Hey again, Xena fans. Welcome to my geography and timeline review for Season 2. As I explained last year, this is my attempt to bring some continuity to the Season 2 episodes, trying to figure out where they took place and in what possible order to make the whole thing flow better. As I also said last year, none of this speculation really matters (and I could be way off in my reasoning), but I’m a continuity nerd, so I have to at least try. This season has some episodes that contain no geographical references at all, which is both good and bad for this little project of mine; it’s bad because no references means the episodes are impossible to place geographically, but that can be a blessing since it means I don’t have to worry too much about the surrounding episodes. (If an episode could theoretically take place anywhere, I can pretty much fit it in wherever I want.) As I said last year, if you’re not as enamoured of this sort of thing as I am, feel free to skip this post. My first review for Season 3 will be up next Wednesday as always.
I’m sticking to the same format as last time, taking the episodes in the order they aired (with one exception, which I’ll note when I get there). I won’t link to individual episodes, since they’re easy to access through my Tag Cloud under “Xena Season 2”. At the end of the post, I’ll suggest a possible viewing order that might make things flow better, but it’s just my
opinion and others might have a better order. (If so, feel free to share it in the comments.) Again, I believe Xena and Gabi are having plenty of unrecorded adventures (and training sessions, and getting-to-know-you time) in between episodes, so they technically have time to travel wherever they want if we assume the travelling was mostly done off-screen and between episodes. You can click on the maps for a larger view (CTRL click to open them in a new window or tab) and thanks again to getdrawings.com for my Greece outline map, and to d-maps.com for the Mediterranean map and the one of Greece with the rivers on it that I used to show the possible location of Mount Nestos.
1. Orphan of War: Originally, this episode wasn’t meant to be the first one of the second season, but I think it works as the season opener. It fits pretty well before Remember Nothing, since Xena’s encounter with Solan (and having to let him go again) would affect how she felt about killing the kid outside the Fates’ temple. As for the location, a lot of fans seem to think this takes place in the Centaur village near the Amazons (from Hooves and Harlots), but I have a different take on it. First of all, there’s no mention of Solan or Kaleipus in Hooves and Harlots and Xena doesn’t seem worried about running into them. So I think there must be two Centaur villages, one near the Amazon territory, and another somewhere else. After digging into real-life Greek myth, I found several locations where Centaurs were traditionally found, including the Pholoe (or Foloi) Oak Forest in the Peloponnese. That’s where I’m locating Kaleipus and Solan’s village, for several reasons. First,
the Ixion Caves are close to the village and, as we’ll see in Past Imperfect, Borias must’ve gone to get the Ixion Stone right before the Battle of Corinth, after he stopped Xena from killing Kaleipus. That means the Ixion Caverns have to be relatively close to Corinth, and the Pholoe Forest is only about 50 miles away. There’s also some cut dialogue in Hooves and Harlots suggesting Tyldus left the main Centaur settlement after the Battle of Corinth and came north to settle near the Amazons. Ephiny’s presence in the Pholoe Forest could be explained by her desire to get as far away from the Amazons (who resent her for marrying a Centaur) and northern Centaurs (who probably aren’t all that fond of Amazons) to raise her son, Xenon.
2. Remember Nothing: This episode fits fine where it is and geographically it obviously takes place at a temple to the Fates. I’d originally thought it must take place near Amphipolis, but according to Wikipedia, the Fates had temples (that we know of) at Corinth, Sparta, and Thebes. So, if I’m right about the previous episode taking place in the Pholoe Oak Forest, the logical place for this temple would be outside Corinth somewhere. Of course, the Fates could have temples all over Greece, but Corinth fits with the surrounding episodes, and with real-life history. (Although I think Xena probably takes place in a parallel universe, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fit it as close to our world as possible.)
3. Warrior…Princess…Tramp: This actually aired as the sixth episode, but as I explained in my review, there’s no way it belongs there. Gabi is far too
casual in her conversation with Joxer about Callisto for this to take place right after Callisto killed Gabi’s husband (especially since she goes back to being depressed in the following episode). I think someone saw the Callisto conversation and mistakenly thought this episode belonged right after Return of Callisto, but that doesn’t work. This was originally meant to be Joxer’s first appearance of the second season, so I’m placing it here. As for the location, it takes place in Lias’s (made-up) kingdom of Trea, which is about halfway between Corinth and Thebes, since Xena mentions (in separate episodes) that it takes a day to get there from either location.
