Xena: Warrior Princess Episode 1.03: “Dreamworker”

[chavalah.livejournal.com]

We know that “Xena” is a show about a haunted warrior hoping for redemption after a dark past, and a young girl essentially looking to “grow up,” clock a few mature experiences and become less ignorant about the world. By episode three, the writers are asking, “is that possible?” Now here’s a show concerned about character development. :P

The sets are pretty simple—cloth and netting strewn around a sound stage—and so is the plot, all in all. But this episode nudges our leads into some personal realizations that will help them along their broader story arcs. They each confront their darker natures, and it leaves them forever changed.


We open on Gabby “trash talking” what turns out to be a tree trunk before she brings Xena’s sword swooping down and gets it stuck in there. :P “You’re lucky the tree wasn’t armed,” is Xena’s assessment. The battling bard wants Xena to teach her how to use it, but Xena refuses. “The moment you pick up a sword, you become a target,” the warrior princess warns.

Or to be more succinct—here are Xena’s rules of survival tailored for Gabrielle. “Number one: if you can run, run. Number two: if you can't run, surrender and then run. Number three: if you're outnumbered, let them fight each other while you run. Number four: talk your way out of it.”

These rules don’t apply to her, apparently, when some goonish highway men come ‘round, looking for “donations.” Xena out-snarks them and then kicks their asses. :P In the process she drops her sword, and guess who picks it up and immediately becomes a target? As the men swoop in on Gabrielle Xena kills the leader and sends them packing.

As the ladies regroup, we shift to two men watching them through the trees. The main one, a mystic named Manus, remarks that Gabrielle fought with a fire in her, but she didn’t “stain herself with blood. Morpheus will be pleased.” Uh oh. Pleased about what? What’s in store for Renee this week, whose name still isn’t in the opening title sequence? :P I’m keeping a tally.

As they enter their next village, Gab is still maintaining that she was trying to “take the heat off” Xena earlier, but her mentor is unimpressed. The two women split ways to buy different provisions. While haggling for a sharpening stone, Xena asks her shopkeeper who to report a dead highway man to. The vendor, who has obviously watched them come into town, and has already remarked on Gabrielle, asks nervously, “Your friend didn’t do it, did she?” He seems abnormally relieved to find out that Gabs is innocent.

A blind man comes in wanting a holster for his horse, but the shopkeeper shoos him away, calling him an “ex-mystic.” “We don’t serve your kind here!” he snarls. Xena is disturbed enough to suggest that the shopkeeper just let the frail man buy what he needs. Later she forgoes her own purchase, buying the holster instead and dropping it in the man’s basket.

Gabrielle is in an armory, and her shopkeeper seems shocked to see her as well. He claims that she should be waiting outside the village until after solstice. But when Gabs pretends to be an experienced swordswoman, he changes his tune. Though it’s uncertain why he would ever believe this girl who staggers under the weight of one. :P Gabrielle ends up buying a breast dagger from him, labeling it “cute.”

Xena notes immediately that something is off with her friend, as Gabrielle is shifting around awkwardly. The dagger falls out and Xena confiscates it, tucking it into her own cleavage. “It’s not like your breasts weren’t dangerous enough,” Gab grumbles.

Suddenly the villagers are running into their houses and Xena puts Gabrielle on the horse as some warriors come rushing at her! They swordfight for just a little while before the men instantly disappear. :-O When Xena looks back to the horse, she sees that Gabrielle is gone!

Xena slams herself into her shopkeeper, recognizing how keen the man was on Gabrielle’s arrival, and demanding to know where she is now. The shopkeeper stammers that she’s probably at the temple up in the mountains…every solstice, the mystics take a young maiden there, never to be seen again. That’s why they send their young girls out of town around this time. Xena remembers that the blind man was an “ex-mystic,” and goes off in search of him.

Manus prays that Morpheus, the god of dreams, be pleased with his new “bride.” Uh oh. Gabrielle, now dressed in a white, silly dress with blue jewels in her hair, paces her bedroom cell frantically. When Manus and his goons come in, she demands to be released. She’s not “wifey material…I sleep late, I don’t know a lick about housework, and children! I mean, look at these hipbones!” (I wonder if Renee ever ad-libbed any of her lines, or if they were all written for her. :P)

Manus is unperturbed. He tells Gabrielle she’ll be put through a series of tests. If she wins, she becomes the god’s bride. If not…well these tests are fights to the death. :-/ Gabrielle, a fighter? How’s she gonna get out of this?

Meanwhile, Xena tracks the blind man, Elkton, to his home. He recognizes her voice from the shop and realizes that she gave him the holster. Things are going well here. Pressed for information, he tells her that the mystics are an “evil, perverted cult” who force young maidens to lose their “blood innocence,” e.g. they have to kill someone. Once that happens, she will be sacrificed as Morpheus’s bride. :-O That’s definitely a detail that Manus left out with Gab!

