Daughter of Pomira

The horde returns in one of the weaker episodes of Season 4. I still can't put my finger on just what bothered me about this episode -- perhaps it was the moral dilemma that wasn't. Perhaps it was the lack of any real villain (even one as mediocre as Satrina from Past Imperfect). Perhaps it was the forced feeling the whole thing had. I don't know what it was, but it bothered me.

About the villain (or lack thereof) I didn't see Milo as a real villain -- just an annoying obstacle. Why he was able to get a few good licks in on Xena is beyond me.

There were a few good lines here and there, but all in all it was a slow moving tale with a foregone conclusion. From the moment Xena saw Vanessa/P'li in the Horde... excuse me, Pomira caves, I knew how the episode was going to end, and the story wasn't engaging enough to make me wonder how they would reach that destination.

Perhaps it was that the Horde, which had seemed so fantastic in The Price was reduced to little more than an analogue for any number of "native" cultures misunderstood by "civilized" society. But the Pomira lacked any defining characteristics of their own, a feeling I didn't get from the Horde of The Price. The message (and the presentation of that message) felt like a mediocre episode of Star Trek rather than Xena: Warrior Princess.

That's not to say that Star Trek was bad -- far from it. However, Star Trek has a tendency to do just what was done here -- use an "alien" as a parallel to a specific present day situation. In general, this is something that Xena shied away from. While there are lessons along the lines of what Star Trek did, Xena has focused more on the universality of the lessons, rather than specific cases.

In final analysis, this certainly isn't the worst story ever done in the run of the show. It is not, however, one that people watch again and again. I think it was intended to be gripping, but I found that I didn't have any real stake in the outcome -- nor did Xena and Gabrielle.

There were hints of Xena and Gab's involvement coming about through their guilt over their own family situations, and that would have made a much more engaging story. But another anonymous former soldier of Xena's who has put away his sword (and is never seen again in the series) didn't have any interest for me in this tale.

So that's my take. Lucy and Renee (and the other members of the cast) did the best they could with what they had, but there really wasn't a whole lot to work with.

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