From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #381 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, December 21 2003 Volume 03 : Number 381 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again [Liz <] Re: [chakram-refugees] Re: Peekabo - red [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] Peekabo [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again [KTL] Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again [KTL ] Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again ["H.J.] [chakram-refugees] Season 5 ["Cheryl Ande" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 21:23:43 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 08:43, Liz wrote: > Here in the UK, XWP is playing on the Bravo cable channel - best of all it > plays 3 times a day, 4 days a week. Heavan you might think? Alas we have > just dived into the trash that is seasaon 5, post Them Bones. > > What pearls, if any, should I endeavour to catch? Or should I just hunker > down and wait for season 6? > > I may actually try to watch Married with Fishsticks.... perhaps with > chemically altered neural patterns? > > Perhaps Antony and Cleopatra? Amphipolis Under Seige? > > That's not much worth salvaging from a whole season...... > aaarrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! > > Liz Hey, XT, will you set her right or shall I? ;) Liz, with respect, I hope your question was just a rhetorical one. If ya didn't like Season 5, you didn't like it, and no amount of argument from us is likely to change your opinion. I'm quite prepared to say which S5 episodes *I* liked - which is most of them, actually - but from the title and tone of your post I wouldn't necessarily expect you to like them. Best I can suggest is you try to watch 'em all with an open mind - you might find some are better than you expect. (And by all means post what you didn't like about specific eps if you want, we'll be happy to debate them with ya). Or else don't. Regards cr ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 21:32:41 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Peekabo On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:08, KTL wrote: > > On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:56, KTL wrote: > > I'm trying to figure out which attribute occasioned your regret. The > > 'naked' or the 'half' ? > > Hardy har har. I just for some reason imagined a woman being half naked > by having only say the right side of her body clothed and the left side > unclothed. Wouldn't THAT look strange? It would also pose certain problems in keeping the clothes attached. Umm, superglue and velcro? ;) Actually, considering some of PacRen's cossies, maybe they did use that. :) > > > I have to say that I NEVER heard any discussion on that point. The > > > tavern was just a tavern to me. > > > > It was a fairly substantial building, from what we saw in Haunting of > > Amphipolis. > > Check out the size of Gabrielle and Lilla's room in Sins of the Past. It's > HUGE! Had quite a few rooms, too, going by the number of guests it accommodated (all in their own rooms) in Takes One to Know One. > > I think we could conclude that Cyrene probably wasn't rich, but > > reasonably affluent by local village standards. (Assuming the place > > wasn't owned by the bank, which would have been much less likely in those > > days). > > Yes but Cyrene works in her tavern. So even the merchant class in Xena is > still "hands on". They aren't sitting on their butts watching other people > work. Except for maybe Lord Seltzer. Oh yes, agreed. It would be most unusual to find a tavern owner who didn't run the place personally. Actually, we never see any staff in Cyrene's tavern, but I assume she must have had some staff to help out. > > > I really didn't see any difference in any of the > > > taverns-they pretty much all looked alike as I remember. They all had > > > the same wooden mugs, the same wooden bar in the same place, the same > > > table and chairs-and I mean the SAME. Grin. > > > > Came out of the same prop store, after all ;) > > I think they were literally the same. (As Gabrielle notes in A Day In The > Life--"This is like every other village we've ever been in. You think > someone would try something new for a change.") LOL! > > > > I always wonder if anyone noticed the propane tank under the table in > > > Girls Just Wanna Have Fun on their first viewing. > > > > I've never managed to spot it yet! > > Well Thel, I