From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #254 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Sunday, September 15 2002 Volume 02 : Number 254 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] OT: Save Farscape [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena Fan Club Kit #6 SURVEY [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena Fan Club Kit #6 SURVEY ["Creation (Sharon Del] [chakram-refugees] Season Four [KTL ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 20:34:32 +1200 From: cr Subject: [chakram-refugees] OT: Save Farscape Just a note for any Farscape viewers on this list who missed my first message. Those who aren't, I apologise for the OT and please ignore this message. SciFi Network have abruptly cancelled the show and there's a biiig campaign to persuade them to reverse their decision. For information see http://farscape.wdsection.com/ At least, if you're a viewer, spare a moment to sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/SAVE_FARSCAPE/ Or send a letter, fax or email (polite, but telling them how good Farscape is) to one of the following: (Copied from farscape.wdsection.com) The Sci-Fi Channel USA Networks 1230 Avenue of the Americas, F115 New York, NY 10020-1513 Phone # 212-413-5000 extensions = the first letters/numbers of the last name. Fax # 212-413-6531 Fax # 212-413-6522 **"I am getting my faxes through to the execs at SCIFI @ 1-212-413-6503 on a pretty consistent basis." Programming Phone # (212) 413-5821 Comment Line # (212) 413-5577 New comment line # 212-413-5679 *Michael Jackson The SciFi Channel 1230 Avenue of the Americas, F115 New York, NY 10020-1513 Mr. Jackson's extension 1. Dial 212-413-5000 2. It should give you the option to spell his name. 3. Just keep entering letters until you finish his last name. 5225766 - Jackson. End with a #, then enter his first name. 6424235 - Michael. 4. If you hit # after your message, you can choose to place the call priority. Ms. Bonnie Hammer, Senior Vice President of Programming c/o Sci-Fi Channel 1230 Avenue of the Americas, F115 New York, NY 10020-1513 Phone:212-413-5000 bhammer@usanetworks.com Robert Halmi, Jr. President & CEO Hallmark Entertainment P.O. Box 2116 Radio City Station New York, NY 10101-2116 ADDITIONAL NET EMAILS scifiweekly@scifi.com program@www.scifi.com feedback@www.scifi.com series@usanetwork.com There's a chance other networks may be interested in picking the show up - UPN and Showtime among them. Addresses and contacts are: UPN Todd Lituchy Sr VP Scheduling and Acquisitions United Paramount Network 11800 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90025 Phone: 1-310-575-7000 Fax: 1-310 575 7210 E-mail: feedback@upn.com SHOWTIME In addition to letters, you should also go to http://sho.com/util/custhelp.cfm. This also works for those outside the US, who cannot get in through the front door. To leave a message: select Technical and use Farscape as the header. Sources at Showtime state they *are* looking at these and are noting the interest. Mathew Duda VP Acquisitions and Planning Showtime Networks 10880 Wilshire Blvd. Stes. 1500 & 1600 Los Angeles, CA 90024 Phone: 1-310-234-5200 Fax: 1-310-234-5393 ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 00:55:39 -0800 (AKDT) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena Fan Club Kit #6 SURVEY > we're wondering if we should make only a DVD version of kit 6. Or should > we release kits with an option for VHS or DVD. Input would be appreciated > :) > > Sharon The kits should have both options. I suspect almost everyone on these lists has a VCR, but not everybody has or wants to get a DVD player. I'm stilling watching FIN on my computer when I watch it, since I still haven't been moved to buy a DVD player. Of course now that XWP is available on DVD, I just may change my mind on the need to own a DVD player. The things I do for XWP... You know though, I watched the FIN DVD on a TV just recently while traveling and was very surprised to find that the quality of the image on the computer is definitely superior to the one on the television. Next thing, we'll have to buy a HDTV. It just never ends! You currently offer two options in tapes, PAL and NA..er..TC?--the European-and-those-still-hanging-on-English-Colonies one and the non-European and etc., so offering and making up different kits is something you already have in place. BUT I would strongly suggest that both tape and DVD have the same content. Otherwise many of us will just get cranky. (Or crankier.) I guess that the commentary thing being heard over the ep as an optional sound track isn't something you can do on tape though, eh? (Like YOU would know...grin) KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 11:12:25 EDT From: KLOSSNER9@aol.com Subject: [chakram-refugees] Bruce Campbell in SF Channel film Bruce Campbell will star in the premiere of a TV film, Terminal Invasion, on the Sci Fi Channel tonight, at 8:00 (Central time). Boeotian ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 11:21:10 EDT From: KLOSSNER9@aol.com Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena Fan Club Kit #6 SURVEY /You currently offer two options in tapes, PAL and NA..er..TC?