The Xena Scrolls – Director: Charlie Haskell/Story: Robert Sidney Mellette/Teleplay: Adam Armus, Nora Kay Foster
This one starts at an archaeological dig in Macedonia in 1940, where a digger discovers a tablet with ancient writing on it. A car arrives at the dig site and a woman (Mel Pappas, who looks a lot like Xena but with glasses and a 1940s wardrobe) gets out. Mel goes to the main tent and finds armed thugs inside who demand her briefcase. Another woman (Janice Covington, who looks like Gabi crossed with Indiana Jones) pulls a gun on the thugs. A shootout ensues and miraculously
no one is hurt, even though Janice uses a Gatling gun and a Tommy gun. She runs the thugs off and finds out her visitor is the daughter of the man she sent for. Mel says her father is dead but she can help Janice translate the parchment she sent to him. Janice isn’t too keen on Mel helping, but one of her men (the one who found the tablet earlier) turns up dead and everyone else deserts, worried the dig is cursed. Janice tells Mel a guy named Smythe is probably behind the killing since he wants to beat her to the discovery of the century … the Xena Scrolls.
Janice tries to read the parchment and we get a clip of the ladder fight from 
Callisto. Janice’s interpretation is off (she mixes up Xena and Callisto), but Mel corrects her. Janice explains how her father spent his life searching for the Xena Scrolls, which he regarded as history not myth. Mel recalls Janice’s father as a tomb robber only interested in money, which Janice confirms. Mel suggests that both of them are living in their father’s shadows … she trying to live up to her father reputation and Janice trying to live down hers. A French soldier (Jacques Serre, who looks like Joxer imitating Claude Rains) shows up and warns
them the Scrolls are said to be cursed and could contain mystical powers … powers that should be kept away from the Nazis. Smythe shows up with the tablet taken from the dead guy and offers Janice a lot of money to translate it. Janice accepts, which disappoints Mel, but Janice claims the tablet is fake and can’t help open the tomb. Mel tries to be helpful and translates the tablet properly, opening the tomb. Smythe and his men take all three of them into the tomb. They trigger a slide trap and a rockfall, ending up down in the tomb.
Smythe is nowhere to be seen and Janice hopes he was crushed in the rockfall. Mel determines that the tomb is dedicated to Ares and we get a clip from The Reckoning. Jacques starts dithering about the curse and we get 
clips from a couple of old monster movies (which Janice and Mel recognize as such). After triggering a flying dagger trap (and skewering Janice’s hat), Mel is told to stay out of the way. When she sits down, she opens a panel and finds the Scrolls, which she starts reading. We get a clip of Xena and Marcus fighting harpies in Mortal Beloved. Janice realizes Mel has found the Scrolls but isn’t happy about giving her credit. They find a chakram, but Mel is the only one who can pull it from the rock. It’s only half a chakram, but when Mel picks it up, it exerts some kind of pull and almost drags her through the tomb to where Smythe is holding the other half of the chakram.
Smythe wants Mel’s piece of the chakram, but Janice comes in and saves her in spectacular swashbuckling fashion. Janice collapses the cave on Smythe
and they find a chamber with a sarcophagus in it where the torches light up automatically. Jacques starts going on about the curse again until Janice slaps him. Smythe finds them and the chakram halves are pulled together again, throwing Mel and Smythe backwards and knocking Mel out. Ares rises from the sarcophagus and kills Smythe and his men. Jacques challenges him, but Ares exposes him as a fraud; Jacques is really Jack Steinman, a brush salesman from New 
Jersey and a descendant of Joxer (prompting a clip of Gabi beating the shit out of Joxer in Callisto). Ares explains how he needs Xena’s descendant to free him from the tomb and Janice assumes he means her. But Ares says she’s actually related to an annoying blonde; at first, Janice thinks he means Callisto, but realizes he’s talking about Gabi (and we get a clip of Gabi whacked out on nut bread from Altared States). Mel is Xena’s descendant, but when she wakes up her body actually has been inhabited by Xena’s spirit.
Xena refuses to free Ares and herds the other two out of the chamber. Janice is feeling shitty because she’s related to the sidekick instead of the hero, but Xena tells her how brave and selfless Gabi was (illustrated by a clip from
Hooves and Harlots) and how important Gabi was to her (shown by clips from Is There a Doctor in the House?, and Ties That Bind). Xena says Janice should be proud to be related to Gabi and Janice shows Gabi’s spirit by offering to help Xena fight Ares. Ares grabs Janice and Jack, setting them up to be killed by a giant spiked ball if Xena doesn’t release him by hitting the Eye of Hephaestus with her chakram. Xena frees Janice and Jack, but Ares deflects the chakram, striking the Eye and opening a door to the outside. Xena won’t let him leave and they start 
fighting. Xena’s a bit rusty and Ares gets the upper hand, but before he can stab her, Janice uses her whip to grab his arm. That gives Xena time to drop the spiked ball on Ares and strike the Eye with her chakram (which breaks the chakram in half again), dropping the door. Jack and Janice urge Xena to get out, but Xena’s spirit is gone and Mel is confused. Janice goes back for her and the two of them roll under the door just before it closes, trapping Ares in the chamber. Just to make sure, they blow up the whole dig site, hoping that’ll keep Ares trapped
for a while at least. (Obviously he finds a way out by the time of the events of Deja Vu all Over Again.) Later, Jack takes off (after getting a bit romantic with Mel) and Janice agrees that she and Mel might work well together. Fifty years later, we see Ted Raimi pitching ideas to Rob Tapert in Hollywood and showing Rob the Xena Scrolls (which Ted says he found in his grandfather’s attic). Rob is intrigued by the whole Xena thing, which suggests that the Xena TV show is based on Gabi’s scrolls, meaning the episodes are recreations of actual events … at least in this parallel world where Xena actually existed.