Xena demands to be taken to the temple. Elkton is dubious…until he feels Xena’s arm. He wonders if she’s the warrior that the prophecy talks about—a woman with a dark past who will be able to defeat Morpheus in a “dreamscape.” He decides to help her save Gabrielle. She doesn’t need to travel anywhere physically…just drink a potion and go to sleep. She has to traverse the dreamscape and find her way to the door on the other side. While there, Morpheus will use her own memories to try and defeat her, draining her body of life. Elkton will keep her prone body “hydrated” with karma oil. Pretty creative conditions here!

The warrior princess, now dressed in a silky, purple, kimono-esque outfit, finds herself wandering through a netting tunnel while spooky music plays. Along the way, she confronts several aspects of her past. Warriors surround her, shouting her name and claiming they’ve killed on her orders. “You can’t change who you are!” She keeps walking.

Now her victims come to greet her amidst bodies lying on downed set pieces. “I am Messer,” one tries to introduce himself. “Your victims were always faceless.” Others follow, crowding her in. Xena denies killing them, which I find a little eyebrow-archy. If anything, this little “nightmare” is rather tame. Of course I speak from hindsight where I know evil!Xena traveled the world, taking part in things season one viewers can’t conceive of yet. Given what little we know of her, plus the necessity of getting back to this week’s plot sooner or later, these scenes are pretty effective. We already know that Xena is haunted by her kills. But she doesn’t want to deal with them here; she tells them to stand back. “This is the weight of your conscience,” Messer tells her. The only way to stop it is by re-killing them. He hands her a sword. Of course, Xena is stronger than that. :D “Morpheus, I won’t do this!” she shouts, dropping her sword. “I’m not her anymore!” The victims disappear and Xena moves on.

Meanwhile, Manus has been made aware of Xena’s existence in the dreamscape. He demands from his goons that Elkton be found, and the ex-mystic and Xena’s body killed. Uh oh. Elkton is already concerned because “Morpheus is draining your life quicker than expected.” He continues to dab Xena’s body with karma oil, telling her to hurry.

Gabrielle is led to her first challenge. Manus, with a devious smirk on his face, tells her she’ll be “let go” if she succeeds, but didn’t he already tell you the truth, Gab? At least the part about survival=marriage. Anywho. Gab’s task is to make it to the end of the room. Two men are inside, waiting to kill her. She’s given a sword and locked inside.

The room is filled with cloth hangings, and there’s a nice bit of staging where we largely see the goons via their shadows. Gab grips her sword tightly and almost immediately, her attacker’s sword comes ripping through the cloth and knocks off the tip of hers! Uh oh. Gabby hears Xena’s voice from earlier in the episode, telling her when faced with two opponents, make them fight each other. Good listener, Gab! She lures the goons to either side of her, all separated by two sheets of cloth. Then she sneezes, ducks, and the two men stab through the cloth, killing each other! Score!

Manus comes in, impressed. “I thought you would have killed, but you didn’t,” he says. She’s taken to her room where she falls asleep. In the dreamscape, Xena encounters her on her bed, plucking flower petals to the tune of “they’re gonna sacrifice me, they’re gonna sacrifice me not…” At first, Xena is wary if this is the real Gabrielle, so she makes the bard tell her something she doesn’t know about her…Gab chooses that she was born with six toes on her right foot. :P Uh…okay. Xena believes it and sits down. She warns her friend that the mystics want her to kill—don’t do it, Gab! Once she loses her blood innocence, she’ll be sacrificed to Morpheus. Gabrielle is shocked, wondering if her actions in the first challenge count as murder. “If it did you’d be on your honeymoon by now,” Xena surmises. She encourages the girl to “use what you know” (hint hint, especially taking) to get herself out of this until Xena can break out of the passage. As Gabrielle wakes, she disappears from the dreamscape.

Manus re-enters, telling Gabby that he knows of Xena’s presence. “You shouldn’t be afraid to use the sword to defend yourself,” the mystic says, echoing Gabrielle’s own concerns from the beginning of the eppy. “Your friend will be dead long before she can help you.”

At Elkton’s house, Manus’s goons enter to find their two query gone! The ex-mystic has set themselves up in the woods, pouring the last of the karma oil on Xena’s prone body. Time’s running short now.

Gabrielle is locked in a room with a fire pit in the middle, where she promptly throws her sword. Might be bad timing…three men come at her, almost toppling her in after it! One throws a spear in the wall and Gabs can’t resist detaching it, breaking off the end to make it a staff. Luckily, she also remembers that she’s a talker. :P She proposes that they fight each other to see who’s the best, and that person can take the first stab at her. As two goons fight, Gab turns to the third and says “I guess we know where they rank you.” :P Hee!