4. Giant Killer: This episode obviously takes place in the Middle East. Even if you ignore some of the biblical trappings, it’s a fight between Israelites and Philistines over land, which the Philistines say was worthless desert before they got there. So this must take place in the Middle East, probably in the Valley of Elah near Jerusalem. That raises the question of what Xena and Gabi are doing there, but the episode itself answers that: Xena came to keep her promise to meet Goliath there ten years on from their last meeting. It’s
a pretty fair jaunt to the Middle East, which means there’s a lot of travel time glossed over between episodes … unless we move this episode forward. If we make this episode the first of the season, it makes way more sense. In fact, this could take place in the hiatus between seasons; long enough after Is There a Doctor in the House? for Gabi’s wounds to have healed, and long enough before Orphan of War for them to get back to Greece. They could’ve shortened their travel time if they went by ship, but I think they must’ve gone the long way by land because in Ulysses, Gabi is unfamiliar with the sensation of seasickness, suggesting it’s her first time on a ship. If she’d crossed the Aegean and Mediterranean seas (twice), she wouldn’t be so surprised by her nausea on Ulysses’ ship later.
5. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun: This takes place in the Forest of the Bacchae,
which could be anywhere; in real life, Bacchus (or Dionysus) was supposedly from Thebes (or his mother was), so the Forest could be located somewhere near there, maybe near Mount Kythera, which was sacred to Dionysus. That would fit with Xena and Gabi moving northwest from Corinth in Warrior…Princess…Tramp (if we move Giant Killer to the first spot), as you can see on the map for that entry.
6. Return of Callisto: Presumably Callisto’s prison is located somewhere near Delphi (and the ruins of Cirrha), since that’s where her last appearance took place. That would fit with Xena and Gabi continuing in a general northwest direction. (See the map below.)
7. Intimate Strangers: This has to occur right after the previous episode (definitely not with Warrior…Princess…Tramp in between), but the starting location could technically be anywhere. The episode has to end very close to Amphipolis, since Callisto’s men bring back Cyrene and the other hostages pretty fast. After Callisto’s death, Xena and Gabi started tracking Theodorus and the rest of Callisto’s men, and it’s safe to assume they’d want to get as far away from Xena as possible. So maybe Theodorus and company fled north, hoping to escape into the wilds of Europe, and Xena and Gabi caught
up with them not too far from Amphipolis. As for Callisto and Ares, they were using magic, so they could appear wherever they wanted, and it’s safe to assume Hades sent Xena back close to where Callisto was to give her a decent chance to fix things.
8. Ten Little Warlords: This starts with Xena (still in Callisto’s body) and Gabi travelling to a port city, which could be anywhere but is probably somewhere close to Amphipolis, since that’s where they ended last episode. They travel to an island to confront Sisyphus, but it can’t be too far from shore since it doesn’t take them long to get there. (Even Gabi and Joxer in their little boat make the trip in a few
hours.) So it must be a small island, very close to shore. There are numerous tiny (and unnamed) islands along the Thracian coast, so this episode could take place on any one of them. There’s one off the first isthmus of Chalcidice, not far from Stagira, plus a couple along the coast southwest of Amphipolis (see the map just above). Stagira was the ancient enemy of Amphipolis, even in real life, so it would be interesting to know if Xena and Gabi passed through there … maybe an unrecorded adventure? It would make sense, since the Stagirans wouldn’t welcome Xena (who was pretty hard on them according to what she told Caesar in Destiny), but maybe she figured she could do some good deeds there while in Callisto’s body.
9. A Solstice Carol: This could really take place anywhere, even in the Middle East (although I don’t think it does, for reasons I explained in my review). Technically, this could be moved forward to go right after Giant Killer, since that one takes place in the Middle East, but that would screw up the
timing of the winter solstice. I have no problem keeping it here, probably somewhere in Thrace, Macedonia, or northern Greece. Presumably, it’s not too far from Poteidaia, since Sinticles’ toys were sold there when Gabi was a child. Maybe it’s on the Chalcidice peninsula, like the previous episode. It’s strange Xena and Gabi don’t go home for solstice, but maybe Gabi knows Xena won’t be welcome in Poteidaia, and Xena doesn’t care that much anyway, so they just decided to spend it together. (Speaking of solstice, Melissa Good wrote a great little fan-fic story about Xena and Gabi’s first solstice together, which every Xena fan should read … especially if you’re a Texter like me.)
10. The Xena Scrolls: This episode is displaced in time, so it could fit anywhere in the rotation and the geography doesn’t much matter (although it’s said to take place in Macedonia in 1940).
11. Here She Comes … Miss Amphipolis: This takes place on a sea coast where a war was fought a year ago. It’s strange that Xena knows all about the war and Gabi doesn’t, since they were already travelling together a year ago. Maybe Xena means the war happened last calendar year, which could be
longer than one full year ago. Or maybe she heard about the war from someone else, like Hercules. It’s also possible Xena was involved in trying to stop the war; maybe that was one of the good deeds she did after her face-turn in Hercules, but before meeting Gabi in Sins of the Past. The three warlords do seem to know her, although they could’ve met her elsewhere. The warlords are from Skyros (an island in the Aegean), Parnassus (a mountain in central Greece), and Messene (a city in the southern Peloponnese). (I’ve seen transcripts where Messene is rendered as Mycenae, but I don’t think that’s what they were saying in the episode.) Those territories are far apart, but city-states (and warlords) had a way of acquiring territory all over the place, so the neutral territory where the war took place could be anywhere. A logical location would be in eastern Boeotia along the coast, or maybe even in the southern part of the island of Euboea.
