Dreamworker

And the fieriest, and the least stained with blood, according to Morpheus' priest, must be a religious thing, I'm so much more choosier than that I can't begin to compare the criteria sets.

This ep is, like most, set up for us right at the top: Gabrielle is fascinated with Xena's sword (remember how she said she wanted to be a warrior in Sins of the Past? And how we all laughed, right along with Lila?), and having been tasked with gathering wood, she's chosen to use Xena's sword to attack a mighty stump. She taunts it first, though, deadwood is susceptible to boasting, well, she's just playing, so am I, and Xena takes the sword away from her cos it's not a toy. Now it's also dull, but Xena doesn't fuss too much about this, she's just getting Gab paper-trained, no point in overloading her.

Gabrielle asks for sword training, you can tell it's not the first time, and Xena turns her down, but when Gabrielle pushes on the grounds that it would help her to survive, Xena instead gives her the Rules of Survival, which consist mostly of running away as soon as you can create an opening. Xena then explains that when you pick up a sword, you become a target, and if you ever kill someone, everything changes. When the ruffian band appears on the path just then, right on cue, Xena illustrates her advice by grabbing Gabrielle, mounting Argo, and galloping away.

Actually, no, she doesn't. She hides a dagger behind a rock, steps out to meet them, and draws her sword. I'm starting to think that "survival" is perhaps not a high priority for Xena, or maybe this is more a case of "do what I say, not what I do" that my own role models were so big on.

In the coming fight, Xena drops her sword to use a big spear she's taken off one of the robbers, and Gabrielle picks it up. Immediately her status changes from "loot" to "threat", me, I would consider it a promotion, but since three bad guys zero in on her, perhaps I should rethink that. Certainly Gab does, as Xena drives them off, she drops the sword back on the ground.

The leader picks it up and it clues him in that he's fighting Xena (maybe her name's written on the grip), he thinks his reputation will benefit, he's not considered the possibility that the reason she has such a high Q-quotient is not only that she could whup someone like him by mail, she's currently just warmed up while his buddies are all puking on the ground. Anyway, he attacks her, she dodges, comes up with the dagger and kills him.

This may be the first time Gabrielle's seen Xena kill anyone. That's something that changes stuff, too, so already we can tell that this is gonna be one of the meaningful eps.

As they go off, priest dudes hidden the bushes nearby comment on Gabrielle's fighting form and score her based on the Morpheus Variant. In case you've forgotten, that's fire, yes; blood-stained, no. Run titles.

Back to the story, we get a long shot of a peaceful village, looks just like Potedia but it's not, it's a different place altogether, on a completely different day. In town, Gabrielle goes one way for salt pork and Xena into a different shop, she wants a sharpening stone, guess why, and the storekeeper takes a noticeable interest in Gabrielle, to the point of being glad she wasn't the one who killed the robber Xena mentioned to him. This is odd, Xena notices, but just then an old blind guy named Elton comes in wanting a halter and the shopkeeper throws him out, cos he used to be a "Mystic". This really annoys Xena, so she buys the halter for Elton herself.

Gabrielle, meanwhile, is in a weapons shop, looks like RenPics' prop shop, where the salt pork must be on sale. The shopkeeper there is more honest than the first one; he tries to tell Gabrielle about the Morpheus-problem, but assumes she knows more about the backstory than she does, and sells her a really cute little breast dagger, that she manages to keep hold of all the way out of the shop and back to Xena. There it slips from her bodice and hits the ground and Xena takes it away from her. Just at that moment, they are set upon by swordsmen wearing sheep on their heads. By the time Xena drives them off, Gabrielle has disappeared, too.

Cut to Xena slamming the first shopkeeper against his wall several times. He comes clean about the Mystics and why he was happy to see Gabrielle earlier—apparently, the Mystics are some kind of Morpheus cult and they wanted Gab cos she's young and inexperienced. "Experienced" to these folks means something rather different than it does to me, which explains why they send their young girls to a retreat every Solstice instead of just getting them some "experience", they'd run short of practice dummies after awhile.

Xena's opinion of this fellow was pretty low after the halter thing, now it's somewhere at the bottom of a well. She goes off to find Elton, the ex-Mystic, and the scene changes to a serious fire hazard, there's enough candles there to provide fondue for the whole village, and the priest from the top of the ep is kneeling behind the altar they're set on, he's talking with his god, Morpheus, who is represented, presumably at his own direction, as a large sheep.

