PROMO TRANSCRIPTION
coming soon!
TV GUIDE PROMO
The Warrior Princess learns that life as a blue blood can be
a royal pain in the neck when she stands in for a lookalike
princess whose life has
been threatened by assassins.
Xena trades places with a princess who looks strikingly similar to herself in
order to get to the bottom of a series of recent assassination attempts.
Xena trades identities with a look-alike princess in order to defeat the young woman's would-be assassins.
Assassins threaten Xena's double, a princess.
AIRING AND RATING INFORMATION
1st RELEASE: 02/05/96
An AA average of 5.5
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) STAR TREK DS9 12th with 6.5
(2) HERCULES 14th with 5.9
(3) XENA/BAYWATCH 15th with 5.5
2nd RELEASE: 05/27/96
An AA average of 5.0
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) STAR TREK DS9 8th with 5.4
(2) XENA 9th with 5.0
(3) HERCULES 1oth with 4.9
3rd RELEASE: 05/19/97
An AA average of 5.6
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) XENA 12th with 5.6
(2) HERCULES 13th with 5.0
(3) STAR TREK DS9 15th with 4.9
SYNOPSIS:
This synopsis is by Kym Taborn.
Amazing, but true: the cousin of
Sisyphus (does brains run in this family or what?) hires Xena to
protect his daughter, Diana, who is, no kidding, an exact double
of...Xena! It seems that Diana is about to marry Mineus (arranged
of course; they have never met) in order to join two kingdoms
together. Part of the deal is that Mineus' kingdom must give up
slavery. This does not set well with the slave trade lobbyists.
The king fears an assassination attempt upon Diana, who has only
left the castle twice before and is rather naive. Xena agrees to
go undercover as Diana, while, instead of hiding Diana in a
secure place, Diana is forced to dress up like Xena and is thrown
out of the castle.
Xena-as-Diana then meets Philemon, the
brother of Mineus. He was sent to make the final arrangements and
preparations for the marriage and fusion of the two kingdoms. He
has secretly fallen in love with Diana. He can sense something
different with Diana, but he takes it as pre-wedding heebie-
jeebies.
Meanwhile, Diana-as-Xena comes across
Gabrielle in the midst of an attack. Gabrielle thinks it's a test
and so clobbers the fiend. Gabrielle doesn't believe Diana's
story until Diana starts to cry. Gabrielle finally gets the clue
and agrees to help Diana survive on the outside.
Xena-as-Diana thwarts off an
assassination attempt and realizes that someone is allowing the
assassins to enter the castle. Later that evening, Xena-as-Diana
meets Mineus and avoids playing a harp by breaking the strings.
Gabrielle and Diana-as-Xena slowly
bond on the road. Diana-as-Xena is exposed to some poor folks and
is shocked. As Gabrielle feeds the folks, Diana-as-Xena almost
decapitates everyone by throwing her "rounding killing thing."
When Gabrielle tells Diana-as-Xena it's called a chakram, Diana-
as-Xena says, "Bless you."
At last Philemon discovered his
beloved is not his beloved. Xena fends off another attack and
finds out that General Bromius is behind the assassination
attempts. When they go to Bromius' room, he has committed
suicide. Philemon suspects murder. The King assumes that the
peril is over, so he recalls Diana home. Diana returns and Xena
leaves. Philemon realizes it was murder and rushes out to find
Xena to bring her back. At the wedding, just as Philemon feared,
another attempt is made on Diana's life. However, Diana is really
Xena-as-Diana and beats the pants off of everyone at the wedding.
Meanwhile, Diana-as-Xena gets Philemon to admit his love for
Diana. Back at the wedding, Mineus absolutely refuses to marry
Diana because of her actions at the wedding. Happy ending!!! And
Argo gets a well-brushed tail.
COMMENTARY:
Commentary Kym Taborn.
Not to be confused with HTLJ's
"Warrior Princess", which was a dark gothic terse drama compared
to "Warrior...Princess", "Warrior...Princess" is most notable
for reaching the apex of silliness for the first season. "Royal
Couple of Thieves" and "The Prodigal" attempted to aspire to the
low-humor of this episode, but they never stood a chance.
Slapstick and broad physical comedy was used in good measure. The
energy that Ms. Lawless put into the roles was no doubt a relief
after playing the stern, uptight Xena for over half a year. For
the most part, except for a few brief moments in "Altared
States", Ms. Lawless had played Xena very stern and humorless, reserving Xena's emotional expression exclusively while in the
heat of battle or in strategy power-plays.
Lucy Lawless actually played four
characters in this romp: Xena, Diana, Xena as Diana, and Diana as
Xena. All four were distinct and never were confused during the
show. It was always very clear which character was on screen,
excepting of course the end where the trick was played upon the
audience as well. However, there were subtle things done by Ms.
Lawless which became obvious after multiple viewings of the last
act of the episode.
Lucy Lawless amplifies the confusion in
the second season sequel WARRIOR...PRINCESS...TRAMP (episode
#30), where yet another lookalike, Meg, enters the picture. Then,
Ms. Lawless gets to show off her acting chops as three people
pretending to
be two other people each: Xena pretends to be Meg and Diana; Meg
pretends to be Xena and Diana; but Diana only pretends to be
Xena. For you non-math majors, that's eight different roles for
Ms. Lawless to take on!
WHIMPERS, MURMURS, AND A LOVE GONE TOO
FAR
03-08-00. Steve Sears, a former co-executive producer of XENA, appeared on the NetForum on or around February 4, 2000, under his Tyldus rubric, and shared the following:
[responding to this question] (And what do you think of the editing of episodes from
tv stations?)
I understand that overseas, this is a huge problem.
Every country has their own time-out for TV shows. And, sometimes, it's
less than we give them. So the local companies edit out what they think
is unimportant or inappropriate. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can
do about that. However, I do know that it has also happened here in
the US, some stations wanting to squeeze in more advertising space
out our expense. Studios USA goes after those stations when it happens...
...Another
time, in "Warrior...Princess", there was a great line at the end of an
act where the prince was stepping in to protect who he thought was the
Princess (it was Xena). He says something to the effect of "Stay behind
me, this is going to get ugly" Behind him, we see Xena's demeanor change
and she says "YOu have no idea!" It was a great line, but it was CUT to
get to commercial. RJ, Rob and myself were on the phone to the station
immediately. They claimed it was a computer timing glitch and they'd fix
it. They did... the next time it happened.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Interaction between Gabrielle and
Princess Diana dressed as Xena, especially the 'round killing
thing' and 'bless you' scene.
Xena as Princess Diana and trying
to beat up bad guys without her chaperone noticing.
TRANSCRIPT
Click here to read a transcript of WARRIOR...PRINCESS.
DISCLAIMER:
Neither Xena nor her remarkably
coincidental identical twin, Diana, were harmed during the
production of this motion picture.