Finally when two men are dead, the survivor ropes a net around her and drags her to the fire pit. He’s downed by a knife, which was lodged into a pressurized wall, darting out and stabbing him in the back. Kind of a weak way for Gabs to “win,” but options were limited, I suppose. Manus is once again impressed that she’s “smarter than I thought,” in that she realized that if she kills someone, she’ll be sacrificed. Parlor tricks got her out of the last two challenges but she won’t be so lucky on the third…it’s either kill or be killed there. :-/

Xena is also up to her third challenge…her first victim and her last (the highway man.) We learn that her first victim was in fact attacking Amphipolis at the time—“Friends died under your sword.” The warrior princess doesn’t seem to have regrets about killing in self-defense. They taunt her with Gabrielle’s future—“Soon, she will be just like you…haunted by all of the demons.” Xena decides to take care of her demons here and now. She banishes them from her mind, and they start to shimmer and be pulled backward out of the room, Exorcist-style. Nice effects.

The warrior princess has made her way to the final door she has to pass through, but she has one, final challenge left. A shadowy figure appears behind her, cackling that she can’t leave yet; she needs a “key” for the door. “This may be your dream, but you can’t control me. I am you.” A Xena-doppleganger steps into the light; her eyes are black. She taunts her with memories of the “happy” days where she was powerful and put fear in mens’ hearts. “There’s no glory in being a hero,” she promises. “Join me!” …this isn’t the first time that a baddie will want Xena to re-embrace the evil, but it’s a special case, this being the dark part of her past that she has to confront. Xena’s body jerks around dangerously as she fights her doppelganger in the dreamscape.

Gabrielle isn’t in much better a predicament. She’s trapped in a cage, with a wall of knives coming at her! At the edge is one man with a sword, blocking her escape route. Either way, it looks like Gab will get stabbed. :-/ Another sword lies on the floor. Gabrielle begs Xena to hurry. She ultimately picks up the sword.

Doppelganger-Xena is monologing about being the stronger of the two as real Xena is in all kinds of peril—the goons have found Elkton and her body! The Doppelganger reminds Xena that without her, she never would have been a leader, or powerful at all. Xena realizes that her evil past is “the key.” “Without you, I wouldn’t exist,” she admits. “You’re the key to my nightmares. Whatever part of me you think you are, I control you.” Beautiful moment of self-realization. Xena pushes her doppelganger through the door, and not a moment too soon! One of the goons is about to stab her body through the heart, but it disappears! Xena pops up, dressed as a warrior again, in the room of Gabrielle’s final challenge.

Robust music with Bulgarian singers plays as Xena fights her friend’s battle. “Kill them both!” Manus commands. Gabrielle tosses Xena her sword, maintaining her blood innocence (though she does get a free pass in punching Manus out). Of course the weapon that delivers the killing blow is the breast dagger. :P Ah, symmetry.

Back in the village, Xena is ready to buy her sharpening stone, asking the shopkeeper what she owes. “After ridding us of Morpheus?!...Ten percent off everything.” :P Eklton, sighted again and dressed in blue robes, comes in and chastises the man until the price goes down to free. With the evil cult gone, he’s back to his old job as head mystic. Manus is stuck in a dreamscape with his own demons for company. Doesn’t seem like he’ll be able to overcome them so easily. Elkton lets Xena go with a “sweet dreams.” :P

Gabrielle is troubled—she saw her own potential to kill someone, and it frightened her. Xena urges her to look at the still waters of a lake nearby. “That was me once. And then…” She picks up a stone and throws it in. The water ripples and churns.

“With time, the water will calm again,” Gabrielle offers hopefully. Xena agrees…but points out that the stone is still underneath. It’s a part of the lake, now, forever. It’s a very astute metaphor about what Xena has gone through and what she has to live with for the rest of her life. As she and Gabrielle leave, she looks out at the stilling waters.

Impressive episode…without much melodrama, we get to the “key” of how Xena can move on with her life, though the “stone of evil” has changed her forever. I like the emphasis that you can change your future for the better, and it means you’re a good person, but you can’t deny the past.

As for Gabrielle, the nature of “blood innocence” comes back many a time in the future. She’s kept it…for now…though she’s also changed by her experiences. She knows that to fight isn’t as simple as she thought at the beginning of the episode, even if it’s in self-defense. Traveling with Xena, it’s uncertain how long she can last without at least having some physical instruction on how to defend herself (spoiler: the staff particularly becomes important. :P)

Also, how can I not be a fan of the writers already showing how entwined Xena and Gabrielle's destinies are, with their shared dreams and experiences in the dreamscape? The show handles it much more subtly than I do here, but it makes the fangirl in me squeal. This won't be the last time that Xena defeats a god, either. :D

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