Xena Reviews: Season 4, Episode 15

Between the Lines – Director: Rick Jacobson/Writer: Steven L. Sears

This one starts with Xena and Gabi still in India. Xena gets a new outfit so she can blend in better with the natives, like Gabi does. They see a woman (Nayima) about to be thrown on her husband’s funeral pyre and decide to save her. They kick some ass and take Nayima to hide in a building. While Gabi barricades the door, Xena quickly realizes there’s no other way out. Nayima shocks Xena when she starts glowing and the patterns drawn on her body come to life. Nayima sends Xena into the future to protect her karma from a great evil. Xena finds herself facing a warlord (Khindin) and soon realizes she’s not herself … she’s in the body of a woman named Arminestra.

Arminestra is the Mother of Peace, a negotiator not a warrior (and she walks with a cane), so Xena isn’t sure how to stop Khindin. As Khindin threatens to kill the villagers Arminestra is protecting, a warrior named Shakti rides in with an army to rescue Arminestra. When Xena grabs Khindin, she sees that it’s really her old enemy, Alti, who’s moved on to her next karmic life. Alti wounds Shakti, but he and Xena get away. Alti wants to steal all Xena’s power from all her karmic incarnations so Alti can become the Destroyer of Nations. She interrogates the villagers, but none of them know where Arminestra is hiding. In the present, Gabi realizes Xena is gone and Nayima explains that she sent Xena into the future to fight a great evil threatening her karma. Gabi asks to be sent there too, pointing out that her karma is irrevocably intertwined with Xena’s. Nayima agrees to send her, but says the only way to defeat the evil is to bring it back to the present using the lines on her body (the mehndi), which she teaches Gabi to draw. In the future, Xena takes care of Shakti’s wound and learns that she’s a great peacemaker in this life. Shakti is ready to surrender to keep his people alive, but Xena warns him that won’t work against Alti. In the present, Gabi learns the mehndi and is sent into the future, arriving in Shakti’s body (which embarrasses her at first, since he’s not wearing a shirt). Xena and Gabi soon recognize each other in their new bodies and Xena tells Gabi about Alti. Gabi mentions how they can only defeat Alti by taking her back to the present, but Xena wonders how they can pull that off without getting the villagers here killed.

After sending one of her men (Acklin) to retrieve the mehndi paint where Nayima hid it in the present, Xena confronts Alti, tempting her with the knowledge of who sent Xena to the future to fight her, since Alti is afraid it was a darsham (an Enlightened One). Gabi leads the army in an attack and in an interesting role-reversal, Gabi fights (using a sword, but not killing with it) while Xena frees the villagers. When Xena’s instincts push her to try and stab Alti, Acklin stops her and gets a crossbow bolt in the chest. Gabi’s knocked out and Acklin gives Xena the mehndi paint before dying.

Alti prepares to publicly crucify Xena and Gabi, but they use the time to paint the mehndi on each other’s bodies. When Alti returns, they activate the mehndi, pulling her back to the present with them just in time to stop Nayima from being burned to death. Since Xena’s herself again in the present, she can fight Alti, but she soon finds out that all of Alti’s powers have been restored too … including her ability to use past traumas to inflict pain in the present.

Using her powers, Alti pounds Xena and Gabi, showing Gabi the vision of her and Xena being crucified in the future to sap her will and feed off her fear and pain. Alti is holding Gabi by the hair, so Xena uses her chakram to cut Gabi’s hair off. Alti distracts Xena so she misses the chakram on its return and it cuts her neck. Nayima confronts Alti, who realizes she’s the darsham. Alti can’t hurt Nayima and Xena figures out that it’s the mehndi that has power over Alti, not Nayima herself. Gabi uses her mehndi to hold Alti, while Xena conjures spiritual chakrams and kills Alti. Xena and Gabi immediately crawl to each other’s arms and Nayima tells Xena she’s killed Alti at the one time in her karma when she was most powerful. She warns that Alti will return, but Xena will always be there to fight her … and Gabi will always be by Xena’s side. After healing their wounds, Nayima disappears. Gabi and Xena know that her new short hairstyle brings them one step closer to the crucifixion vision Alti showed them, but there’s not much they can do about it. Gabi tells Xena that their karmas are intertwined and Xena paints a symbol on her foot so they can recognize each other in the future.

This is a really good episode (#44 on my all-time list) and establishes the soul-connection between Xena and Gabi, which I like. Steve Sears said that Xena and Gabi felt a connection from the beginning (which we saw in Sins of the Past), which he likened to “old friends who just met”, a line from a song in the Muppet Movie. As Nayima says, Xena and Gabi are like lines in the mehndi, running parallel to each other until the lines cross and their lives intersect, something that’s fated to happen in their various incarnations. The fact that they ran into Alti in their next incarnation shows that her fate is intertwined with Xena’s too, but as an adversary instead of an ally. Alti came to India because she knew her power to exploit past lives would be stronger there, since everyone has so many incarnations (and actually believes in reincarnation, unlike the Greeks). Being a darsham, Nayima sensed Alti’s evil and sent Xena to bring her back where she could be defeated. Steve Sears says Nayima is so enlightened that she appears dimwitted to most people because her thought processes are so far beyond their understanding.

I know some people don’t like the idea of Xena and Gabi being soulmates who were destined to be together because they feel it takes away their choice, making their relationship something beyond their control. But I don’t see it that way; I think destiny brings Xena and Gabi together, in whatever incarnation, but after that the choice of what to do is still theirs. Xena didn’t have to let Gabi stay with her back in Season 1, she chose to, just as Gabi chose to stay despite all the hardships. Fate may bring them together time after time, but they always have a choice on whether to stay together or not. And not every iteration of their lives together will be a romantic one—I really can’t see Arminestra and Shakti as a couple—but they’ll always have some kind of connection, whether as friends, family lovers, whatever. But ultimately, the choice of how to proceed is up to them. (Steve Sears seemed to think that Janice and Mel were reincarnations of Xena and Gabi, as well as their descendants, but I disagree; since the reincarnation hadn’t even been thought of at the time, I think they were just meant to be descendants … and I personally never got a romantic vibe between Janice and Mel anyway.)

Noticeable Things:

• The episode opens with a quotation about karma from the Xena Blue Scroll, author unknown. Steve Sears said that blue is often considered a sacred colour, but I’m not sure why the author is unknown … did someone other than Gabi write it, or has her authorship just been forgotten over the years?
• During the first fight, Xena dips a scarf in water and stiffens it into a fighting staff, which I seem to recall being an old magic trick … maybe she learned it from Eli? She also jams a spear into a lingam, which is a stylized sculpture of a penis.
• During the big fight, Alti uses memories from Destiny, Daughter of Pomira, Callisto, When in Rome, The Deliverer, and Maternal Instincts to hurt Xena in the present.
• Nayima hides the mehndi paint behind the symbol for woman (♀) in the wall and Xena draws the same symbol on her foot at the end of the episode. Steve Sears said that symbol won’t literally appear on Xena’s foot in every incarnation, it’s just a symbolic gesture.

Favourite Quotes:

• “Xena, in this lifetime the Mother of Peace would be a goddess to me.” Gabi letting Xena know that their role-reversal in the future doesn’t bother her.
• “Think of yourselves as lines in the mehndi … separated, but forever connected.” Nayima telling Xena and Gabi that they’re destined to be together. That description could fit for the fourth season in general, since Xena and Gabi are walking different paths but stay together because of their love for each other.
• “Maybe it’s not the first time we’ve walked down this road.” Xena accepting that she and Gabi have shared many lives together. Gabi’s reply is “Maybe it won’t be the last.”