Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 124

2011: Blog Highlights

My most popular blog posts of 2011:

Pratchett's Women: The Boobs, The Bad and the Broomsticks

Tender Morsels: Not Bitchy Enough

Lunatic with Lethal Combat Skills [Xena Rewatch 3.1-3.4]

Blog series kicked off in 2011:

Agathon

DC Reboot Reviews

Friday Links

Pratchett's Women

Rock the Romanpunk & Matrons of Awesome

Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom

Watching New Who

My personal favourites:

Science Fiction on the Radio

Strong Books Make Strong Girls

Ask Not What Your Library Can Do For You…

Remembering the Brigadier

Old Age and Treachery

"She Vanquished Me," – Doctor Who: Battlefield

On Awards, At Length

How My Six Year Old Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Doctor Who (thanks to the Ood Cast)

Time to Write

The Social Habits of Forsytes

My Daughter's Doctors

What Rowling Got Right: Worldbuilding as Plot

This is What Feminist SF Looks Like: Big Finish and Gallifrey

The Story of Cesc

Writing Fantasy: Finding the Words

Slash! Stab! A Lesson in Practical Queening

Wonder Woman's Daddy Issues

Pratchett's Women III: Werewolf Glamour & the Sexing of Dwarves

Australian Award-winning Women in SF and Fantasy

Lego For Girls

Christmas at our House… is basically all about Doctor Who

A home-made Adipose from Glammer to Raeli

And home-made cybermats!

I could say that we didn't give Jemima the pirate hat because of Amy Pond… but it would be a lie.

Shortbread daleks! All now eaten.

And… well, yes. A fraction of the Doctor Whoness that invaded our household this year, as every member of the family received something along those lines. Things. Somethings. Many things.

This is not all the things.

I regret nothing.

Friday Links Without A Princess Are No Friday Links at All

Funnily enough I have been drawn to links this week that tackle the 'girl lego' issue. The one closest to my own opinion & sensibilities is from Wandering Scientist, who points out how badly Lego has skewed "boy" for so long, and that while Lego is aware that boys consider "a castle without a dragon to be worse than no castle at all," they don't seem to have the same respect for girls who think a castle without a PRINCESS might be worse than no castle at all.

I also enjoyed reading her post, Princesses are not the Problem, about how she deals with her daughter's craving for Disney Princess Culture, by allowing it in and working to help her daughter understand there are more options out of there, rather than forbidding it.

Disney princesses are problematic, but I have a similar policy in my house, and I find it frustrating when people automatically criticise pink and girliness as if these are terrible things. My daughter had her pink phase. I didn't push it on her, but I didn't kick and scream, either, and now she's come out the other side and she likes purple and yellow and Batgirl and, yes, Lego. And if she was still super princess-feminine-sparkly-rainbows in her outlook, I'd still be rather fond of her. Kids need choices, and it irritates me beyond all measure when pink is the only choice for girls, but that doesn't mean it's okay to provide a castle without a princess in it.

(Megabloks, btw, provides a castle with a princess AND a dragon. How is this not the best of both worlds?)

Some other Lego for Girls links:

The Changing Face of the Lego Minifigure

Reel Girl: I know Lego didn't start all this gender stereotyping in kids' toys. I get that you're jumping on the bandwagon because you need to sell products. You're worried because sales are down. But you're making a mistake.

I'm Starting to Think that Lego is Evil

Some Links Not Involving Lego:

The Outer Alliance on Intersectionality and Lovecraft's racism

Ian Mond also has some thoughts on Lovecraft's racism & anti-semitism.

Ben Payne muses on his year of trying to consume equal amounts of culture created by men and women.

Sean the Blogonaut meanwhile, explains why attacking the Australian Women Writer's Challenge makes you Look Like a Dickhead. (he is far more diplomatic than that)

Can I say how much I love it when men take up the challenge of explaining Feminism 101 to the guys who don't get it? Much though it does niggle at me when men talking feminism are lauded and cheered and respected in a way that many women talking feminism often are NOT, I still think it's a job that men can and should be taking on their shoulders, and I very much appreciate those who do.