know it'll be hard for you, but you're going to have to TEAR > your eyes off Gabrielle. It's in the scene where she runs down to the > courtyard because she hears a girl screaming and sees her being abducted. > > There's a long shot of Gabrielle crossing the courtyard. Look in the > background and watch for a table with a torch above it. The propane tank > is under the table. It's hilarious. Ah. If Gabs was in shot, I expect my concentration was wandering from the TV.... ;) (Sorry Gabfans, blame KT... she set me up for it :) > Ife wrote: > > > > Yes, with XWP I had confidence that every critical aspect about Xena > > > > -- from her armor to what she traveled with -- had been given careful > > > > consideration. > > KT: > > > I think Tarzan did too. The mere fact that something is on the set > > > means that a choice was made to put it there. > > > > By somebody. But the decision to put it there may have been very > > carefully taken to convey the exact impression the director wanted; or it > > may just have been that the director said 'we need a couple of tables' > > and someone grabbed the nearest ones out of the prop store, with no more > > significance than that. > > Yes, BUT they had to be sure to grab the poor people's chairs, not the > king's palace chairs. There IS a difference. Tear your eyes off Gab and > look around. (Heh heh heh) I'll ignore that one. ;) Yes, but... on occasion, someone obviously grabbed the wrong prop - the wrong chacky in Soul Possession, and the wrong dagger ('of Helios') in Seeds of Faith come to mind.... > > Just like the propane tank under the table. That sure wasn't intended > > to convey something to us. :) > > It's a visual metaphor for Xena's bottled rage. Strong enough to blow up > the whole damn tavern if she loses her tight grip on her on/off coupling! > (Do you know that at 40 below propane liquifies and no longer makes fire?) Umm, no, that isn't usually a problem we have in Auckland. We're too far from the Arctic Circle.... > > Hmmm. I've noticed that in the comedies they tend to use brighter > > colours than in the dramas. (OK, this *could* just be a subjective > > impression!! I certainly wouldn't want to push it too far and there are > > exceptions.) > > Bitter Suite was saturated with colors. I don't remember OH YES! Xena's > skeleton dress is red! And her breast plate courtesy of Ares is red too. > Is Ares in red also? Yes, dark red. (About the same colour as Daredevil in the recent film of the same name, IIRC) > > But certainly, some episodes seem to have a distinctive 'look' or even > > colour to them - maybe the influence of the director's choices. Sin > > Trade for example, has (at least in my memory) a predominant colour of > > browns. Many Happy Returns is full of bright colours, though it could > > just have been that the weather smiled on them while they were making it. > > And so on. > > > > cr > > Lot's of blue. They ALWAYS used blue. > > KT Hmm, I don't recall that. Blue - I associate with Xena's 'maternity cloak' in the S5 Chin eps. And Dreamworker, I think. Doesn't really come to mind in other eps (though I'm probably missing something....) cr ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 10:12:20 +0000 From: Liz Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again At 21:23 20/12/2003 +1300, cr wrote: >On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 08:43, Liz wrote: > > Here in the UK, XWP is playing on the Bravo cable channel - best of all it > > plays 3 times a day, 4 days a week. Heavan you might think? Alas we have > > just dived into the trash that is seasaon 5, post Them Bones. > > > > What pearls, if any, should I endeavour to catch? Or should I just hunker > > down and wait for season 6? > > > > I may actually try to watch Married with Fishsticks.... perhaps with > > chemically altered neural patterns? > > > > Perhaps Antony and Cleopatra? Amphipolis Under Seige? > > > > That's not much worth salvaging from a whole season...... > > aaarrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! > > > > Liz > >Hey, XT, will you set her right or shall I? ;) Who the H-E-doublehockeysticks is XT? >Liz, with respect, I hope your question was just a rhetorical one. If ya >didn't like Season 5, you didn't like it, and no amount of argument from us >is likely to change your opinion. I'm quite prepared to say which S5 >episodes *I* liked - which is most of them, actually - but from the title and >tone of your post I wouldn't