--the /European-and-those-still-hanging-on-English-Colonies one and the /non-European and etc. The U.S. system is NTSC. It stands for National Television Standards Committee, though the British like to say it stands for Never the Same Color. /BUT I would strongly suggest that both tape and DVD have the same content. /Otherwise many of us will just get cranky. (Or crankier.) I guess that the /commentary thing being heard over the ep as an optional sound track isn't /something you can do on tape though, eh? Having the same content on both VHS and DVD would be to throw away the advatanges of the new technology. Why do that when millions of people already own DVD machines and discs? Boeotian ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 14:39:03 -0400 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] RE: End Game CherylA wrote: " As Hanumen said it is very bad when some one is stuck between two paths and Gabrielle is at this point stuck between her abhorrence of violence and her attraction to it. " cr wrote: "Well, rather than 'attraction', I would have said 'obligation' as Amazon Queen. But yes, she's stuck." No when I wrote attraction to violence I meant attraction but in the broader picture than just End Game. I believe Gabrielle finds Xena's violent world very attractive and has never quite come to terms with its attraction. There is a part of her that is repulsed by the fighting and bloodshed but there is another which finds her life with Xena exciting and even fulfilling. I believe she felt guilt about this attraction and thus her attraction to Eli's way but her refusal to leave Xena. She tried to have it both ways - she could avoid violence herself but still be part of a world she finds attractive. I don't think she did this consciously but this was how she was trying to cope with her two sides. In End Game it is obvious that she starting to be unable to maintain this charade. In Ides the pressure erupts and she succumbs to her violent side. After Ides we spend two season watching Gabrielle coming to terms with this side of her personality and how she can integrate into her persona as a person who also beleives in peace. CherylA ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 14:35:18 -0700 From: "Creation (Sharon Delaney)" Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Xena Fan Club Kit #6 SURVEY >> we're wondering if we should make only a DVD version of kit 6. Or should >> we release kits with an option for VHS or DVD. Input would be appreciated >> :) >> >> Sharon > > >The kits should have both options. I suspect almost everyone on these >lists has a VCR, but not everybody has or wants to get a DVD player. >I'm stilling watching FIN on my computer when I watch it, since I still >haven't been moved to buy a DVD player. Of course now that XWP is >available on DVD, I just may change my mind on the need to own a DVD >player. The things I do for XWP... > >You know though, I watched the FIN DVD on a TV just recently while >traveling and was very surprised to find that the quality of the image on >the computer is definitely superior to the one on the television. Next >thing, we'll have to buy a HDTV. It just never ends! > >You currently offer two options in tapes, PAL and NA..er..TC?--the >European-and-those-still-hanging-on-English-Colonies one and the >non-European and etc., so offering and making up different kits is >something you already have in place. > >BUT I would strongly suggest that both tape and DVD have the same content. >Otherwise many of us will just get cranky. (Or crankier.) I guess that the >commentary thing being heard over the ep as an optional sound track isn't >something you can do on tape though, eh? > >(Like YOU would know...grin) > >KT God knows I don't want a cranky KT melting the icebergs in Alaska and sending them down to LA Hmm, sound over ep -- but there would be no on/off button. Couldn't get some people to be quiet while you listened to the tape Sharon ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 14:28:13 -0800 (AKDT) From: KTL Subject: [chakram-refugees] Season Four Well I've been reading the posts on season four. And got so intrigued with them that I actually sat down and watched a whole slew of season four eps over the last week. But not in order, which was an interesting way to do it. I started with the Way, and as things in that ep struck me, I picked an earlier one to see how it had related to Xena's whole-season-long-soul-searching arc that reached its climax in the Way. And of course, while watching the earlier one, I then saw things in it that had to be also checked out from an even earlier ep. I used to say that I didn't like season four. Certainly, while it was first spinning out, I didn't care very much for it at all. It was far too Gabrielle centered for me and I'm just not that interested in Gabrielle's story. It wasn't until the season had ended that I suddenly realized that what we actually had had was a parallel storyline. While Gabrielle was going through her "coming of age/resisting authority/who am I?" typical late teen/early 20-something journey, Xena was going through her own "mid-life what was my life worth?" crisis at the same time. Gabrielle's search was overt and spread all across the screen. Xena's search was primarily internal but even more wrenching, devastating and critical to her soul and well being than Gabrielle's was. And this was a direct result of the events of season three, especially (though not exclusively) the rift arc eps. Season three starts off with the Furies demanding that Xena take retribution on the murderer of her father. Even though the murderer happens to be her mother. This story line reflects the situation in Hooves and Harlots when Melosa demands her right of vengeance on the centaur who killed her sister, and it also sets up the rift arc and the horrific events that Dahok and his vicious spawn Hope wreak upon Xena and her family and her loved ones. The rift arc is a very well done excursion into Greek Tragedy. It was exactly like the first set in a long series of plays showing the results of the gods interfering in a human's life and the disasters they wreak upon her or him. In the Deliverer, we learn that the gods are fighting for power. Though in the Greek classics it's only the Greek gods who are struggling against each other, the XWP twist adds a struggle between pantheons into the mix also. But as is usual in the typical course of this kind of story, a human becomes a pawn in the battle of the gods. Though we never quite hear ALL of Dahok's plan, we do hear his daughter telling us that "As Xena goes, so goes the world." If this were a classical Greek Tragedy, Gabrielle being involved in the death of Xena's child would have sparked off a generations long tale of vengeance, murder, and retaliation between the two families, commonly culminating in total destruction of "both their houses". But instead of demanding vengeance, Solon