Paul Cornell's 12 Blogs of Christmas have been delighting me. I especially enjoyed his review of (and perspective on) the recent season of Merlin, because he manages to sum up everything I (STILL) like about the show. And the post which describes the lost Christmas episode of Blake's 7 is a thing of beauty.

Some cute art: i09 presents the cast of Community as Batman villains, and Kathleen Jennings introduces Daleks to the world of the greenwood with a Robin Hood/Dalek crossover. [I wish this one was in colour - lincoln green Daleks for the win!]

Oh and I spent far too much of yesterday (in between all that pre-Christmas shopping, cleaning and preparing) reading this post analysing why, exactly, the end of Battlestar Galactica sucked so much. I think what I find most fascinating is that this is a MAJOR essay about how awful the ending was, and I agree with most of it, and yet it doesn't even touch on the gender issues that screamed loudly at me, through the whole final season. Wow. Apparently I'm still not over the ending.

Pratchett's Women V: The Seamstress Redemption

Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett (audiobook read by Stephen Briggs)

Deriders of the Bechdel Test tend to gravitate immediately towards what I like to call The Shawshank Redemption Clause. They cite as many works as possible which are completely awesome, and have no ladies in them, as evidence that the test is stupid.

Me, I see that as evidence that their faces are stupid. And that they have entirely missed the point of the Bechdel Test.

No one would ever deny that it's possible to create a masterpiece that has no women in it. However… there are few true masterpieces in the world, and there are very few stories in the world that are so VERY good that having more than one interesting female character in them is something that wouldn't improve the narrative.

I had this in my head upon revisiting Night Watch, because I remembered very clearly that a) this is primarily a story about men and b) this is one of my favourite Discworld novels of all time. And I say this as someone who is meh about Small Gods and Reaper Man, two of the most celebrated of the Discworld novels, precisely because the overwhelming focus on male characters and point of view left those books, in my opinion, lacking something.

Mostly, I was scared that my focus on female characters would spoil this book. It's not like it would be the first thing that my developing feminist perspective has utterly ruined for me.

But it turned out okay. Because (spoilers, sweetie!) Night Watch is still awesome. It's mostly a male narrative, AND it's awesome.

(But, as it happens, it passes the Bechdel Test. Just.)

This was the book, way back when, that got me excited about the Discworld and Pratchett's writing all over again. It's not a book to give to beginners. It contains some of Pratchett's most understated and subtle prose, it is the quintessential Vimes book, it's a time travel narrative that makes actual sense, and it reveals a secret history that links a whole bunch of Ankh-Morpork personalities in all manner of revealing ways.

Mostly the male ones.

I think that by this stage in his career, even in a novel all about war and police and serial killers and fatherhood and mentorship and men men men, Pratchett had become incapable of reaching for the easy sexism that adorned his early books. Here, he gives a whole subplot around the Seamstresses (a socially accepted metaphor for prostitutes) who have basically been a background joke in every Ankh-Morpork book to date (and the City Watch books in particular), and humanises them.

We meet Rosie, the young woman who will eventually grow up to be Mrs Palm, Carrot's unseen landlady back in Guards, Guards, the most notorious madam in the city. Rosie is a fabulous character – confident, intelligent and cynical – and despite the book's nudge-nudge-wink-wink attitude to her profession, she is never portrayed in a degrading or sexualised way. This does admittedly have a lot to do with so many scenes being shown through the eyes of Vimes, who is so completely and utterly married that you (and she) can see it coming ten blocks away, but I respect the fact that there is no attempt to make their interactions flirty, or anything other than a wary alliance.

Then there are the Agony Aunts, a vicious pair of head cases who work as heavies and protectors for the seamstresses, under the employ of a mysterious lady known mostly as Madam. I loved these two, because they are a great example of the kind of freaky throw away background characters that Pratchett does so well, but also because they didn't have to be female. He could have done anything to illustrate 'infamous comedy enforcers' but he went with terrifying old ladies, like the Kray brothers but with scones and knitting.

