Past Imperfect

and since my girlfriend was in town for the event, I wasn't exactly, well, focused, on the tv while it was airing.

But I feel I've a duty to go ahead and spoil the heck out of it, since it's a new Xena ep and that's what I do and I'm not nearly so jaded as some out there, and I love X:WP, I really do, so please just remember that as I trot down through the choruses here.

(Hm. Not nearly enough beer. Damn. Oh, well, there's always water. Or coffee. I'm not picky, just thirsty.)

Our trip down memory lane starts off with Xena fessing up to Gab about this Vision thing she's been worrying over since September. There's been tons of buildup that suggests that Xena might just be a tad preoccupied about the possiblity of her and the bard being NAILED TO A PAIR OF FLIPPIN' CROSSES IN THE SNOW AND LEFT TO DIE but one can understand how Gab, who has only been told the Vision and not shown it (the way we have, in muted blues and white with ethereal music playing in the background and Romans moving in slo-mo and hammers hammering nails soundlessly... it's all so peaceful, really, kind of pastoral almost, Gab saying "I love you, Xena" and Xena saying "I love you" back and if it weren't for the ram's head flashing in the shadows... oh, sorry. Another ep. That wasn't there. My bad.) and then Gab goes and breaks into the the whole Moment with an almost stridently discordant note of disbelief (Gab as Martha. Who'd'a thunk it?) and we're off!

Gab just don't wanna go there. Reality is hard enough to cope with, why add this load of might-be's? Enough already—there's a town needs defending, X&G do defending, it's in their job descriptions, so let's just let the future worry about itself, okay? Okay.

So they make it into this town, it's like under seige or something, but they get inside just fine cos Xena's way good at slipping through enemy lines or maybe the enemy hasn't got the "surrounding" part finished yet, and just as they get there and ID themselves the Big Attack comes, complete with fireballs exploding over the walls and lots of confusion and a goldy-haired child standing motionless and empty-headed in the midst of the falling missiles while her mamma's ineffectually moaning "my baby! my baby!" so's Xena has to do the patented Xena/Herc Rescue thing, at (of course) great peril to her own life (right. sure.) and they beat off the attack and all is quiet once more.

Except the town's commander is dead and his Second has no battle experience. He says so, just like he thought it was important. Why he would think so, and still have been offered the post in the first place, him being all green and raw, is beyond me, but it does give Xena an opening to take over the town's defenses more or less plausibly.

It's a jolly good thing she does, since the attacking army reminds her of someone... of something... something in the past... her past... (You know, ten winters ago life was a lot more hectic than now. Busybusybusy all the time, never a moment's rest. It's no wonder so many warlords went down for the eternal count so early in their careers. Just not enough vacation. Those folks need a union.) I was kinda thinking that Time was doing some sort of weird X-files loop thing and X&G would turn around to find themselves in Corinth defending against Xena's younger self and that would turn out to be why the Corinthians actually made out okay against the Destroyer of Nations and wouldn't that be a cool kind of redemption thing? But no. It's just this gross similiarity in style and tactics between Evil Xena and the current attacker that Good Xena picks up on, sparking a whole series of flashbacks where we see Evil Xena waddling around camp, very near term with Solon the Magician, slapping Borias' hands off her tits while ordering captured Corinthian soldiers to be gut-stabbed and their bodies floated down the river, captured centaurs (why are centaurs so butt-ugly? anyone know? what did Ephiny see in what's-his-name?) to be slain, 'cept Borias won't go for that, he frees them in a cool fight where Evil Xena does the Bad Guy thing and stands around pondering names for the baby while Borias kills the guard, fights Dagnine, frees the centaurs, jumps on Kaliepus' back and they all run away, and Evil Xena's hand-picked killer fighting force just stumbles around with their mouths open (Xenias? Borax? nah... hey! stop them! Xerias? Timothy? hmm...)

Meanwhile, back in the present moment, not to be confused with the moment that just passed, or even the moment that will be real soon now, and certainly not the moment that might have been except it wasn't, Gab and Xena are arguing about a safe place to store the Gabster till the danger's over, and they're in the town's MASH unit where all the soldiers are rapidly showing up for sick call, because the food supply is poisoned. Xena figures this out since... you got it! Evil Xena did it once! At Corinth! The coincidences are getting to be too much for her and then she sees (they're all down by the river, whacking away at a dam, heaven knows why, and there's a fight when the present-day bad guys rise up out of the river (member the Corinthians tupped into the Corinthian river with their bellies and throats slashed? there's supposed to be a kind of visual connection here, with the current soldiers rising up alive out of this river, it's a poetic justice kind of thing, neat, huh? Bet that's how they breathed while under water, too, they had their throats... well, maybe not.) where was I? Oh yeah, X&G and a lot of Good Soldiers are fooling around with this dam and there's a fight and they break free and then Xena sees, off in the distance, a weirdly shaped mountain peak that looks just like the one in her Vision, and Gab notices it too, but when Xena tries to get her to do something or other to keep herself safe, since it's a Sign that the Vision is a true one, Gab stamps her bardic foot and tells Xena in no uncertain terms just how much of this she's willing to stand for (not a lot, actually). What will be, will be. What is, is what's important.

There's some more flashbacking now, and I kinda got lost on how it all connected up with the stuff in the present, but the gist is that Xena gives birth in her warlord tent while Borias and the centaurs attack, it's at night, and Xena's slave Satrina gives her happy drugs to dull the pain and Borias sneaks into the tent to take Xena away with him, he's still in love with her and there's a huge fight, Satrina knifes him and sounds the alarm because... she doesn't like Xena after all... or something... and doesn't want her to reunite with Borias, because that would destroy all her plans... to do gods know what. I admit it—I'm clueless on Satrina's motivation here. She's really a warrior with a grudge against Evil Xena for offing her lover, Evil Xena doesn't know this, neither does Borias, no one would think it to look at her anyway, and why she doesn't do Xena in when she has the chance, while the woman's in labour for instance, is beyond me, but instead she carts her out of the camp after the birth while it's being overrun by centaurs and Borias' men, even as Borias is dying in the glow of the fires (he's just been messily defeated by Dagnine, big fight during the birth thing, don't you wish I was better at this?) and he gets to see the baby just before he dies.

And all of that was just to let us know who's heading the present day's attacking army—Satrina, she's spent the last ten winters silently prepping herself and her army for this occasion, killing Xena in battle, just like the Corinthian battle, using all Xena's tactics. And she knew Xena would be at this town, defending it, at just this time, because... heck, I dunno. Because the djinn told her? Whatever, she's had her guys tunnel under the walls like what Evil Xena's army would have done at Corinth except they were all out digging in the back yard looking for the Ixion Stone and Xena corners her down there and they fight and Xena wins but won't sully Borias' memory (that's what she says. I do not make this stuff up.) by offing this loser chick, who then calls in her soldiers and they almost overwhelm Xena but Gab shows up with Good Guy soldiers and there's a melee in the tunnel and you'll all be relieved to know that X&G won and Satrina was buried in the rubble when part of it collapsed. Sorta like Callisto, except without all the drama and passion and death-defying cool villian stuff, okay, more like dropping a rock on cockroach.

So the town's saved but there's still the Vision thing kind of looming over Xena, she can't shake worrying about them GETTING NAILED TO CROSSES, but Gab does the sensitive chat thing by the fire that night and Xena feels better.

I know I do.