In the Beginning...

Originally published March 31, 2000

I remember when the first Hercules TV movie aired. It was part of the Action Pack of shows put together by Universal Studios. I had recently moved to Maine, and was up late one night. The Action Pack included the TekWar films, based on the novels by William Shatner. I had read the first book or two, and wanted to see if the movies were any good.

They weren't. I recall seeing an ad for the Hercules movie, and at the time it didn't register on my radar. Having been somewhat disappointed by TekWar, I dumped the whole Action Pack into my mental garbage bin.

A couple of years later, when the second season of Xena was drawing all sorts of media attention, the shows came back into my sights. I didn't make the connection between the old Action Pack films and the new show. I also didn't go out of my way to track the series down, because I'm typically not that much of a TV viewer. I personally prefer film.

Anyhow, I was up late one night watching Saturday Night Live, and the last half hour (as usual) wasn't very good. I started channel surfing, since I wasn't in the mood for bed just yet.

One notch up the dial, I came across a show with some good-looking women in revealing leather outfits wielding swords. Intrigued, I watched the show, finding it to be an enjoyable (if campy) fantasy action-adventure series. I learned that it was Xena, and I put it on the mental list of shows to watch if I was up late on Saturday night (which I usually was). That episode (I later learned) was A Necessary Evil.

I watched the show every once in a while. I didn't really go out of my way to watch it. The local affiliate that carried the show moved it to another night (from late Saturday to late Sunday), and once again the series dropped off of my radar.

A few months later, I was up late on Sunday. While flipping through the channels, I came across the series once again. It was the third season now, and I'm pretty sure the first episode I saw this time around was The Deliverer. I watched Gabrielle's Hope the week after that.

I still wasn't hooked, though. It wasn't until a few weeks later, when Maternal Instincts aired that I became hooked. Up until that episode, the show struck me as high-quality camp, but camp nevertheless. It was better than shows like Robin Hood that were around the same time, but still not the best television had to offer.

That all changed with Maternal Instincts. The final scene, where Xena and Gabrielle head off in opposite directions, twisted my gut. But, it wasn't just that scene because there were many great moments in the episode: Hope's death at Gabrielle's hands, Gabrielle's near suicide, Xena's heart-wrenching wails over her son's body, the moment when Xena learns that Hope was responsible for Solan's death -- all of these moments shattered the box I had placed around the show.

All of a sudden, I had to know what happened next. The writers and producers had taken a tremendous chance with their characters and their series -- something I had never really seen in a syndicated series like this. I was suddenly and irrevocably hooked.

The rest, as they say, is history. I started digging on the internet, learning as much as I could about the series and the story. I began reading Whoosh! avidly, getting into the scholarship of the series. By the time the fourth season started, I was a member of the Chakram mailing list, and it wasn't long before my reviews of the new episodes became a regular feature of the list.

When the original editor of the Hercules and Xena topic at Suite101 moved on to other things, he mentioned that he was looking for a replacement. I was urged to go for it by one of my on-line Xena friends, and submitted my application. It was accepted, and I spent the next couple of years writing commentary and reviews (and getting paid for it).

It was a great ride, and I was happy to be a part of it. The shows revolutionized syndicated action-adventure, and there are many shows that probably wouldn't be on the air if Hercules and Xena paving the way (though that may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view). Still, I think Hercules and Xena deserve a place in television history.