Xena Warrior Princess
The Complete Illustrated Companion
By K. Stoddard Hayes
Purchase from: Amazon.co.uk
First the official blurb:
Xena: Warrior Princess chronicles the life and death (and afterlife) adventures of the fierce and fearless Xena as she travels through ancient imaginary lands. Leaping onto our screens with the now-familiar battle-cry “Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi!’, the show rans for six series, and it’s blend of drama, humour, hard-hitting (literally!) action and a knowing modern-day sensibility helped it to achieve mainstream cultdom.
Xena: Warrior Princess The Complete Illustrated Companion is the only comprehensive, fully-authorised guide to all six series of the groundbreaking action-adventure show, and contains a complete episode guide, plus character and behind-the-scenes information, and details of Xena fandom, all illustrated with over 150 photos, including an 8-page colour section.
And now the review:
I was very pleased to see that the book was dedicated to Kevin Smith although the dedication is pretty hard to find – it’s on publisher’s page on page 2.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book ever since I got wind of it a few months ago. A complete official companion book to compliment the series. There are two variant covers, the cover I have is of Xena from A Friend In Need and the fire behind her. The book is a large paperback 6 x 9 in size with 239 pages.
The book has an episode guide that goes back to the Hercules trilogy, a character study of Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, Ares, Callisto, Aphrodite, Alit, Caesar, Autolycus, Salmoneus, Cyrene, Ephiny, Eli, Eve/Livia, Borias, Friends…Enemies…Gods; Other recurring characters and lastly Send in the Clones: Look-alikes (i.e. Princess Diana, Lea, Meg etc)
There’s a small section on Behind the Scenes with costumes, make-up, stunts and special effects.
A section devoted to the fans and how fandom influenced the show (i.e. Missy Good being asked to write scripts, paying homage to the fans in Send in the Clones and Soul Possession. There is a small section devoted to Xena in Cyberspace and several well known Xena sites are listed.
There’s a Greek Mythology encyclopaedia as well.
The Episode Guide has the following info
Teleplay by:
Story By:
Directed By:
Guest Stars:
Air date (US air date)
A short synopsis of the episode about a paragraph long.
A short behind the scenes piece about that particular episode
As an example of the behind-the-scenes information for each episode, the following is for Tsunami
Compare this episode’s tsunami with the one in “Lost Mariner” to see how far computer effects advanced in just a year. During production a water tank used in shooting the episode gave way, causing a small tsunami on the set. (the tank wasn’t in use at the time).
A quote from either Xena or Gabrielle (or other characters)
The disclaimer which often appeared at the end of the episode.
Most of the photos are black and white and 8 page colour section.
The opening chapters on the production of the show are quite interesting from Season 1 to Season 6.
The episode guide is decent but could have used some oomph similar to the Xena: Warrior Princess: the Official Guide to the Xenaverse by Robert Weisbrot which was published in 1998 which had Lucy’s thoughts on each episode. I guess Lucy or Renee were too busy to contribute to this book which is a real shame.
Overall the book is well written and a good addition to any Xena Library. The price is $19.99 (US) $32.00 (Australian) and £14.99.
It’s due for release 25 April 2003.
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