Another strong if minor female character is Sandra, the payoff for a decade of cheap jokes about seamstresses. She's the real seamstress who actually does darning and mending, a rarity in the city because the others are all sick of being mistaken for "seamstresses" and have gone off to work in other cities. The scene in which she and Rosie discuss a sexual reference Sandra didn't understand (mirroring a similar scene between Vimes and his younger self) is the one that helps the book to technically pass the Bechdel Test. And of course there's more to Sandra than meets the eye – as Vimes discovers when he starts wondering why her laundry basket is so heavy.

Madam herself is a fascinating character and her relationship to the young assassin Vetinari (her nephew) tells us a lot about his past and the formation of his character. The overall subplot, about the conspiracy to put a new Patrician on the throne, is heavy with irony, and serves to demonstrate to Vimes as well as the reader why the present Vetinari's rule is so important. I liked also that the Seamstresses were motivated by wanting to set up their own Guild, and that the book shows us that we are only scratching the surface when it comes to their political deviousness.

Cheery, like Angua, doesn't have much of a role in this book, because they are both too new to the Watch to be a part of the colossal backstory on which the novel rotates. However, there is an adorable scene with Cheery at the very beginning of the book, which made me crazy happy.

The whole Watch is on the lookout for a serial killer on the run, a very dangerous man, and when he is located, Vimes is horrified to discover that Cheery is the officer on the spot. Not because she's female (that thought doesn't enter his head) but because she's the forensics officer, not "street" and will do things by the book, which this particular criminal will take advantage of. When he gets there, though, it's to discover that Cheery has made a succession of very smart and practicaldecisions as to the distribution of officers and resources. This time, when Vimes thinks the word 'forensic' to himself, it's with a small nod of respect.

So yes, Cheery is only in the novel for five minutes, but she kicks seriously competent arse!

Finally, there is Doctor Lawn, who is not female, but whose involvement in the story revolves around women's themes. Apart from him being a cynical, entertaining character in his own right (an excellent foil for Vimes), the good doctor also specialises in gynaecological services, including (as conveyed in a very understated conversation) contraception and abortion. Considering how often prostitutes are glamorised and set up as sex object window dressing in bog-standard fantasy fiction (the kind that Pratchett's work has reacted against from the beginning) I thought it was important to note that this was addressed as a necessary side effect of looking at the role of prostitution in society, and that this necessity was kept separate from any moral judgement on the part of the characters or the author.

However, I found myself troubled by the final scene in which Vimes' friendship with Doctor Lawn reached its climactic payoff. The Bitch Magazine blog has recently done a whole month's discussion on the representation of childbirth and parenting in TV, and one of the issues they addressed was the pop culture habit of turning labour and childbirth into melodrama. Childbirth can be dangerous, and it is absolutely one of the highest-stakes moments in many people's lives, but the portrayal of it in fantasy and science fiction is quite problematic, and one of the over-used tropes is the childbirth being about the man and what he can do to save the day, rather than being about the woman doing all the work.

I can forgive Sybil's labour and birth being turned into a panicky mercy dash scene that's all about Vimes – after all, he is the protagonist of this book, which is his story of impending fatherhood with extra metaphors coming into play when he becomes the man who taught his younger self how to be a good policeman. And I was delighted (because I had forgotten this bit) that the birth of young Sam was an occasion to bring closure to Vimes' friendship with Doctor Lawn, just as the scene with the Patrician cleverly provides closure to all the other important bits of the time travel aspect of the novel (though I would have LOVED to see Vimes talking to an adult Mrs Palm, frankly, as Rosie is the only character he spends a lot of time with in the past who doesn't get closure at the end of the book).

But the thing that breaks Night Watch a tiny bit for me, the thing I can't entirely forgive, is the way that Sybil's (unseen) previously competent and practical midwife proves to be suddenly lacking, and it is the doctor who is brought in to save the day. I especially found myself grinding my teeth about the bit where Doctor Lawn is the one lecturing everyone the revolutionary practice of boiling everything and promoting good hygiene. Because, in the history of midwifery, this is NOT WHAT HAPPENED. Historically, when the male doctors elbowed the mostly-female midwifes away from involvement in childbirth, maternal death skyrocketed because of the increase of infections, thanks to doctors not bothering to wash their hands before or after vaginal examinations.