necessarily expect you to like them. > >Best I can suggest is you try to watch 'em all with an open mind - you might >find some are better than you expect. (And by all means post what you didn't >like about specific eps if you want, we'll be happy to debate them with ya). >Or else don't. OK. Anything to break up the H-E-etc that has been the Fates "debate". I just watched Little Problems and the dialogue was just dire. Rose, I think, has been acknowledged by all to have done a very good job. But the Xena character seemed to lapse extremely close the "message of the day" which nearly happened in Chariots of War and a few other eps. Usually an ep which ends with the phrases ".... and the lessoned I learned was....". Oh yeah, Daughter of Pomira was a good ep nearly ruined by that. And cr, it was not rhetorical. I have been looking through Whoosh! and noticed that Lyre Lyre is a season 5 ep. Yay! Always a good sing-along. I counted up 6 eps that I liked in S5. Compared to 15 I liked in S4. And 14 in S6. But you can respond. Or else don't. Maybe others would like to play? Liz ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 14:18:35 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Re: Peekabo - red > Some notes in re KT's ruddy comments-- Don't worry about it, it's just a *little* chafing.... > > > How about > >temperamental redhead? > > In an unfinished analysis of female protagonists in science fiction books > from 1950-1980, I found that a quite disproportionate number had red > hair... My hypothesis: in those days the degree of independence displayed > by a woman as protagonist had to be 'explained'... so the common belief in > the non-submissiveness of redheads was used to make it more understandable > (acceptable?). > Oh that's fascinating. Hmmm. And now of course, we've switched to saying they must be lesbians. (Unless I missed the memo that came out explaining that "redhead" was actually a commonly understood innuendo for "lesbian" then?) > >(And why did the phrase, "redhead" come into use > >instead of just red like blond or brunette?) > > Well, blond and brunette primarily refer to hair, while red definitely does > not. YES! That's exactly the conclusion I came to also. That blond and brunette are used almost exclusively to refer to hair color (with the understanding of a pale skin color for real blonds and most often dark or olive skin going along with brunette hair.) BUT some of the celts managed to pull off brunette hair with pale skin and ice blue eyes. This is the combination my mother's family (of Irish descent) have. And of course, this is what Lucy with hair dyed black looks like too. It's like the way we use certain words to refer to the meat we eat from animals. We don't eat cow, we eat beef or veal, we don't eat sheep, we eat lamb or mutton, we don't eat pig, we eat pork. Though we do talk of a roast beef or more rarely, a roast pig. And we do use the phrase, as for example, "Gabrielle was almost spitted like a roast pig in 'Abyss'". We do eat chickens though. And fish. > > >And I'm thinking, Xena wore red to seduce Caesar in Destiny. Then she wore > >red at his party in When In Rome. And of course she is dressed in a red > >robe by the ghosts in FIN. > > Don't forget the ribbons Xena removed from Diana's disguise. > > > TEXena Oh yes! Another one. And didn't they look sweet? 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, 20 Dec 2003 15:30:14 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] Peekabo > > Check out the size of Gabrielle and Lilla's room in Sins of the Past. It's > > HUGE! > > Had quite a few rooms, too, going by the number of guests it accommodated > (all in their own rooms) in Takes One to Know One. No, I'm talking about Gabrielle and Lila's room in their house. I would have expected a tiny cramped room. But they've got a BIG space. > > There's a long shot of Gabrielle crossing the courtyard. Look in the > > background and watch for a table with a torch above it. The propane tank > > is under the table. It's hilarious. > > Ah. If Gabs was in shot, I expect my concentration was wandering from the > TV.... ;) > > (Sorry Gabfans, blame KT... she set me up for it :) No, your eyes wouldn't have been wandering from the TV--they were probably wandering to the dancing well-boobed vampires. > > It's a visual metaphor for Xena's bottled rage. Strong enough to blow up > > the whole damn tavern if she loses her tight grip on her on/off coupling! > > (Do you know that