THE WARRIOR PRINCESS

GUEST STARS, CAST & CREDITS
PROMO TRANSCRIPTION
TV GUIDE PROMO
AIRING AND RATING INFORMATION
SYNOPSIS 1 by Kym
SYNOPSIS 2 by Kym Again
COMMENTARY
TALES OF THE HERCAVERSE
TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER
WHOOSH! ARTICLES
LINKS

PROMO TRANSCRIPTION
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TV GUIDE PROMO
The "perfect woman" is waiting for Iolaus. Unfortunately, she's an evil, power-hungry warrior princess, who's using him to get Hercules out of the way.

A power-hungry princess bent on killing Hercules uses his friend Iolaus to trap him.

Xena turns up on today's first Hercules episode [Thanksgiving Day Marathon 1998]. It's one of the shows from Herc's first season that introduced the warrior princess and readied her own series. And while she may be bad, she's more than good enough for the smitten Iolaus. He thinks she's "the perfect woman."

Intending to kill Hercules, the woman warrior Xena (introduced in this episode), seduces Iolaus and pits friend against friend.

AIRING AND RATING INFORMATION
1st RELEASE: 03-13-95
An AA average of 6.2
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) STAR TREK: DS9 ranked 3rd with 7.9
(2) HERCULES ranked 11th with 6.2
(3) BAYWATCH ranked 14th with 5.7

2nd RELEASE: 06-26-95
An AA average of 5.0
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) STAR TREK: DS9 ranked 4th with 6.0
(2) BAYWATCH ranked 7th with 5.4
(3) HERCULES ranked 8th with 5.0

3rd RELEASE: 10-09-96
An AA average of 5.2
Competition from Syndicated Action Dramas:
(1) STAR TREK: DS9 ranked 5th with 6.9
(2) HERCULES [showing UNDER THE BROKEN SKY] ranked 8th with 5.9
(3) XENA [showing WARRIOR PRINCESS] ranked 13th with 5.2
(4) BAYWATCH ranked 20th with 4.5

SYNOPSIS #1:

Synopsis by Kym.

That wild and crazy Iolaus falls for the wily charms of that undomesticated and ethically-challenged warrior princess, Xena, who - surprise! surprise! - is not after Iolaus at all, but...Hercules! Who'd a'thunk it? Hercules does! He goes to retrieve his pal only to have the totally smitten and brainwashed Iolaus challenge him to a duel to the death! It doesn't get much better than this. Fortunately, Hercules beats Iolaus to his senses just in time for her evilness, Xena, to rear her horse and tell the boys, "Ha! You haven't heard the last of me, Hercules!"

SYNOPSIS 2:

Synopsis by Kym as well.

This is it! Our first introduction to Xena: Warrior Princess.

Herc and Iolaus make a splendid knife, which Herc gives to Iolaus as a token of their friendship. Bad move, Herc. While playing with it, Iolaus discovers an old flame got married. This flings Iolaus into a predictable depression. Herc then goes off to build a wall for his mother. Second bad move, Herc.

Meanwhile back at the camp, the Evil Xena trains her men in order to further her evil plan to kill Hercules. She beats her loyal minions to a pulp and calls them pathetic. What a woman. No doubt, they begged for more.

In the course of the episode it is s-l-o-w-l-y revealed that Xena has hatched an incredibly contrived plan to become Iolaus' lover in order to use Iolaus to bait Hercules and/or kill him (it's a win-win situation). Iolaus falls for phase one and goes off with the evil Xena. Herc does not stop him. Third bad move, Herc. Xena then gives one of her boytoy warriors her medallion and tells him to kill Hercules, knowing full well that he will fail and cause Hercules to follow Iolaus to her camp once Herc discovers who sent the soon to be expired boytoy. This warrior princess IS evil and quite the plotmistress.

Hercules falls for the bait, and against his mother's wishes goes to Xena's camp! This could have been the fourth bad move, but wasn't because Herc KNEW it was a bad move, but did it anyway. He's really fond of Iolaus.

To make a long story short (skipping Iolaus' thoughtless dropping of Herc's splendid knife at a scene of carnage and Xena's use of another disposible boytoy warrior), Xena POISONS Iolaus' simple mind (it's very obvious that it wasn't difficult to accomplish) and gets Herc and Iolaus beating each other up. When Herc decides NOT to kill Iolaus, Iolaus gets all mushy and Xena gets nervous. As Herc and Iolaus start tearing up the camp like the good old days when they were best buds, Xena jumps on her horse and gives the boys a look of 'You haven't seen the last of me...you...you... guys!.' She rides off to her future which included another gig on HERCULES and her very own show. That was one triumphant evil warrior princess.