12. Destiny: This one starts with Xena visiting the ruins of Cirrha, which is on the west coast, near Delphi. I couldn’t find a Mount Nestos, but there is a Nestos River that flows out of the mountains north of Amphipolis (and Xena tells Gabi the mountain is north of the Strymon pass), so I assume the mountain would be somewhere near the river of the same name. That means Gabi (and Argo) dragged Xena over 200 miles to get to mount Nestos.
Some fans think Cirrha is actually Sirra, a village just north of Amphipolis, which would make the trip to Mount Nestos a lot shorter. But the Xena RPG identifies Cirrha as Callisto’s home village and I tend to agree. I like the idea that Gabi (while wounded, remember!) was willing to haul Xena hundreds of miles to save her life; it shows how much Gabi loves Xena, and it explains why Gabi was so exhausted by the time she reached Niclio’s hut. In the flashbacks, Caesar mentions Neopolitas, which I’m assuming is Neapolis, just down the coast from Amphipolis. That was probably where Caesar had Xena crucified, so M’lila wouldn’t have had too far to go to get her to Mount Nestos … certainly not as far as Gabi did.
13. The Quest: This takes place in Amazon territory, which as I pointed out last time, is located east of Amphipolis (see the map just above). Presumably Gabi took a different (and maybe easier) route to Amphipolis
after leaving Mount Nestos, one that brought her through Amazon lands. Maybe she even did it on purpose, needing to see some friendly faces in her time of grief. Autolycus could’ve started out anywhere and travelled to Amazon territory, since we don’t know how long Gabi spent there, although he probably wasn’t too far away. Maybe the Dagger of Helios (and the map to Amazon caves) were in a town not far from Amphipolis, which would explain how Xena knew about them.
14. A Necessary Evil: This starts in the Amazon village, but apparently ends up pretty far away. Callisto was confined in the Labyrinth of the Gods in a Hercules episode, and the Labyrinth has to be relatively close to Corinth, since Iolaus and Hercules made it back for the party at Iphicles’ castle in the Hercules episode Surprise. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I guess there’s no reason Xena and Gabi couldn’t have fled south while the Amazons were delaying Velasca and made it to the Labyrinth near Corinth. Then they released Callisto and led Velasca to the lava stream, which would have to be pretty close to the Labyrinth, maybe in the mountains west of Corinth.
15. A Day in the Life: This one takes place in a village called Laurel, which is near another village called Piedmont. Both names are obviously just made up, but Piedmont means “foot of the mountain” in French. The Ancient Greek word for foot was “pous” and the word for mountain was “oros”. I found a town called Oropus (see the map two entries below), which is
basically the Greek equivalent of Piedmont, on the northeastern coast of Attica, not too far from Athens. That would generally fit with the surrounding episodes. There’s no sign of a place called daphne (which is the Greek word for laurel) anywhere nearby, but maybe it’s too small to be on the map. Since Hower can travel back and forth between Laurel and Piedmont, they must be pretty close together, probably less than ten miles.
16. For Him the Bell Tolls: This episode and the previous one could be switched in viewing order, but there’s no reason they have to be. Xena and Gabi seem to be travelling around in Attica at this point, and Xena tells Gabi at the beginning of the episode that she’ll have to push to make it to Lias’s kingdom in a day (and Gabi says it’ll take her until the next day to get there on foot), so they must be at least thirty or forty miles from Lias’s place. That would fit with them being in Attica, although they could also be north of Thebes or west of Corinth. All the place names mentioned here (Amphis, Mylon, Pyros) seem to be made up, so I’d place this in Attica just to make it fit better with the surrounding episodes.
17. The Execution: This takes place in a small town, and when Xena is telling Gabi and Meleager about killing Kalamus, she says it was on the road outside … someplace. It’s hard to hear what she says, even with the volume cranked right up. The Bitch of Rome transcripts say “Corener”, which isn’t a real place as far as I can tell. But whatever name Xena says definitely starts with “Cor-”, so I think it might be Coroneia, a town about 50 miles northwest of Athens. Xena said the killing happened “last winter, when Gabrielle was at the Academy in Athens”. Athens City Academy took place
well over a year ago, but maybe when Xena says “last winter”, she means the winter before the latest one (when A Solstice Carol took place). In that episode, Xena left Gabi at the Academy and went to Kerames to fight a cyclops, but maybe after she finished that, she headed north to another trouble spot (sending Gabi a message to let her know where she was) and ended up on the road outside Coroneia just in time to kill Kalamus. We don’t know exactly how long Gabi was at the Academy, but it was probably at least a few weeks, plenty of time for Xena to travel around and have a few solo adventures (while missing Gabi like crazy, of course).