And sure, this is one story, and it works, the narrative is completely cohesive, and the conclusion of Night Watch wouldn't be as satisfying without it. Not a word is wasted. It's great writing. But it bugs me, because we end up with yet another narrative in which men know better than women about the female body. I expect better than this from Pratchett when it comes to remembering the sticky bits of human social history. I suspect, in fact, that this is another case of the Double Subversion problem (as seen with Sgt. Angua in Jingo) where the character of the doctor is deliberately set up to be a contrast to Pratchett's previously conveyed attitudes towards medicine, midwifery, women and witchcraft (say, in the Witches books) but the double subversion means that the character ends up reinforcing a tired and dangerous stereotype.

I feel like I haven't touched on many of the most important aspects of this story, and why it works so wonderfully well. There's a reason for that. My remit for these posts (as decided by meeeee) is to look at the portrayal of women in the Discworld books, and while I find the portrayal of women in Night Watch interesting, what makes it such a spectacular Discworld novel has nothing to do with the women at all. Night Watch has more women and female issues in it than I remembered, and for the most part (with one glaring, flawtastic exception) those women and issues are handled respectfully. It's not quite one of those masterpieces that couldn't be improved with a greater involvement of female characters, but it is a very, very good book. And I still love it. Hooray!

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Previous posts in this series:

Pratchett's Women: The Boobs, The Bad and the Broomsticks

Pratchett's Women II – Slash! Stab! A Lesson in Practical Queening in Lords and Ladies

Pratchett's Women III – Werewolf Glamour and the Sexing of Dwarves in Guards, Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay

Pratchett's Women IV: His Henpecked Voice in Jingo & The Fifth Elephant

Fighting Crime at Christmas

via Tumblr, art by Mike Maihack

BOOK LAUNCH: Reign of Beasts (Creature Court #3)

When: Thursday 2nd February, 2012

Time: 5:30 PM

Where: Hobart Bookshop, Salamanca Square, Hobart, Tasmania.

What: Reign of Beasts by Tansy Rayner Roberts, third and final book in the award-winning Creature Court trilogy, will be launched by Rowena Cory Daniells.



THERE WILL BE MERRIMENT AND REJOICING!!!

My book launches for this series have been a thing of joy to me, with so many loved ones & devoted readers (mostly loved ones who ARE devoted readers) turning up to share a glass of wine, point out how adorable my children are, and celebrate the making of a trilogy. This is it, guys, the last book. Let's make it a shindig…

I'm especially delighted that I managed to schedule the launch at the end of next year's Tasmanian ROR so that some of my mainland writer friends can come too. I'm sneaky like that.

Hope to see you there.

Galactic Suburbia Episode 49: Spoilerific Book Club: Yarn, by Jon Armstrong

Check out Galactic Suburbia's spoilerific book club for 20 December, 2011. This time we're tackling Yarn, by Jon Armstrong. It is totally full of spoilers. Please only listen to this podcast if you've read the book, plan never to read the book, or really and truly don't mind spoilers.

authors & books mentioned:

Philip K Dick

Janet Catherine Berlo – Quilting Lessons – notes from the scrapbook of a writer & quilter Jennifer Chiaverini

The Friday Night Knitting Club novels – Kate Jacobs

GREY up for grabs – comment here with your thoughts on Yarn and Alex will choose a random winner.

Lego for Girls

So, LEGO is going to start including girls. Or, rather, they're going to try to make up for lost time (market) by pitching directly to girls and their toy preferences, in a separate line, LEGO Friends, from the standard boy sets.

Which is, you know, what they have been doing all along with Belville, a rather grim dystopia of pink cottages, ponies and jodphurs. Only now they're going to do it in lavender and aqua! There's a great critical article about the problematic nature of this line at the Mary Sue.