COMMENTARY:

This commentary is by Kymster!.

Xena wasn't kidding! She came back for a highly rated HERCULES two-parter. MCA/Universal saw gold in them thar hills, and next the fall, Xena had her very own new series. Fans arose from all over to support Xena's new path of redemption and recovery of honor. A direct result of this obsessive attraction which the highly charismatic character of Xena engendered, was this very webpage you are currently reading along with other fan-generated fan fiction, newsletters, clubs, gatherings, mailing lists, etc.

TALES OF THE HERCAVERSE

12-30-00.

12-26-00. Robert Tapert, in an interview with WHOOSH to be released January 1, 2001 (#52):

RUDNICK:
I noticed in both HERCULES and in the early episodes of XENA, there were writing credits for John Schulian, who has always been something of a mysterious guy to me. I haven't seen much information about him, yet he wrote some really good episodes, especially on HERCULES.
TAPERT:
He did indeed. Here's really what happened. John said, "I want to do the story of the woman who comes between Hercules and Iolaus." I said, "Great, John, I want to do the story of this evil Warrior Princess and do this three episode arc." I wasn't thinking spin-off at this point. I had a very definite vision of what I wanted that Xena character to be. John wrote the script WARRIOR PRINCESS (H09/109) on HERCULES. If you ever would ask Kevin, he hated that script. Always hated it. Eric Gruendemann and a bunch of other people down here didn't like it. They never believed that a girl could get Herc and Iolaus to fight each other.

After we went to [the HERCULES] series, I gave Bob Bielak the story for THE GAUNTLET (H12/112). Never found the transition in the third act where Xena had her turnaround. The only change we made was originally at the end of UNCHAINED HEART (H13/113) we were going to have Xena killed. We kept her alive so she could go on.

12-24-98. On the USA Thanksgiving Day XENA/HERK marathon (Thursday, 11-26-98), Lucy Lawless did pre-recorded bits between the shows. For the first WARRIOR PRINCESS break (10:00am), she said, "Alright, let's see what's coming up next. [handed envelope by an unseen person] Thank you, my lovely assistant. OK, it's 'The Warrior Princess'. This was the first time I ever played Xena, and on the first day, I went to work, it was the biggest job I'd ever had. Sat down in the make-up bus and burst into tears. I'm not ready for this! But I guess I was. Well, you be the judge." For the second break (10:30am), she said, "When we first sat down and in the make-up bus discussing how we wanted Xena would look, they wanted to take me blonder because my natural hair color is kind of a light ash blond, dark blond, and I just knew that this would make my hair fall out in a matter of months, so I said, 'No,no,no...she should be like Gabriela Sabatini'. She should be, you know, bronzed and big and strong and sexy. So that's what we did, we went with dark hair. I think it was a good choice. What do you think?" She also made a quick comment at the end (11:00am), saying, "Ooooh, so chilling. She's so bad!"

11-20-98. Brad Carpenter, the then Director of MArketing at RenPic, stated at the Burbank II Con (01/98) that the main reason Lucy Lawless got the job as Xena was because Vanessa Angel, who was originally up for the role, got sick, and no one else wanted to come down to New Zealand during pilot season to take a chance on a new show. They wanted to use Lucy, but someone said "You just used her [on HERCULES]." Rob Tapert responded "Aw, just dye her hair black!"

11-20-98, From KSZoneW. The countryside shots used in HTLJ's "Armaggedon Now" was also used for many scenes in the Hercules/Xena trilogy episodes during season 1 of Hercules, including Warrior Princess.

11-20-98Highlights: Whenever Xena interacts with her warrior boy toys, I have to smile. Xena's commander techniques are always a pleasure to watch.

TRANSCRIPT

Click here to read a transcript of THE WARRIOR PRINCESS.

DISCLAIMER

No animals were harmed during the production of this motion picture.

WHOOSH! ARTICLES:

Klion, Rori. "Collection of Quotes No. H09 [The Warrior Princess]". WHOOSH #01 (9609)

Taborn, Kym Masera. "Annotated THE WARRIOR PRINCESS, The". WHOOSH #02 (9610)

Taborn, Kym Masera. "Mysteries Surrounding the Creation of the Syndicated Television Show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS". WHOOSH #03 (9611)

Taborn, Kym Masera. "WARRIOR PRINCESS: The Beginning of It All". WHOOSH #02 (9610)

LINKS:

Script.