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THE DELIVERER/GABRIELLE'S HOPE EPISODE OBSERVATIONS

posted 8 years ago by FloatingOpera7
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In the episode The Deliverer, they're in Britannia (ancient England during the Roman occupation) because Xena is going after Julius Caesar to help out Boudica her friend... and I get that they try to be at least a little bit historically accurate. They have Boudica who was an actual female tribal leader of Celts during the Roman invasion of England. However I'm not sure if Boudica lived at the same time as Julius Caesar. Would Julius Caesar have known about Boudicaor have armed his men for an attack on the part of Britannia where Boudica lived. Boudica died around 61 AD. Did these two even live in the same time period?

Who is Dahak supposed to be? He can't be Satan/The Devil since Lucifer/Satan appears in a later episode, other season (I think it's season 5 or 6). How does Dahak figure into the Celtic/pre Christian pantheon? At the end of that episode after the temple of Dahak blows up and Xena saves Gabrielle (who has been impregnated by Dahak at the altar) the ruins of the temple form Stone Henge. Is this the writers of the show's way of suggesting that Stone Henge in England in the context of the Xena universe - was Dahak's temple?

Lastly, in the subsequent episode Gabrielle's Hope, Gabby and Xena and Gabby's baby Hope are clearly in the time of King Arthur of the Arthurian legends. A group of men that serve as a prototype for the Knights of the Round Table explain to Gabrielle and Xena that they are awaiting the coming of a king who will unite their lands and save them (presumably from their enemy the Romans after pulling a sword from a stone. This is the actual source of the legends behind King Arthur. They don't mention Arthur but they do have the sword in the stone and Xena even pulls ito ut for a brief second before putting it back in it's place. So you have Boudica/Stone Henge and King Arthur in the same time period all during Xena's visit to Britannia. It's really messing with actual history and it's not a bad thing but it's a little crazy if you think about it. They also never returned to the King Arthur plot line had they followed what happened after Xena left Britannia.

[–] TheImponderableGirl 8 years ago

Hi. It's been a while since I watched Xena, but I remember the Dahak storyline pretty well (or well enough to answer some of your questions).

Caesar died, if I recall correctly, on the Ides of March, 44 BCE, so, yeah, not the same time period as Boudica.

Dahak was apparently based off of a Persian god named Azi Dahaka. (I remember reading a fanfic years ago that inspired me to look up some Persian mythology.)

As for King Arthur, he wouldn't come along for another, what, millenia and a half; he did show up in an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, where Merlin sent him back to Hercules's time (and when Merlin was still a young man fairly new to his powers). Xena pulling the sword from the stone implied that the king these proto-KotRT were waiting for was her descendant (obviously, Arthur).

But I agree with you about it messing with actual history and being a bit crazy. I mean, they also had Xena participating in the Trojan War and knowing Julius Caesar, and there are centuries between those two time periods.

~ Perhaps we are all stories . . . And may those stories never end. ~

[–] enyala 8 years ago

You can't really take it seriously, and we were never expected to anyway. The writers always took liberties and the Xena period is just a loose basis. More "inspired by" than "based on a true story".

More to the point, there was never a Xena (obviously). But there was an obscure historical person "Zinovia" (Xenovia) in the Thrace/Macedonia area (proper Greek lands, not the cheap ripoffs of Skopja and Albania who stole the names), so perhaps she was the inspiration behind "Xena". Name-wise anyway.

Now, Dahak. He is supposed to predate everyone basically. An ancient demon god from the time of the Zoroastrians. Definitely not affiliated with "God" and "Lucifer/Satan".

Regarding Stonehenge in the Xenaverse, there has never been a particular deity associated with the Druids. Some are monotheistic, others are polytheistic. So again, connecting the ruins of Dahak's temple with Stonehenge and the Druids is just historical fiction/supposition. Interpretation, if you will.