I have mixed feelings. From the Business Week article, it does look like Lego are working hard to look at what girls want and need out of toys, rather than just spraying pink on ponies and hurling it at them, machine-gun fashion. But while I agree that yes, my six year old would probably prefer to play with the LEGO Friends mini-figs that look like real girls instead of little yellow barrels with faces, I'm also concerned that as with Belville, this new line will be an excuse not to be as inclusive as they could be in the standard Lego sets.

Anyone who gets me started on the topic is well acquainted with my rant about how something like Harry Potter, a property that appeals equally to boys and girls, becomes horribly boy-heavy once it turns to Lego, and you have to buy hugely expensive sets to have girls like Ginny, Hermione and Luna included at all. This happens across the board – female characters are massively outnumbered by male in almost every Lego set going, and there are whole lines that feature no female characters at all, or one female character for every 8 or so men.

The Castle theme, I believe, has one damsel (which I've never seen on a toy shelf) and a whole bunch of male knights, guards, peasant farmers, etc. Because medieval history, totally for boys, am I right? (Even Merlin does better with female characters.) And yes, there are some very cute female characters (like Cleopatra!) in the current range of minifigs you can buy as Lego lucky dip, but I've never been able to bring myself to buy those for my daughter because again, so many more male characters than female, and I could spend a fortune trying to get her that damned Cleopatra. It's not like she needs more boy minifigs.

My daughter, up until now, has dealt with this lissue by taking actual bricks with faces on and building them outrageous crinoline frocks which can be swapped between heads. I also bought her a bunch of not-Lego (some other brand) which is capable of producing fairy tale/princess type Lego (Girl's Dream) which isn't utterly revolting, though sadly the bricks don't fit together as nicely as the "real" brand. On the other hand, they have sets with MORE THAN ONE GIRL IN THEM. The pink, though. Oh, the pink.

Our girls should have toy options other than 'everything is pink' and 'all the characters are boys.'

The lack of female minifigs doesn't just say that Lego doesn't care about whether girls buy it or not. It also says that Lego thinks that boys should mostly play with boy characters. Which would come as news to a certain 8 year old boy I know, who was so annoyed that his enormous Atlantis Lego set came with only one female character that he made her the captain, to make up for it. And okay, maybe he's not typical 8 year old boy, I accept that. (But oh, wouldn't the world be a better place if he was?)

Toy makers have a responsibility. They do. And one of the most interesting pieces of child psychology in that article, which leapt out at me, is that according to their studies, girls (mostly) play in 1st person, and boys in 3rd person. Which suggests to me that you could have a better balance of male and female characters without it affecting the boys' game play at all, or threatening their masculinity, or any of that jazz. You could chuck in a few more female submariners, knights, Star Wars characters, witches, ninjas, and so on. If boys don't need specific idealised avatars in their play (as this article suggests the Lego psychologists believe) then surely it would be a good thing to encourage them to play with a variety of characters.

The girl characters don't have to have pink princess dresses, or fairy wings. Lego has actually designed some great female adventure characters (Raeli has a female archaeologist that I bought for myself, before she was born). There just aren't enough of them.

I worry about this new girl Lego line, not because they're giving young girls a redesigned minifig with handbags and breast curves, but because it's an excuse to make the LOOK ITS FOR BOYS Lego lines even more male heavy, and that not only makes the girls who like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Medieval Castles, Atlantis, Cities or just plain building shit with bricks feel completely excluded, but also works as yet another societal tool programming boys to believe that girls aren't people.

But it's not all doom and gloom out there. The new DC Super Heroes line of Lego has just been launched, to tie in with the upcoming Lego Batman 2 game. The first wave includes a set with Wonder Woman (packaged with Superman and Lex Luthor) and one with Catwoman (packaged with Batman). Yes, you heard me right. Lego with Wonder Woman, and Catwoman, and you don't have to buy a set with 12 other (male) characters in order to get access to them.

I would have respected this whole "LEGO cares about girls" spiel a hell of a lot more if the interview in the Business Week article had mentioned that, as well as providing a new line with aqua bricks and yellow handbags and cocktail glasses in trendy swimming pools, they were also releasing freaking Wonder Woman Lego in traditional yellow blocky minifig shape.

Um yes, and the moral of the story is? My daughter is so getting Lego for her birthday. But not the kind with handbags.

Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray

This book has just gone straight to the top of the list of books I hope my daughters will steal from my shelves a year or two before I would have thought they were ready for them.

Imagine a gang of bewildered teen beauty queens, stranded on a desert island after a plane crash, forced to use their pageant skills as survival skills, and learning layer by layer to discard the crap that western society places on the shoulders of young women.

Imagine a high camp satire peopled with the cheerleaders from Glee and Bring it On, the female casts of Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You, not to mention a few of those Whip It roller derby girls, with a script that doesn't just sneak the occasional feminist zinger in with the boys-are-hot banter, but is actually all about how women are awesome, even the dumb ones and the pretty ones and the bitchy ones and the ones who have been raised by our culture to hate other women, and themselves.

But… it's funny. Really funny. Bray has a stiletto-sharp pen which she uses to stab viciously at so many problematic aspects of western society that affect teenagers – at reality TV, and sex, and romantic pressures, and sexism, and the "beauty" industry, and unrealistic expectations, and the media. There are two non-white characters (one African-American, one Indian) who honestly don't know how to deal with each other at first because they're both so used to being the only brown girl in a sea of privileged white girls, and it feels like becoming friends is the most subversive thing they can possibly do; there's a trans character whose story arc makes me ridiculously happy; there's a tough as nails lesbian and a deaf girl who has to deal with questioning sexuality as well as her disability. There's a girl whose most important possession is her purity ring, and there's one who came along to bring all the others down… oh, and there's one with an in flight tray stuck permanently in her forehead.

Beauty Queens is hilarious and entertaining and sexy and smart, so smart that I have spent the last several days thinking about it, and grinning my face off, and not being able to wait to get back to it.

Beauty Queens is also an important book. It's a book that is overwhelmingly positive about so many aspects of girl culture that are often sneered at or taken too lightly in our culture. It's a book about friendship, and love, and how you don't have to kiss the boy just because the music is rising and that's the way romantic comedies are supposed to end.

There are boys in it too. They are pirates. Mascara might be involved. I mentioned it's funny, right?

If this book was a movie it would be the best girlfriend movie ever. But it's hard to imagine a story this awesome and subversive being able to retain its awesomeness in the Hollywood machine. Maybe, just maybe, the pitch (teen beauty queens crash on a desert island, it's like Clueless meets Survivor, okay?) would hit all those lovely money buttons so hard that the Powers That Be might not notice the feminist banter and anti-media subtext.

And the big question is, who would we cast as Ladybird Hope? My vote is for Alicia Silverstone.

Because Caesar Was Taken [Xena Rewatch 3.16-3.19]

3.16 – When in Rome

Pompey the Magnus. Oh my yes.

I was excited to see this was a Rome episode and even more excited to realise it features Crassus, a historical character who has always interested me. But then Caesar turned up, stealing all the oxygen in the room, except that which is pinched by his rival and "ally," Pompey THE Magnus. And I really stopped caring about Crassus.

Jeremy Callaghan, who will always be Brian from Police Rescue for me (last seen in an earlier Xena episode as a thug who might possibly have a heart of gold under his grubby armour), does a good job of balancing out Karl Urban's shall we say High Acting, and has good sinister chemistry with Xena, too. He takes it a bit too far at times with the grape sucking and furniture chewing, but that sort of thing is what Xena is all about.

"So why do they call you the Warrior Princess?"

"Because 'Caesar' was taken."

The episode is pretty much wall to wall flirting with occasional politics and bloodshed. It's a relief to have a good episode after several that felt like padding. An excuse to see a bunch of New Zealanders in Roman armour is also most excellent, not to mention Xena frocking up as a glamorous scarlet matrona.

"I can't believe you were about to double cross me, just as I was about to double cross you."

Gabrielle's subplot is about her concerns that Xena is willing to sacrifice the life of Crassus for that of her friend RandomGaulatrix, given that Crassus is basically a mass murderer. Tough moral question and all that. The choice Gabrielle makes at the end is an intriguing one and definitely shows that she is a lot further down Xena's path of the warrior than either of them are comfortable with.

