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The Adventures of Aella the Amazon!

V

varyar

giver of existential dread
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In case you don't remember it - and I'll be honest, it's not hard, there were a lot of Xena knock-offs in the late 90s and early 2000s - The Adventures of Aella the Amazon (Les Aventures d'Aella l'Amazone) was a French and Canadian co-production that ran from 1998 through 2004. It starred a young Laetitia Casta as Aella and even younger Emilie Dequenne as her cousin Menippe, with a young Eva Green as a recurring nemesis turned ally turned friend. Fun stuff, even if it was so very, very cheesy. What do you remember most about it?

I put together a quick episode guide with some of my comments in case you forgot anything.

Season 1

1 - Aella the Amazon (pilot part 1)
2 - Aella the Adventurer (pilot part 2)
3 - The Plight of Pegasus
4 - The Madness of Medusa
5 - The Walls (Trojan War part 1)
6 - The Horse (Trojan War part 2)
7 - Echoes of Troy
8 - Agave's Ambition (first appearance of Agave, in full villain mode - chew that scenery, girl!)
9 - City of Sages
10 - The Vengeance of Medusa (seeing Aella, Menippe and Agave screaming as they slowly turned to stone freaked me out when I first watched the episode)

Season 2

1 - Revival (the CGI for the de-petrification was pretty good for the time, don't you think? Admittedly, they did kind of drop the '800 years just passed us by' pretty quick)
2 - Strange New World (like, this is the last episode the time jump is more than mentioned, right?)
3 - Liars and Lyres in Laodicea (the first musical episode!)
4 - Lament for Leto
5 - Sayid the Scoundrel! (Tony Shalhoub was perfect casting for the swashbuckling Sinbad expy, don't you think?)
6 - Sayid the Sailor! (Samir! I loved his flirtatious relationship with Menippe, they had such great chemistry)
7 - Agave Escapes
8 - The Pickpocket of Phocaea
9 - Agave in Alexandria
10 - Wrath of Poseidon

Season 3

1 - Scythia
2 - The Horse Lords (yay! the centaurs! loved these guys)
3 - The Furies of the North
4 - The Giant Ones (Bigfoot)
5 - Warriors of the Steppe (Scythian Amazons part 1)
6 - Rulers of the Steppe (Scythian Amazons part 2)
7 - Whispers in the Woods
8 - Agave's Anger
9 - Agave's Agony
10 - The Golden Fleece

Season 4

1 - Sailing the Sea
2 - The Terror of the Tarasque
3 - Menippe in the Arena (Emilie Dequenne and Eva Green were so great here)
4 - Song of the Siren
5 - Misadventures in Massalia
6 - The Warrior Queen (Lucy Lawless' guest appearance launched a thousand shippers. didn't it?)
7 - Might of the Minotaur
8 - Revenge of the Centaurs
9 - Sayid and Son!
10 - Agave in Alalia (Green was fantastic in the completion of her heel-face turn)

Season 5

1 - The King of Macedon (Vincent Cassel was sooo good as Alexander)
2 - Bitter Parting (it really pissed me off when they just wrote Aella off like that - they'd never even shown us the Iberian Amazons before and now she's their Queen, kaybye? What crap!)
3 - The Last Riddle of Aristotle
4 - Alexander's Alchemist
5 - Perils and Promises in Persepolis (the second musical episode!)
6 - Sayid the Seeker!
7 - Beyond the Caspian Gates
8 - The Sinister Schemes of Alexander
9 - Alexander Against the Amazons
10 - Gog and Magog

Season 6

1 - More Misadventures in Massalia
2 - Night of Terror
3 - Day of Terror
4 - Summons of the Siren
5 - Mysteries and Muses in Marathon (the third musical episode!)
6 - Dark Knight of the Soul
7 - Prelude to War
8 - Wrath of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 1)
9 - Woes of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 2)
10 - Wonders of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 3; not gonna lie, I teared up a little when they cut to credits after Menippe and Samir's wedding)
 
varyar said:
In case you don't remember it - and I'll be honest, it's not hard, there were a lot of Xena knock-offs in the late 90s and early 2000s - The Adventures of Aella the Amazon (Les Aventures d'Aella l'Amazone) was a French and Canadian co-production that ran from 1998 through 2004. It starred a young Laetitia Casta as Aella and even younger Emilie Dequenne as her cousin Menippe, with a young Eva Green as a recurring nemesis turned ally turned friend. Fun stuff, even if it was so very, very cheesy. What do you remember most about it?

I put together a quick episode guide with some of my comments in case you forgot anything.

