Right. What would you do?
SD: Gabrielle’s “rally the troops” speech and everyone saying, “To a strong Amazon nation” - in the shooting script, those scenes are both played for cheers and “patriotism.” Fists thrust in the air in a gung-ho manner. In the episode, both scenes were more subdued, tinged with the sadness of lives lost.
Vanessa: They had an elegiac quality to them.
SD: Yeah. Although patriotism is what gets people up out of the trenches and into the hail of bullets, isn’t it?
Liz/Vanessa: Yeah.
Vanessa: I actually preferred the aired version of the end rather than our version. I think it was a better choice to have it be low key, more reflective.
Liz: Yeah. I could have used a bit more rallying, but I'm a Patton fan. (laughs)
SD: The final scene of Xena stopping Gabrielle from killing the bad guy who was cowering on the ground was heartbreaking. The look on Gabrielle's face as she realizes what she's about to do. The look on Xena’s face as Gabrielle approaches her, almost in a trance, covered in blood. Lucy and Renee just nailed that scene. And you two said it all, “War is tough on the soul, Gabrielle.”