"How many more times are you going to follow me into battle?"

The rendition of the Colosseum is the point at which, basically, my willing suspension of disbelief runs out. Ha, and you thought I had a bottomless supply of it, right? But this is no Gladiator, my friends, and the attempts to make it look like a bunch of people are sitting in tiers using CGI is… well, yeah. Also I'm pretty sure the Colosseum was still round back in those days, rather than square. But the shots down on the sand in the Colosseum are classic Xena skirmishes, with some nail-biting action.

We're still on the first Brutus, by the way. The attrition rate for these will step up in future episodes. Speaking of recycling, Gabrielle seems to have got hold of a pair of boots IDENTICAL to the perfect ones that Xena destroyed in a previous episode. So I suppose that's okay.

I have a horrible feeling after this episode that Pompey and Caesar are officially my OTP. Oops.

3.17 – Forget Me Not

Let the ritual bathing begin!

At first this seems promising, with Gabrielle disturbed by dreams of the Hope drama from earlier in the season. She finds her way to the temple of Mnemosyne to meet Xena and decides to try out the temple's charms for herself by giving up her troubling memories.

Because Gabrielle is even worse than Xena for explaining things to her friends, Joxer is unaware of her choice and blunders in, "rescuing" her empty shell of a body while Gabrielle's inner self fights her own demons in a spiritual realm. For some reason, the priestesses allow this to happen. Joxer then bumbles around, trying to restore Gabrielle's memories using her scrolls, and of course (because let's not forget he's in love with her) being tempted to do wicked, wicked things to her saucy memoryless self, and generally screw with her mind to make her think she loves him back. Aargh. And again, aargh.

I'm starting to think that part of the reason I didn't join in the Joxer-hate back in the day was because I had totally not watched half his episodes. This particular one is dire.

The more entertaining portion of the story is the part where Ares turns up to be Inner Gabrielle's spirit guide through her bad memory odyssey. The scenes with the two of them are, as always, pure gold. And in great Xena clip show tradition, the production team spent a fortune on new sets, in this case a glacier-like cave complete with icy lake for Gabrielle to fall into. Plus lots of steamy flame effects.

Because yes, it's a clip show. Of all the bad stuff that happened between Gabrielle and Xena. Including a lengthy flashback about Crassus who, let us recall, was in the LAST EPISODE. I'm glad they suggested that the whole Crassus thing is the reason that Gabrielle was triggered into having nightmares about Hope and Chin etc., and I am very glad that they are not pretending that the Bitter Suite resolution made everything go away – there are still emotional consequences for the characters to work through.

But, SERIOUSLY, clip show? They're over, sweeties. We have DVDs now. You can't get away with sitting on the Keaton's couch and chatting about those funny things Michael J Fox did last Thanksgiving. And I really thought that with The Xena Scrolls last season, they had said their final word about clips shows.

Obviously I just blocked the later ones out. Because, I am now remembering, there are MORE TO COME. Still, any episode that gives us Ares laughing at Gabrielle as she drowns in an icy lake over and over again… not all bad.

Right at the end, the episode pulls one hell of a whammy out of its back pocket by giving us a flashback to a scene we've never seen before: the explanation as to how Gabrielle got to Chin ahead of Xena to betray her to the Green Dragon. The wild card, of course, was Ares. And that means not only that the two of them share a secret, but that she owes him a favour. Oooh I wonder if that will turn out to be important. (Stoooooory arc!)



3.18 – Fins, Femmes and Gems

I've always been a fan of Aphrodite episodes but at this point I have to say, I'm tiring of the concept.

This episode feels by-the-numbers – Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer enter her temple to find a mystic diamond she stole, she puts a spell on each of them to make them obsessed with the first thing she sees. Xena becomes obsessed with fish, Gabrielle with her own image, and Joxer turns into a human ape. Yeah I'm not sure how that fits either.

It's an excuse to let all three characters play with their comedic skills, and they have a great deal of fun – I do like it when Xena goes fishing (shoulda kept track of that in the Chakram Stats, too late now). But it doesn't add up to much, really.