Season 1

1 - Aella the Amazon (pilot part 1)
2 - Aella the Adventurer (pilot part 2)
3 - The Plight of Pegasus
4 - The Madness of Medusa
5 - The Walls (Trojan War part 1)
6 - The Horse (Trojan War part 2)
7 - Echoes of Troy
8 - Agave's Ambition (first appearance of Agave, in full villain mode - chew that scenery, girl!)
9 - City of Sages
10 - The Vengeance of Medusa (seeing Aella, Menippe and Agave screaming as they slowly turned to stone freaked me out when I first watched the episode)

Season 2

1 - Revival (the CGI for the de-petrification was pretty good for the time, don't you think? Admittedly, they did kind of drop the '800 years just passed us by' pretty quick)
2 - Strange New World (like, this is the last episode the time jump is more than mentioned, right?)
3 - Liars and Lyres in Laodicea (the first musical episode!)
4 - Lament for Leto
5 - Sayid the Scoundrel! (Tony Shalhoub was perfect casting for the swashbuckling Sinbad expy, don't you think?)
6 - Sayid the Sailor! (Samir! I loved his flirtatious relationship with Menippe, they had such great chemistry)
7 - Agave Escapes
8 - The Pickpocket of Phocaea
9 - Agave in Alexandria
10 - Wrath of Poseidon

Season 3

1 - Scythia
2 - The Horse Lords (yay! the centaurs! loved these guys)
3 - The Furies of the North
4 - The Giant Ones (Bigfoot)
5 - Warriors of the Steppe (Scythian Amazons part 1)
6 - Rulers of the Steppe (Scythian Amazons part 2)
7 - Whispers in the Woods
8 - Agave's Anger
9 - Agave's Agony
10 - The Golden Fleece

Season 4

1 - Sailing the Sea
2 - The Terror of the Tarasque
3 - Menippe in the Arena (Emilie Dequenne and Eva Green were so great here)
4 - Song of the Siren
5 - Misadventures in Massalia
6 - The Warrior Queen (Lucy Lawless' guest appearance launched a thousand shippers. didn't it?)
7 - Might of the Minotaur
8 - Revenge of the Centaurs
9 - Sayid and Son!
10 - Agave in Alalia (Green was fantastic in the completion of her heel-face turn)

Season 5

1 - The King of Macedon (Vincent Cassel was sooo good as Alexander)
2 - Bitter Parting (it really pissed me off when they just wrote Aella off like that - they'd never even shown us the Iberian Amazons before and now she's their Queen, kaybye? What crap!)
3 - The Last Riddle of Aristotle
4 - Alexander's Alchemist
5 - Perils and Promises in Persepolis (the second musical episode!)
6 - Sayid the Seeker!
7 - Beyond the Caspian Gates
8 - The Sinister Schemes of Alexander
9 - Alexander Against the Amazons
10 - Gog and Magog

Season 6

1 - More Misadventures in Massalia
2 - Night of Terror
3 - Day of Terror
4 - Summons of the Siren
5 - Mysteries and Muses in Marathon (the third musical episode!)
6 - Dark Knight of the Soul
7 - Prelude to War
8 - Wrath of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 1)
9 - Woes of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 2)
10 - Wonders of the Amazons (Amazon Civil War part 3; not gonna lie, I teared up a little when they cut to credits after Menippe and Samir's wedding)
Click to expand...
I think this is in the wrong forum.
 
Was this the same joint venture that did the Highlander shows? I can't remember.

I wasn't a huuuuge fan, but did tune in pretty regularly for season three. It had some of the same problems that the old Sharpe series had in that they clearly didn't have the budget to actually have a lot of extras for the big battles, but the arc was decent. Also amusing that they shot a lot of that season in southern Alberta. One of Mrs. T's college friends got on with their caterer for the summer they filmed that.

I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Tarrasque and more or less tuned out during all the Alexander stuff, to be honest. Surprised it got to six seasons.
 
The Golden Fleece arc is interesting in retrospect- playing Jason as a thuggish fool was in keeping with the late nineties girl power vibe, but you can see that between Season 3 and 4 there was some kind of course change over Medea. The final episodes of Season 3 were increasingly dark, and Morena Baccarin's Medea is a much more sinister piece of work than the show's previous collection of witches and sorceresses, most of whom showed they were edgy by wearing dark eyeliner. When Medea murdered an innocent servant in the finale to help cover Aella and Jason's escape, it was genuinely nasty- very tame by the standards of the 2010s, of course, but far more ruthless and cruel than anything Xena or Gabrielle ever did.

And then in Season 4 Medea's gone, she doesn't come back, and the show literally sends the characters to the other side of the Mediterranean as a sort of physical and tonal reboot. I mean, I love the rollicking adventure vibe of Season 4 but it's a very different kettle of fish.

Does anyone know the story there? Did Baccarin drop out, or did the network change course, or did the writer's room get a shakeup?
 
Firefly offered her more money, I believe. You look closely in one episode, Inara's reading a book about the Argonauts.

The Horse Lords, man, I love the balls on that: "so the centaurs on close up will never show more than the front of their bodies and everything else is a CGI horse body laid over an actor on stilts, and for some rear shots we'll use a real horse." Even at the time it was a mess but the fact they tried it!
 
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