This is the second of the fifth season Chin episodes, and although it has a few twists, it is only slightly more interesting than Purity.
It starts out with Xena giving a very intense stare. Her eyelids grow heavy though, and she looks like she’s about ready to fall asleep. And then she turns a rabbit that Gabs is holding to stone. Gabs is holding the rabbit on a string, but shouldn’t she have been turned to stone as well? Joxer gets in a pretty good line. “That’s it, Xena. If you would concentrate on making that thing stone; maybe it would cook.” Actually, that made sense to me! Xena doesn’t like it though, and throws the stone rabbit at Joxer. Apparently, this wasn’t her first attempt to cook a bunny with her mind. Joxer seems to be the only one with money again. Xena has a vision of death when she touches the black powder. First she sees Joxer, then Gabs blown to bits. Yuck, Ming T’ien is back. But it is kinda cool how he and Pao Ssu share a body. They are both two-faced! Hee hee. Joxer’s Chinese clothes look Mexican. How exactly did Xena know the refugees were from Lao Ma’s temple? So they WERE headed out of Chin, but now they’re on their way back in. K’ao Hsin seems to have lost a lot of her fighting ability. Gabs looks good in pants. Here’s Gabs’ intro. “My name is Gabrielle. I’m with Xena.” Kahn is obviously Genghis Kahn. According to the Xena verse, Kahn invented land mines. How does Xena know where to walk to avoid the land mines? Why is it such a big deal for the footsteps to blow away? Can’t Xena just walk through the land mines again? I’ll bet seeing Ming T’ien really freaked Xena out! She just stares at him and Pao Ssu with her bottom lips stuck out determinedly. Pao Ssu asks, “What are you prepared to die for, Xena?”
Joxer still has the black powder? How? He had some Gabby used when they
escaped the stocks, and even tho they made some later, we saw no reason for
him to keep any. Xena has a premonition of a battle with Gabby there. It is yet another
vision of death, as in IDES.
Now Xena says they have to go back to Chin…it is a long trip, per the map,
and you have to wonder how she can travel that distance back and forth twice
in such a short time.
The Warlord Khan conjures up the ghost of Ming Ti’en for his help in his
battles. M.T. appears with his dead sister Pau on the reverse side of
himself, as a coin. They turn and you can see the other one. Pau will give
the army the secret of the black powder.
NOTE: The other army that was in the same area STILL is in possession of the
secret.
They see refugees from a battle. Xena orders the people to take refuge in
the caverns under Lao Ma’s place. Joxer will take them there. How does HE
know his way around there? Xena again is ordering everyone around. Xena
sees Tau (what a co-incidence) and Tau says Khan’s army has the powder.
Xena says it must be M.T….also he must have had help, in the form of Pau.
How does she guess this correctly?
Gabby is at the pagoda to tell the people there to leave. Lin Chi is the
leader there, and as soon as Gabby tells him to leave, there is an explosion
and a small group of Khan’s men attack. Gabby and Lin win, of course, and
they go to the caverns.
Khan’s men get a brand of the Green Dragon on their hands.
Tau says she saw the same vision that Xena did. Why does Xena think the army
will not find all the people in the caves?
Outside, there is an explosion. Joxer and a small group of Chinese are at a mine field. Xena tells them no to move and she just happens to walk around the mines…she tells them to walk in her footprints to escape. A wind blows sand in her tracks and Khan and his boys are there. He knows Xena by reputation and is respectful of her, but she is rude. Note: she was the same Destroyer of Nations as this guy, only much worse. M.T. and Pau show up…I kept wondering when M.T. would tell her to get off his back.
The soldiers toss grenades, which Xena can deflect with a shield of force.
She now sets off the mines with the Chakram, making a path for the people to
run across. Why not do this beforehand?
Xena now is reading Chinese! She does have many skills. She is only able to
knock over a vase, but not blow it up. Tau arrives and says that she saw a
warning in the book…if one of the three siblings uses the power, they all
will become stronger.
Lin Chi says he is sorry for his ego to Gabby. She looks interested in this
guy. He says Gabby is a bard, but she says she hasn’t written for a while.
Joxer comes in to tell Gabby that Xena wants her, and he is jealous.
Xena knows where the powder is, and wants it destroyed. What is the point, because the same thing happened in PURITY…a lot of people know how to make it.
Khan’s camp: Lin Chi and Gabby go to a tent to blow it up. They are captured easily by a really loose net dropped on them, with loose daggers holding down the corners. Khan comes in and drops a torch into the powder on the ground…why wasn’t this powder knocked around in the fight? Why blow up his own powder when he could have easily knifed both captives?
The powder ignites as Khan leaves. It takes mere seconds to go a few feet, so in the ensuing minutes with Xena rescuing them, they should have been blown up.
The gist: Xena feels Gabby’s fear and knows that she must create a wind to suck the air out of the tent to put out the powder. Gabby holds her breath with Lin and the air is gone and the flame is out. Xena knows they are safe. Note: This tent is not airtight…how can this even happen?
Gabby and Lin now can tear the net easily….Gabby wants to do what she came there for, so they run off as the tent blows up. The army seems to miss them running out
M.T. orders a morning attack. Xena tells Gabby she felt Gabby’s fear, but cannot control the power…now it is controlling HER. It has a will of its own.
In a wasted scene, Joxer ladles out food and talks of “legendary flatulence” as he did in SICKNESS. He sees a woman looking for her family and he says he will find them. How does he know what they even look like? Also, in eight words, he manages to get the woman’s name, Tay, in three times. Boring.
Gabby is attracted to Lin…she says home can be a person.
Joxer runs in yelling that Khan’s army is there with the captured villagers in front as a shield. Xena says she will hold the army off ALONE while everyone else runs off. She
can’t be distracted by Gabby being near her.
Xena faces the army. M.T. says Xena is facing her death as a true warrior. In an overlong scene, we see Xena deflecting a lot of rockets. There is a rounded shield she makes like a giant bubble. Rockets bounce off and hit some of the army. I kept thinking, “more power to the shields, Mr. Scott.”
As Xena holds them off, Gabby and Lin release the people and they fight their way to safety.
Three horsemen attack Xena, and she sees the Green Dragon emblem in her mind, so now she has the power to turn the army to stone, beginning with a few, and ending with a wave, killing 100,000 men and their horses. The emblem turns green before they turn to stone.This frozen army looks like the terra cotta figures of a Chinese army that was found in the early 1970s, I believe.M.T. and sis spin like a top and explode.
At the end, Joxer brags how he was so brave. Gbby looks at him with
amusement. She now says goodbye to Lin Chi and kisses his cheek.
Xena says she lost the power again, and Tau says maybe she can have it when
she NEEDS it. Xena says love can end a war.
Note: the black powder was not destroyed because there is still another army
from PURITY on the loose with the knowledge of how to make it.
This power Xena sometimes has is never really explained, and this episode was lame in many ways. There was no meaningful dialogue with Xena and Gabby, plus TPTB relies on too many explosions and special effects for the rest of the series.
The writing was just empty, and the premise that Xena, who cannot control enormous power, manages to get it to work when convenient.
This is the second part of the Black Powder caper. There are more questions
again, but what is the point of trying to answer them? It opens with Xena concentrating on a rabbit that Gabby is holding. Xena wants to cook it without using fire. Note: The rabbit is not even gutted, so she is trying to cook a “raw” rabbit. She is trying to harness the Power at will, but only succeeds in turning the rabbit to stone. Gabby tosses it into a pile of identical critters. In SICKNESS, Gabby could not catch one, but it looks as if she can get a lot of them anytime.