Um. There was an excellent fight scene at the end. And an even more awesome fishing scene. At one point, Gabrielle drowns Narcissus-style and Xena gives her the kiss of life.

Xena whistles her own theme tune while fishing. You know you needed to know that.

The resolution is stupid.

3.19 – Tsunami

Fortune teller: "There is danger, and death."

Gabrielle (to Xena): "Did you hear that?" (pause) "She just described every single day of our lives."

BOATS! I do love it when they get out the old boat prop and start doing all that rigging and sea salt biz. Also the running gag about Gabrielle's seasickness is referenced here – she no longer has any problems at all but mentions the pressure points she now uses to prevent feeling ill.

Basically this one is a disaster movie – Gabrielle tries to rescue Autolycus from a prison ship and is press ganged herself; Xena hops aboard to join her. Pretty soon they're wrapped up in the minor dramas of the crew, prisonmaster and his wife, but none of that means much when a nearby volcano causes a… well, you saw the title, right?

The visuals of this episode are pretty damn good when you consider how clunky things were only a year ago. Getting 'ship gets hit by tidal wave full of snarky ancient world prisoners and floats upside down for much of the episode' is the kind of thing that a television budget would still struggle to portray today.

None of the extra characters are particularly sympathetic, and Angela Dotchin is a bit less convincing as a nervous pregnant wife than she was as a glam mermaid in Hercules a year later (I never did see the swashbuckling TV show she did with Bruce Campbell, Jack of all Trades, but I guess if there are fans of that then seeing them together in this episode is a cool thing?) but I am glad she gets a chance to fight for her husband, even if this is yet another example of beautiful, loyal young wives attached to and apologising for the behaviour of grotty old rich men in the Xenaverse.

Apparently they made pretty damn good boats in the ancient world if this one could stay airtight underwater for so long! The physics is dubious at best, but this is a fun episode. What we lack in sympathetic supporting characters, we gain in Autolycus, Gabrielle and Xena kicking arse underwater, Poseidon Adventure style, expressing a few emotions along the way.

Also everyone is wet. Very wet. For the whole episode. If that's your thing, this is a good episode for you!

I'm only sad that they didn't take this opportunity to do a crossover with Seaquest DSV!

CHAKRAM STATISTICS:

People who want romance with Xena: 13

People Xena allows to romance her: 7

Xena dead lovers: 3

Gabrielle dead boyfriends: 2/7

"Adorable" children: 36

Babies: 5

Babies tossed humorously in the air during fight scenes: 6

Xena doppelgangers: 4

Xena sings at a funeral: 3

Gabrielle sprained ankles: 2

Xena dies: 3

Gabrielle dies: 3

Characters brought back from the dead (including ghosts and visits to the Underworld): 21

Ares loses his powers and goes all to pieces about it: 2

Xena or Gabrielle earns money: 2

Xena or Gabrielle spends money (or claims to have money to spend): 7

Out of the Pantheon: Morpheus, Ares, Hera, the Titans, Hades, Celesta, Charon, the Fates, Bacchus, Aphrodite, Cupid, Poseidon, the Furies, Discord

The Celebrity Red Carpet of the Ancient World: Pandora, Prometheus, Hercules, Iolaus, Sisyphus, Helen of Troy, Paris, Deiphobus, Menelaus, Euripides, Homer, Autolycus, Meleager, Oracle of Delphi, David, Goliath, Orpheus, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Ulysses, Penelope, Cecrops, Boadicea, Cleopatra, Crassus, Pompey

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Previous Xena Rewatch Posts:

Warlord is a Lady Tonight

I Don't Work For Money

Amazon Wanna Take A Ride?

Go To Tartarus!

Swashbuckle and Shams

Death In A Chainmail Bikini

Full Moon It Must Be Xena

How Do You Mortals Get From Day to Day?

The Future is Archaeologists

Divide and Conquer

My Sword is Always Ready to Pleasure You

Hide the Hestian Virgins!

Lunatic with Lethal Combat Skills

Coping with Your First Kill

Sweet Hestia, I'm In a Den of Filth

The Bitter and Sweet of It