at 40 below propane liquifies and no longer makes fire?) > > Umm, no, that isn't usually a problem we have in Auckland. We're too far > from the Arctic Circle.... Antarctic then! THAT was the one thing that totally bemused me when I was in New Zealand. How people kept talking about the "tropical North". Mind-blowing for us provincial North Hemisphere types. > > > > Lot's of blue. They ALWAYS used blue. > > > > KT > > Hmm, I don't recall that. Blue - I associate with Xena's 'maternity cloak' > in the S5 Chin eps. And Dreamworker, I think. Doesn't really come to mind > in other eps (though I'm probably missing something....) Xena's dress in Chariots of war. Xena's cloak in Bitter Suite. Xena's skirt under her red armor in BS. Ares also wears a bight blue, yes? Gabrielle had the little blue jacket. Cyrene wears blue. There's actually early Xena leather corsets in blue. A number of the kings had blue cloaks though the Romans of course had red. Autolycus wore green (though he had the same outfit in red once, didn't he?) Eli wore green. The most colorful costumes were in the eastern ones--India, Gurkhan, Japan, etc. But yeah, actually brown is predominant. Because that's the color of both undyed leather and homespun wool. Perhaps that's why I noticed when bright colors were present--because so often most costumes were brown or very muted tones of other colors, like Gabrielle's blue jacket and her ugly dull green BGSB. 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, 20 Dec 2003 15:50:16 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again > Full horror, indeed. :> LOL! Didn't Tapert himself say something about wishing Purity or something was > never done? He said in interviews that the two Chin ones in season five, Purity and Bottle, were among the most disappointing of the whole series to him. There are of course many well known reasons why season five was so poor in so many ways. Quick recap, Lucy was off pregnant, RJ was sent off to write for Cleopatra 2000 (Whatever--I can't remember--was it just 2000 or 2001? 2025?) and Tapert was involved with getting two new shows off the ground and producing four shows weekly from a very small studio. I always figure season five is what XWP would have been like without Lucy acting out stories thought up by Rob and written (or at least edited) by RJ. Pretty grim. Without that combination of those three working together, I think XWP would have been just another Queen of Hearts, Bird of Prey, or Sheena. Or even like those fairly good shows, Dark Angel and Witchblade, it wouldn't have lasted very long and certainly never would have become the iconic, world famous and still treasured cult hit it is. > Or was I smoking crack that day? Perhaps you were anyway? Whatever gets you through the night of the bad parts of season five... KT > > S. ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 16:42:02 -0900 (AKST) From: KTL Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again CR > >Best I can suggest is you try to watch 'em all with an open mind - you might > >find some are better than you expect. (And by all means post what you didn't > >like about specific eps if you want, we'll be happy to debate them with ya). > >Or else don't. >Liz: > OK. Anything to break up the H-E-etc that has been the Fates "debate". > LOL! Oh that reminds me....grin...(Uh..next post) > I just watched Little Problems and the dialogue was just dire. Rose, I > think, has been acknowledged by all to have done a very good job. I think she won an acting award in New Zealand for that role, yes? And yeah, she's GOOD! But the > Xena character seemed to lapse extremely close the "message of the day" > which nearly happened in Chariots of War and a few other eps. Usually an ep > which ends with the phrases ".... and the lessoned I learned was....". Oh > yeah, Daughter of Pomira was a good ep nearly ruined by that. > Yeah--there were some feeble efforts along those lines. There's some eps where it's pretty obvious that they were just filling the hole of an open TV slot. It's like, gods, EVERYODY'S out of ideas this week! That's certainly a daunting task and one without any extensions for deadline. The amazing thing is how so many of the eps were mostly good, not bad. And of course, how so many of them were excellent. > And cr, it was not rhetorical. I have been looking through Whoosh! and > noticed that Lyre Lyre is a season 5 ep. Yay! Always a good sing-along. > I was going to point that out to you. As one who has observed you watching that ep and laughing like a hyena while huddled on my couch with your girlfriend and my best (gay) boyfriend, I KNOW that's one of your favorite comedies. > I counted up 6 eps that I liked in S5. Compared to 15 I liked in S4. And 14 > in S6. 