I'm guessing that sacrificial lambs aren't part of the ceremonies locally.

Anyway, the priest hopes the new chick in town, Gabrielle, will prove acceptable to Morpheus as his bride. Cut to Gab, dressed in a tulle nightgown with a sequinned bed jacket, the collar doesn't suit her, frantically ripping the bed in her cell apart. Well, we knew it was an arranged marriage. The priest comes in and tells her about the whole "bride of Morpheus" plan, it involves her surviving three deadly challenges, at the end of which she gets to be Morpheus' bride, doesn't really compete against Publisher's Clearinghouse or even church bingo as that sort of thing goes, but the priest acts like he's doing her a favour here. Nowhere is there any hint that she might choose something of equivalent or lesser value as her prize, she should be able to bring an action on that point alone.

Meanwhile, Xena's found Elton in his hermit's hovel outside of town. Elton explains to her about the Mystics and what they're doing with Gabrielle, including a tidbit the priest left out (in contravention of all federal, provincial and local laws governing sweepstakes, who knew sheep were so dishonest?), that the Mystics would actually trick Gabrielle into killing someone during the challenges, which would cause her to lose her "blood innocence", making her eligible to be a sacrifice on Morpheus' altar. But then Elton remembers a prophetic dream he once had, about a warrior with a dark past who could travel the dreamscape, and use it to enter Morpheus' stronghold. Xena says she's up for it and they start preparing.

This involves a lot of colourful oils and more candles, must be a Steven Sears ep, Elton reminds Xena that, while Morpheus will be trying to stop her, and will be able to use her mind and memories against her, it's still her dreamscape and she can control it (Elton's from California). To make things even more interesting, he says that she'll only have a few hours in which to navigate the passage, if she's not succeeded by then, she'll die. He offers to dribble oil over her body, calls it "incama", which is a Mystic word for "canola", and says that will extend her time.

Xena enters the dreamscape at nightmare level, she's surrounded by the ghosts of innocent villagers she'd had murdered in her former life, and they taunt her with their names, which she'd never learned. Obviously, she's got a lot of guilt to work through, and if the latter half of the show's run is any indication, this is just the tip of the iceberg. She insists that she's in charge, though, and disperses them.

At the sheep farm, Gabrielle is beginning her first Challenge. She has to pass between the bedsheets from Door Alpha to Door Omega, this is highly symbolic of all sorts of things that are meaningful only in California, and only in the southern part at that. Behind the sheets are sheepheads with big swords, and Gabrielle can only see their shadows moving against the sheets. The priest gives Gabrielle a sword to defend herself. It's not a very good one, the first shadow sheephead who spots her cuts through the sheet and breaks Gabrielle's sword, so she's lucky there, she can fall back on what Xena's told her and what she knows how to do.

She lures the sheepheads (they're still behind the sheets) to a point where they're opposite each other and then pretends to sneeze, at the same time diving for the floor. The guys stab through the sheets and into each other. Why she didn't just tiptoe to the far door and leave them to prance about making shadow rabbits I don't know, it's not like the conditions stated they had to die, only that she had to stop them from stopping her.

The priest retrieves her and escorts her back to her cell, to rest before the next challenge. He's not happy that she didn't kill someone, he must be late for a dinner engagement, and now he'll have to cancel.

Gabrielle goes to sleep and begins to dream. Elsewhere in sheep-counting country, Xena is racing through blue corridors with meaningful trellises scattered about; she finds Gabrielle's dream self in a sumptuous bedroom. Gabrielle is wistfully admiring about Xena's dream clothing, she's wearing loose-fitting silk robes in a flattering deep purple, that's how it works when you're the star, and they catch up on what's been going on. Gabrielle finds out about the moratorium on sheep-hunting season, and Xena tells her to do what she does best, as Gabrielle fades out. The priest has summoned her to her next challenge. She tests her dream by pulling his own dagger on him, it's kind of round and threaded like an awl, maybe part of worshiping sheep involves a lot of boring, I'm trying really hard not to go there but they're not making it easy, and he's not scared so she knows the dream was true.