forgives Gabrielle and creates Illusia to give Xena and Gabrielle time and space to talk to each other and remember that they love each other. Indeed, they can only get back to their own world by forgiving each other and once again working together as a team. I think Solon does this because he loves Xena too much to want to stand idly by as she loses herself in being evil again--not if he can prevent it at any rate. But forgiving Gabrielle is the total antithesis of what Xena's society demands of her. When she chooses forgiveness rather than vengeance, it is a triumph of free will over the will of the gods and the mores of her culture. But now that she's cut herself adrift from her culture and the religious system she grew up under, where does she go from there? What defines her now? What criterion justifies her actions as judge, jury and executioner over others? What gives her that right? Certainly Evil Xena never worried about the rules. Evil Xena took any right she wanted. Reforming Xena, having shattered her old world view, now has to figure out if the right she takes IS the right one. She now has to decide for herself now if what she is doing is moral or not. It's a HUGE responsibility. And one Xena is not sure she's capable of. Because she still considers herself an unworthy and vile person. This is the Xena who comes stumbling out of the end of Season three. And then she meets Alti. Season Four starts off showing us just how evil Evil Xena could be. It's an excellent set-up to the whole season. Alti showing Xena the vision of her death, but more importantly to Xena, showing Gabrielle dying in great pain by crucifixion also, gives Xena a very specific horror to spend the season trying to avert. And it also throws her into a huge brooding fest over her self, her past and most importantly, her future. Season four thus unfolds as the season in which Xena loses her faith in herself. There are scenes after scenes and dialog after dialogue showing her uncertainty. The set-up for Xena's more openly acknowledged foray into soul-searching starts early in the season. At the end of Family Affair we first hear her say to Gabrielle, "I'm searching for answers too". And this is something new. I don't think we've ever heard Xena say something like this before and mean it in this way. She's talked before about exterior ways she can act to do good. But to BE good-this is just not something she sees as part of herself. And she shows this new anguish that's eating her up over again and again during this season. She says about fighting and killing people in A Good Day, "You want to know that what you did was for all the right reasons, but with that pain in your gut and the weight on your shoulders, the best you can come up with is that it was a good day of fighting". And later in the same speech, "...you've got to know that it's for a reason. All this is for a reason. Otherwise...what's the point?" And Lucy makes her voice crack and her face twist in pain in an absolutely heartbreaking way as she says this. What Xena's essentially saying is "What's the point of my life?" In Locked Up and Tied Down she says, "Gabrielle, we're always talking about your spiritual quest. You say that you need something to make you feel complete. Well, so do I." That's an extraordinary thing for the stoic and generally dismissive of talking about her inner feelings woman to admit. It's a sea change in Xena and one that is pivotal to her whole story. Or perhaps it's more correct to say it's a hinge, along with the events of season three, both of these seasons giving us the Xena who ultimately does indeed redeem herself by the end of the series. Even some of the comedies of season four have this theme of "Who am I really? How do I see myself? What's my place in the scheme of things?", as Shoe so aptly shows us. And In Sickness we see that Xena' self image most certainly does NOT include her having lice. She's in total denial over it. She believes herself to be vicious and violent sure, but she's physically CLEAN, dammit!, no matter what those lice keep screaming about. And this self-doubt and insecurity is why Xena keeps getting beat up by folks she could easily have taken before. Like the guy in Daughter of Pomira. Like Najara. Like Indrajit. As Xena herself says to Gabrielle about her loss of fighting ability in the Way: X: "It's this wound. That demon should never have gotten a blade on me." G: "Xena, you're only human. Everybody loses focus sometimes." X: "It's not just that I lost focus. It's WHY. A few days ago, I saw my future life. You saw it, too. I'm destined to be reborn as some kind of a saint." G: "But that's wonderful, isn't it?" X: "Yes-- but if I already earned that karma-- can I still mess it up? Maybe I was shown my future life for a reason. Maybe I'm supposed to change the way that I'm living this life, here and now. But, either way, a warrior cannot ask these questions in the heat of battle. When the kill is there, you have to take it. If I can't do that...I can't be a warrior, anymore." I think this conclusion Xena has reached has been a long time coming. It hasn't just been stirred up by seeing herself as Armenestra. She's been thinking about her warrior actions and their impact on her life and destiny this whole season, I believe, as shown in the examples sited above. And then we have the lovely Blessing Of Xena's Way by Krishna, when he assures her she's exactly what she's supposed to be, this time around. And surely this is part of Xena's curse and a burden of her atonement-that she has to reform from being a bad person to being a good one while STILL being a warrior who sometimes kills. Season four is the second best season to me, right behind three. I believe it is the most complicated, the most subtle and shows the greatest change in Xena's self-image of herself of all the seasons in the whole series. But I still like Season Three better. Now if the Debt had been part of seasons four...hmmmmm. KT ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V2 #254 **************************************