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Post by Joxcenia on Jul 5, 2004 18:36:59 GMT -6
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Ernie
Whooshite Apprentice
Posts: 151
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Post by Ernie on Jul 30, 2004 11:57:23 GMT -6
It's got a great ending. Gabrielle playing judge and jury really is powerful stuff, and a big turning point for her character.
The rest is quite good, although it always bugs me that Xena leaves Gabby to escort Crassus to Rome by herself. He's presumably a very experienced warrior in his own right, and even through Gabrielle is pretty good, it still seems like an absurd risk.
I also find Xena's turn in the gladiator's arena a bit disapointing. Somehow I expect a bigger action sequence than the one we got.
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Post by Joxcenia on Jun 20, 2005 19:23:05 GMT -6
Excerpt:
Question: In 'When in Rome'..Gabrielle allows Crassus to be killed be keeping the ring. I felt that Xena put her in a bad position there, and Gabrielle wasnt true to who she was by doing that. She was still in her 'no kill' phase, and I thought it did a lot of emotional harm to her. Others have disagreed and felt it a necessary part of the journey with Xena, and to have to make choices like that to grow. What were your thoughts on that when writing it, and the message you wanted to send?
Steven Sears: This is a very complicated episode and one that I am particularly proud of (ask me in five minutes, though, and that answer might change to something else). Historically, if you eliminate about seven years, what I wrote COULD have happened in history. The name Vercinix was actually a shortened name for a warrior named Vercingetorix who bedeviled Caesar in Gaul. Finally, Vercingetorix was captured and was paraded around Rome and imprisoned for five years until he was behaded in 46 b.c. Eliminate those seven years and the death of Crassus (53 b.c.) actually coincides with all this.
So, Xena had a mission to accomplish. A good man was going to die and she had to prevent it. Gabrielle became a part, the pivotal part, of that mission. However, at every step of the way, Xena gave Gabrielle the choice, allowed Gabrielle to make the decisions. The real question is why did Xena do that, not whether it was fair.
A few things went through my mind when I was writing this episode (and I can't be held accountable for remembering all of them, I can't even remember where I left my keys!).
First, the cold, hard facts of her plan:
Complicated.
Xena's plan was too complicated for one person to accomplish. She had to have help. Any slip-up in the details would have made it, at best, more difficult. Possibly a lost cause. Gabrielle's help was essential.
However.... Two things were going on with Xena.
What to do? Even though Xena could have ordered Gabrielle to blindly follow orders and manipulated her into the plan, Xena did something she's not comfortable. She gave the final decision to Gabrielle, hoping that Gabrielle's wisdom wasn't as clouded as Xena's ability to plan. In other words, Xena wasn't as sure of her own ability to judge the morality of letting Crassus die. She left it to someone she suspected as being more able to make that decision.
Now, to Gabrielle:
Gabrielle had to grow up or end her journey with Xena. Growing up means the hard decisions. She had to make one, one that meant the death of a man. The decision, though, truly was hers to make. Why did she do it? I gave her an "out" in this script. I put the doubt in her mind by playing on the fact that she didn't know Crassus, only the rumors she had heard. Crassus was successful at diluting those stories by telling her that he tried to stop the carnage, bad apples in his soldiers were responsible and disciplined. And, the way he told her this was in such a manner that was convincing. He didn't disagree with the storied, he just made himself out to be the one who tried to prevent it too late. How could a well-intentioned man like that be put to death? Just because Xena said he was an evil man? Perhaps Xena didn't understand the situation... and so on. Gabrielle, at that point, had no intention of letting Crassus die. But the "out" that I gave her was the validation of Xena's account of Crassus from Vercinix. Not only was Crassus a murderer, he was a manipulator and would most certainly return to his old ways if allowed to live.
Gabrielle had to weigh the deaths of innocents against the death of this one man. When you put the weight of one side against the weight of the other, it's an easy decision. But only if you are talking about scales. When you are making a choice between unknown lives and the life of someone you have spoken to, interacted with, it's a different matter. Gabrielle made her decision. Xena would have accepted any decision Gabrielle would have made, without incrimination.
The dropping of the ring at the end of the episode was my symbolic way of showing that Gabrielle had shed yet another naive point of view that clouded her view of the world.
Simple, eh?
Yes. I think too much.
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