Meanwhile, the sheepheads find out that Elton has moved Xena's body away from the hovel. It's nighttime, and raining heavily, so of course he's taken her to a clearing in the wilderness. He's energetically oiling her while defying Morpheus and an almost certain head cold.

Gabrielle's next challenge pits her against three warriors beside a flaming hole (no, honest, I am so trying not to go there) and she throws her sword away and appeals to their vanity, causing them to fight till only one is left, then by happen stance, he's killed. She didn't do it, so technically she's still innocent. The priest guy is getting truly annoyed, he did have his hopes for this one. He figures that she's read the fine print.

Xena next has to exorcise the ghosts of her first and last kills. The first one was in the act of killing her friends and family when she gutted him, and the last was that skanky robber with the inflated ego, and where either of them get off being miffed at being dead is beyond me, but this is Xena's dreamscape and likely she feels guilty about all of them, no matter what. She casts them away from her by focusing on her belief that she's not that person any more. Elton's not the only one from California, looks like.

But she's not done, after them she has to face her Doppelgänger, Evil Xena, who asserts that whatever Xena is now, she is because of her. Xena doesn't want to accept this, she's invested in being new-made, in having left her old self behind on Hercules' bedroll like a snake shedding its skin, but the Evil Xena ghost knows better. Xena tries to beat her up but it's not working, Evil Xena is stronger.

Gabrielle hasn't been idle this whole time; her third challenge is to be set inside a cage where a wall of pointy bits is slowly rolled forward, pushing her toward a sheephead with a drawn sword and a bad guy leer. She'll either have to whack him or herself be slain, Pauline had it easy by comparison.

Back in the clearing, the sheepheads have found Elton with Xena's body. They prepare to cut off her head, this involves taking measurements and being excruciatingly careful that the sword is aimed for the centre of her neck and not to one side or the other. It's really great to see folks take such pride in their work.

Gabrielle picks up the sword that's been laying at her feet. She's out of options, and almost out of treadmill.

In the dreamscape, Xena realizes that Evil Xena is the key to her inner self and that means she's also the key to the door blocking her way out to the castle, so she dwarf-tosses Evil Xena through the door and that's the ball game—we see the sword descending toward her neck and then hitting empty pallet, she's inside the sheep farm, and not just inside in some dungeon or remote tower, but in the very room where Gabrielle's challenge is taking place!

In the ensuing melee, Xena disables the sheephead threatening Gabrielle, takes out several others, Gab tosses her sword to Xena, it's a lot lighter than her own, we don't know where it is or why she doesn't have it, but the new one cuts through sheep heads as though they were head cheese (I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that) and before we know it, they're all down (Xena shot the breast dagger at the last one, it really was more lethal than it looked, how about that?) and it's only the priest that's upset that they hadn't read Morpheus' memo about how everyone should let him have everything he wants and shut up about it.

So Gabrielle punches him, a right pretty roundhouse, and he's down for the duration. Hey, she's been waiting for this, you can tell, he's been such a patronizing bastard all through, calling her "Innocent" and urging her to killkillkill just like it was a good idea and would help her.

Cut to the next day, or a couple days later, Xena's buying stuff from the first storekeeper and he's so happy with what they've done that he offers her ten percent off, man should be thinking hard about his own dreamscape and the ghosts he'd see, maybe he will, since just then Elton comes in all dressed up in priestly robes and with his eyesight restored and his old job as High Mystic Priest and a shepherd's crook. He makes the storekeeper comp Xena's shopping list and says that they can now go back to worshipping Morpheus and his brothers as they were meant, with sacrifices of grain and the occasional corn-on-the-cob picnic, and then he wishes Xena sweet dreams, coming from him that's a rather practical wish.

The Mystics have imprisoned the old priest in his own dreamscape, should be just as nasty as it gets but no worse than what he deserves.

Xena catches up with Gabrielle out by a pond, where the latter is staring pensively into the still water. Gabrielle's shaken over how close she came to killing another person, and how different it felt to what she'd thought it would at the top of the ep, and Xena tosses a stone into the pond to illustrate how when stuff happens, it can't be undone, even after the obvious effects have disappated. Which is true, but doesn't actually address Gab's issue, though it does get her moving again.