18. Blind Faith: There’s nothing to say exactly where this one takes place, but it must be within a day’s travel of Athens, since Xena had the option of going there to get the senna for her eyes. That would fit with the previous episode being set in Coroneia, which is about two days from Athens.
19. Ulysses: This one obviously ends on Ithaca, but it must start along the Greek coast somewhere. Right after they set sail, Ulysses says it’ll take “several days” on the open seas to reach Ithaca, which means they must start anywhere from 60 to 100 miles away. That could put their initial meeting with Ulysses on the northern coast of the Peloponnese, near Aegira. They could also start on the west coast of Messenia, near Pylos, but
that raises the question of how they got down here. The northern Peloponnesian coast would be closer to their previous location near Athens, if we assume they headed west along the northern Peloponnesian coast. In myth, the island of the Sirens was said to be near Charybdis, but we’re already breaking away from the traditional story (which had Ulysses wandering for ten years after the Trojan War ended, instead of only a year or so like he’s been doing here). So I figure if the overall story is changed that much from The Odyssey, the Sirens don’t have to be in their traditional location either. Xena mentions leapfrogging up some islands to reach Ithaca and I think those could be the Echinades, a group of islands along the coast east of Ithaca … one of which could be the Sirens’ island.
20. The Price: This seems to take place on the edge of civilization (since Gabi wonders if they’re the first people ever to visit there), but there is a Greek outpost nearby. It’s probably a frontier fort, outside Greek territory, set up to monitor the locals (or maybe to establish a presence for later colonization). Xena says her army met the Horde the first time they turned west (near some mountains), which could put them north of Illyria in the Alps; maybe they took Ulysses ship north and sent it back with the crew after disembarking, wanting to explore someplace they’d never been before. Alternately, they could have travelled all the way over to the Greek colonies near Massilia (present day Marseilles) in southern Gaul. Considering Xena’s
history with Caesar and the Romans, you’d think she’d steer clear of any territory too close to the Roman heartland, but she and Gabi might’ve made their way west to Massilia, again looking for unexplored territory. That would explain the Greek fort, since the Greeks colonized a pretty wide area along the coast near Massilia. The more westerly location would fit better with the next episode too, unless we assume Xena and Gabi travelled west from the Alps north of Illyria (maybe trying to get out of Horde territory) and ended up on the western side of Italy that way.
21. Lost Mariner: However they ended up west of Italy, they must’ve gotten passage on a merchant ship bound for Greece, which sinks at the beginning of this episode, probably west of Sicily. Xena tells Cecrops to sail east to get to Charybdis, which was traditionally located in the Strait of Messina (see the map just above), between Sicily and Italy. So they must’ve started west of there, and I guess they must’ve ended up somewhere along the Sicilian coast after Cecrops’ ship broke up. Sicily also held a number of Greek colonies back then, so it wouldn’t have been too difficult to find a Greek ship to take them home.
22. A Comedy of Eros: This one could take place anywhere, although I’m assuming it’s somewhere in Greece, since Hestia was a Greek goddess. Gabi
says every Hestian Virgin in the province is at the temple, which also makes it sound like it must be in Greece somewhere. As for episode order, I think the last seven or eight episodes can stay in the order they aired; it fits geographically, and the progression of Xena and Gabi’s romance (with Gabi realizing she loves Xena, Xena pulling back for fear of hurting her, and Gabi working to convince Xena that love is worth the risk) fits too.
So, if we take my ideas into consideration, we end up with a slightly altered episode order for Season 2:
1. Giant Killer 12. Destiny
2. Orphan of War 13. The Quest
3. Remember Nothing 14. A Necessary Evil
4. Warrior…Princess…Tramp 15. A Day in the Life
5. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun 16. For Him the Bell Tolls
6. Return of Callisto 17. The Execution
7. Intimate Stranger 18. Blind Faith
8. Ten Little Warlords 19. Ulysses
9. A Solstice Carol 20. The Price
10. The Xena Scrolls 21. Lost Mariner
11. Here She Comes … Miss Amphipolis 22. A Comedy of Eros
Not really a lot of differences from the airing order; A Day in the Life and For Him the Bell Tolls could be switched, but there’s no compelling reason to do so. If anyone has any additions, questions, or suggestions, feel free to mention them in the comments … I love talking about this stuff. And join me next Wednesday for my review of The Furies, the first episode of Season 3.