From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #280 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 Thursday, October 10 2002 Volume 02 : Number 280 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] <> [] [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #279 [> ["Cheryl Ande" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 11:55:18 -0400 From: Subject: [chakram-refugees] <> # # # # # # This is unfortunately a vaguely disappointing episode. It is, I suppose, a sequel to The debt and perhaps therein lies the problem. When you have an episode as great as The Debt you have to make sure your follow up is equally impressive and this just doesn't measure up. Lets start with the writing. I usually am pretty YAXI proof - I don't care that last week Xena said she would never eat blueberry pie and then the next week she wants blueberry pie - but here the YAXI are so blatant that they can't be ignored. It would have been nice the writer of this episode had at least paid attention when he'd watched The Debt (if he did watch it). There's a point when Xena is the woods with Lao Mao's good daughter and we see a flashback of Xena running through the woods being chased by dogs. She turns to the daughter and says "This is where I first I met your mother" and then there's a flash of Lao Ma meeting Tien's train with the captive Xena. Everyone knows that's not when Xena met Lao Ma and if Xena had said "this is where your mother saved my life" the scene would have made more sense - its just plain annoying when an error like that is made. Then we have the issue of why Lao Mao hid her daughters. If she had hidden them from their father so they wouldn't have been used a pawn by him to further his goals it would have made sense. But to hid them from Ming Tien doesn't make sense - Ming Tien must have been a mere toddler when the twins were born - was Lao Ma clairvoyant to know he would hate them and why should he - it was made clear in The Debt that women had no political power (Lao Mao basically used her husband as a front for her power) so why would Ming Tien fear his sisters. Finally we have Lao Ma's book of wisdom being reduced to some kind of book of shadows (I've been watching Charmed). The book now can be used by anyone to get magical powers whether they are good or evil. I thought it was pretty much implied in The Debt that the powers that Lao Mao had were benevolent in nature. That if you followed her wisdom, ambition, greed and power as an end in itself would no longer be relevant to you. These vices had to be abandoned to be able to harness those powers. Now we learn that you can use those powers to fulfill those yearnings. How odd! Speaking of odd there are a number of huh moments here. I don't quit exactly know the nature of Xena relationship with Lao Mao but when evil daughter said Xena was Lao Mao surrogate daughter I went huh. Whatever there relationship was mother and daughter doesn't spring to mind. Then we have Gabrielle go off with Joxer to find the missing ingredient for the black powder because Joxer knows all about spices and is by implication a good cook. Since when - last time he cooked (ISAIH) he gave a whole army the trots. We also have one of dumbest villains in history. Then we have Pao Ssu's partner in crime, Go Kun, who is dumber than dirt. When Xena and Kao Hsin confront Pao Ssu at her camp, Gabrielle is on the hill getting ready to shoot rockets into a stock pile of black powder at the camp. Go Kun stops her but then proceeds to fire his own rockets into the camp - it never dawns on him that a stray rocket would hit his own stock pile of black powder - which it promptly did putting an end to Pao Ssu's mortal existence, The acting itself can't be faulted. Marie Matiko was so good playing the sisters Pao Ssu (evil) and K'ao Hsin (good) that originally I thought they were being played by two separate actresses. Lucy Lawless must have been preoccupied by baby names because he performance is puzzling. She starts out well but by episode's end she has become more and more inscrutable and began to talk like a fortune cookie. The two high points of the episode were Gabrielle and Joxer. They seem to be having a great time. I love Gabby's line in the Chinese market place that the natives will feel more comfortable if she and Joxer dress like natives - yep I see her point the short green-eyed blond and the tall geek now blend right in. Also when she and Joxer get captured and lock in stocks I liked Gabby using her contortionist skills to pick Joxer's pant leg to with her foot to retrieve a bag of black powder - Gabby was wonderfully disgusted and Joxer happily thrilled when she bumped into a certain part of his anatomy. We will still be in China next week too. 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: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 16:31:02 -0400 From: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: chakram-refugees-digest V2 #279 > ------------------------------ > > Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 01:16:11 +1300 > From: cr "Hell, if Bellerophon was going to attack the Amazon camp again, that gave them the perfect chance for an ambush." That's a big if. There would be no reason to attack the Amazon camp again. He got what he wanted the first time around - Varia as hostage. The only way to entice him into attacking again was to do nothing about Varia. If he couldn't get the Amazons to come to him he would have to come to him. If this happened he would be prepared for an ambush. "He was only impregnable while he stayed in his castle. Siege tactics would work. Amazons surround the castle in the forest and pick off anyone who pokes their nose far outside the walls. That's what Amazons were supposed to be *good* at. That's what bows and arrows are good at." True a sige would work if you had the time and manpower to maintain the seige. For a successful seige you have to be prepared to stay there for a really long time remember the sege of Troy took ten years. Did the Amzons have the resourches to keep their troops in the field for that long and would the Amazons have the patience for this. If Bellephone had prepared for the seige he could just out waited the Amazons added to that he also had a hostage. So what stops him from dangling Varia from a parapet to just to get the Amazons riled up. So they would be forced to try to storm the castle and that takes seige machines which the Amzons would have build. "Fighting in forests with lots of cover. Armed men on horseback lose most of their advantage in a forest. Head-on attacks against a fortified castle was *not* what Amazons were good at." The problem with Halicon was not that the Amazon's attacked head on. They were actually trying to attack from the rear. Sneak up on the castle from the sea. The trouble was that they lacked information on Bellephone motives for his orginal attack. They didn't know until Xena sneaked into the castle that he was luring them into a trap and by then it was too late. > "Just to elaborate on that.... consider a pine forest (which is what Bellerophon's castle was in). A few narrow tracks through it, which horses could use, but above all lots of trees close together and plenty of cover. The whole place is built for ambushes." Isn't that what happened. Xena lured him into the forest and the Amazon's ambushed him. The error Bellephone made was letting Varia go. As long he had her, he forced the Amazons to attack the castle. Once he let her go the Amazons could have left and he would have had to leave the castle to get at them. Bellephone's plan to use Varia to kill Gabrielle was very iffy at best with Xena watching Gabrielle's back - Varia had very little hope of succeeding. The criticism about this episode centers a lot around the battle tactics used here. And they are all valid - Xena, a very good general, would never have allowed troops to attack withoutproper intelligence about her enemy. The point of the episode was however a character study of Gabrielle under stress and to emphasis her growing independence from Xena. It was also calculated to show a change in Xena's character. To be frank (I'm about stick my head out to be shot by numerous Amazon arrows) is that I have found in fan fiction at least that women don't write battles very well. Men do a much better job (Jim Kuntz and Leonard Fox come to mind). Women are interested in developing the characters and spend a lot of time preparing for battle but the battles themselves are never very realistic. The men write the battles better and use them in a better way to demonstrated character than women writers. 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: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 22:43:15 -0400 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] <> From: Daylight Time, > cande@sunlink.net writes: > > > " Bwahahahaha! As much as I love Lucy, the "fortune cookie" description is so apt. I've read her comments where she said she didn't know where her long ago "girlfriend" in AFIN came from. She must've felt the same about her foster sisters." I think she was just stunned that the sisters thought Lao Ma was a mother to her. I have a more subtexty interpretation of that relationship - I just think Xena just didn't know how to break the news to the girl that she and Lao Ma had a very different kind of relationship. Perhaps that why Xena was acting so strangely - she was just in shock at the girl's naivety. CherylA > > -- Ife ========================================================= 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 #280 **************************************