6 eps--hmmm. Let's see--I thing the best of the season were Chakram, Lyre Lyre, Amphipolis, Antony & Cleopatra, Looking Death and Motherhood. HEY--that's six! BUT I also think that Fallen Angel (especially Hudson and the scene of Xena giving her goodness to Callisto) and God Fearing Child were very good. Seeds of Faith, Livia, Eve, (though I find the Christian bit a bit much also), Them Bones, Eternal Bonds and Little problems, (just to watch Rose portray a little grrl as a tough warrior) were good and worth a rewatch at times. So that's another 8 that I would rewatch and enjoy. Oddly enough, I just rewatched Punch Lines, because I was watching God Fearing Child and it's on the same tape. I thought that was one I wouldn't care to watch again. But I enjoyed it quite a bit, to my great surprise. I think because when these eps were first run, I was always so disappointed with the lack of Lucy in them. Now that they "exist" and I've seen them, I KNOW that Xena's scenes are gonna be sparse. So now I can look at them and enjoy what's there instead of being pissy over what's not. One of the best scenes to me from Punch Lines was them in the supermarket. Xena is eating a raw turnip as she waits on line and the guy behind the counter yells at her for eating it without paying for it. Xena makes this hilariously adorable "Uh-oh, I'm busted" face and then tries a charming smile which doesn't work, and THEN takes a piece of food out of her mouth and places it placatingly on the counter as the guy says, "Oh, THAT'S pretty." I laughed out loud at that scene and I didn't even remember it before. Xena cowed by a supermarket checker! LOL! One of my buds always claimed that Xena looks "just adorable" holding the sword up by her face at the end of the credits. And I always thought to myself, "Humph--ADORABLE!? Xena's never adorable. Gorgeous, splendid, magnificent, yes, but adorable? No." However, in Punchlines in this scene she IS adorable! As I fast-forwarded through the ep to watch this scene, I noticed that Renee is dressed in pink jammies in this one and Alex is dressed in mostly her pink skin and playing in a bath tub. I also realized as I fast forwarded it that Joxer is in LOTS of it, which is an automatic turn-off for me. That's probably why I hadn't bothered to rewatch it before, that sour too-much-Joxer aftertaste. Sadly, as I rewound it, my honey claimed that he hadn't seen it before. Now we have to rewatch it again tonight--he's a Joxer fan. *sigh*. > > But you can respond. Or else don't. Maybe others would like to play? I'm ALWAYS up for an XWP romp! KT > > Liz ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 20:20:15 -0600 From: "H.J.J. Hewitt" Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] The full horror of season five starts again >RJ was sent off to write >for Cleopatra 2000 (Whatever--I can't remember--was it just 2000 or 2001? >2025?) Cheesh! \2525/! TEXena, who found it a hoot! ========================================================= 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, 20 Dec 2003 22:34:19 -0500 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Season 5 Fallen Angel is spectacular especially demon Gabby Chakram is very good I liked Animal Attraction especially Xena going all mushy over a teddy bear and Gabrielle's reaction to Xena's pregnancy. Dem Bones grew on me although I disliked it at first. Little Problems just to watch ROC and Alex play Brun and Hilda (also Rose McIver won an award for this episode in NZ). Antony and Cleopatra I think was incredible. I know many people didn't care for it but I loved it. Looking Death In The Eye Kindred Spirits is fun watch for Joxer ducking Gabby's antlers. Mother is wonderful. Fishsticks - I liked it what can I say - the baby squid is cute and ROC as Lollita is priceless. Amphipolis Under Seige is amust simply to watch Paris Jefferson as Athena. Anyway I think season 5 got a bad rap. Kevin Smith is wonderful and Paris Jefferson is simply great as Athena. Not everything worked but it isn't horrible at all. 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. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #381 **************************************