This is a really good episode (#51 on my all-time list) and one of the better 
clip shows. The clip shows were supposed to save time and money, but the set-up for this one is so elaborate, it feels like it might have cost more than a regular episode. I love Janice as Indiana Jones (complete with hat and whip) and Renee sure seems to be having fun with the part. Janice and Mel are basically reversals of Xena and Gabi, with Janice being the tough, no-nonsense hero, and Mel being the naive but brave sidekick. And Mel immediately believes Janice is a good person (despite her father’s reputation), just as Gabi immediately believed
in Xena. Apparently Lucy wasn’t too happy with the way this episode was shot, thinking she was pushed into the background too much. Lucy said she didn’t mind playing second fiddle to Renee, but resented being upstaged by Ares or Joxer. I can kinda see her point, as Mel is pretty passive in this episode. It would’ve been nice to see Mel risk her life to save Janice, since she’s the Gabi analogue and we know Gabi is brave enough to risk herself for Xena.
There’s some confusion about this episode and whether Janice and Mel are meant to be descendants of Gabi and Xena, reincarnations of them (taking 
into consideration events of Between the Lines), or both. Some writers (like Steve Sears) seem to think they’re both descendants and reincarnations, by some million-to-one quirk of fate. But I tend to think they aren’t reincarnations (especially since that idea hadn’t been thought up yet in Season 2), just descendants. That brings up the question of how Janice could be descended from Gabi since she didn’t have any children (except Hope, but she ended up dead). Some fans assume Gabi had kids some time after the series finale, which is certainly possible … but I have a different theory. Throughout this episode,
Janice is never actually referred to as Gabi’s “descendant”: Ares says she’s “related to someone in the Scrolls”; Janice laments that she’s “related to the useless tag-along Gabrielle”; and Xena says Janice should “be proud you’re part of her family”. So, maybe Janice isn’t descended from Gabi, but from her sister Lila. As we’ll see in Season 6, Lila will eventually have a daughter (Sarah), which could mean Janice is descended in a straight line from her. That would explain her resemblance to Gabi (since she and Lila share DNA) and why everyone says Janice is “related to” Gabi, instead of “descended from”.
Noticeable Things:
- Apparently, there was talk of doing another Janice and Mel episode, but the producers never got around to it. That’s too bad because I really like Janice
and Mel as a team and would’ve loved to see more of their adventures together. Some people think there’s a romantic vibe between them, but I don’t really see that. I think they’d just end up being best friends but nothing more. (Frankly, Mel seemed rather taken with Jack … maybe she’s Ted Raimi’s grandma?) - More evidence that Xena takes place in a parallel world instead of ours: Mel’s father won the 1924 Nobel prize for Archaeology, which doesn’t exist in our universe.
- Ares is apparently quite the admirer of Hitler, thinking he’s someone he could work with.
- One of the movies Jacques references looks like the Wolf Man, but that movie came out in 1941; this episode is set in 1940.
- Many fans have pointed out that the chakram depicted here is the wrong one; it’s Xena’s original chakram, not the one she got later at the beginning of the 5th Season. That chakram was broken in half (in
Ides of March) and put back together in Chakram before being integrated into Xena’s new chakram. But maybe that chakram somehow got split into light and dark versions again and the dark chakram ended up broken again before being placed in the tomb. Or maybe there was another dark chakram that we didn’t know about? In Send in the Clones, Alti gives Xena her integrated chakram, so who knows. I guess the easiest explanation is that nobody knew there’d be multiple versions of the chakram in later seasons, so this is the one they depicted.
Favourite Quotes:
- “It sure as hell ain’t suicide, sweetheart.” Janice letting Mel know the guy with the knife in his back was murdered.
- “Blin, blin, don’t you speak English?” Jacques trying to say “blink” in his best Inspector Clouseau voice.
- “I loosened it for you.” Janice, upset that Mel pulled the chakram from the rock after she couldn’t.
- “You’re a swell-looking tomato with a great set of gams but baby, I gotta go. Dig?” Jack letting Mel know their romance is over before it started. Mel seems rather upset (and rather taken with Jack).