Robert Tapert (left) and Steven DeKnight

After writing and/or producing stints on Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Dollhouse, Steven DeKnight knows genre television.

Now DeKnight finds himself ensconced as head writer and executive producer of a show he helped create, Starz’ Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Last year, when I interviewed Spartacus co-creator Rob Tapert (who also co-created Xena: Warrior Princess), Tapert credited DeKnight with the day-to-day handling of the show.

That was all I needed to know. With the show a solid hit (and having firmly won over most of us here at TheTorchOnline.com), I was eager to do a mid-season check-in with DeKnight, to find out exactly how the show ended up where it did — and get a sense where it’s going next.

TheTorchOnline: You have to be pleased with how the show has been received so far.

SD: Very pleased. Very pleased. It got off to a little bit of a rocky start. The reaction to the pilot was not as favorable as we’d hoped, but working on the show … we very quickly found our footing, and it became a much more complicated, intricate show. The pilot is pretty cut and dry.

TTO: I don’t think the pilot was representative of what the show became. It was the weakest episode.

SD: Exactly. I’ve been very, very please that people have stuck with it. The overriding comment I’ve seen on the internet is that each episode keeps getting better and better.

TTO: I think my favorite theme of the show is that this is a society infused with violence, in the ring, but also in the different social strata. In the palaces and in the streets, among Lucretia and her friends, it’s the same thing that’s going on in the gladiator ring. They’re all having these tournaments, just in different ways. Was there an “Ah ha!” moment when you realized the two halves of the show were two sides of the same coin?

SD: Oh yeah. I mean from the start we’d planned it that way, to mirror the violence in the arena with the violence in the upper strata of the Romans. Just with our research and talking to our consultants, it was just a fascinating culture where they were really raised from birth to not shy away from violence. It’s a republic, and eventually an empire, built on conquest. That’s deeply, deeply ingrained in the people.

Yes, there are some incredibly gory fights in the arena, but there’s also some incredibly violent stuff that goes on in the “civilized” arena of the Romans. You’ve seen in Episode 9 where things go shockingly awry.

TTO: It hasn’t aired yet, so I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a great episode, with particularly interesting turnaround for Lucretia. Usually when someone is writing about Ancient Rome, they are trying to make a parallel, whether subtle or more obvious, between Ancient Rome and contemporary America. Is that a part of this show?

SD: A very, very subtle one. My first order of business is to tell a rollicking good story. My connection with the present and the past has always been that we went through a large economic downturn, and part of that resulted in something that’s been building for years, the squeezing out of the middle class. Basically, there are the rich and there are the poor. The middle class is slowly disappearing, and the wealth is concentrated among very few.

That’s the one thing I wanted to explore this season, and I think you’ve see it most with Batiatus. The drought is his economic downturn. Here’s a guy in the middle class trying to claw his way up into the upper class, willing to do anything he could to do that. Of course, the slave class, the poor that work for outrageously low wages in modern times, were actual slaves in ancient times with that kind of uprising and revolt against the system.

TTO: That’s one of the other things I like most about the show, the sort of Upstairs/Downstairs quality to it, where the slaves are obviously real people to the viewer, but they’re subhuman to the folks over them. Is that how you, as a contemporary writer, are making a judgment about these Roman characters, by showing us their society through the eyes of the slaves?

SD: Yeah, but at [a recent press event], I mentioned when we eventually bring in Marcus Crassus, we’re going to get a different viewpoint of slavery. Marcus Crassus was the biggest slave owner in Rome at the time and made his fortune.

But the thing about slaves, and the thing we couldn’t really explore and expand on this season because in the ludus they’re just slaves, but it wasn’t always just slavery as we imagine it, beaten and locked in a cage. A lot of slaves were highly skilled craftsmen and artisans, and they were basically working for the master. They had their own homes, they had their own families, but they were not technically free.

As we progress the story, and we bring in Marcus Crassus, I want to explore the other side of slavery in Ancient Rome, and actually give the Roman side of it. The fact is, without these slaves, the society would not have flourished, and without Roman society flourishing, where would modern civilization be?

I remember when I said this at [that press event], the next day I read on the internet, the headline was: “Steve DeKnight Puts A Positive Spin On Slavery.” That’s not at all what I’m saying. But realistically, not all slaves were beaten or tortured or mistreated in Rome.

TTO: One of the most shocking elements is the degree to which people accept the system. Ultimately, where you’re going is that one of them won’t accept the system and will try to overturn the system, but the degree to which the gladiators take on this idea that allowing yourself to be killed is honorable, and if you don’t do it, you’re shamed. Shocking from a modern perspective.

SD: Exactly. They’re so far into that system. For instance, take a look at Barca and Ashur. They are slaves, but they are allowed to go out unchained and do things for their master, and they come back. They don’t just disappear. That’s another mindset I found very interesting. They could just skip out, but they don’t.

TTO: The real chains are in your head, I guess.

SD: Exactly. And that’s something we’ll definitely explore as these seasons continue. Crixus is another great example. In Episode 5, Spartacus really grills him about why are you doing this? Crixus is a very interesting character for me, because he’s completely bought into the system, and by the end, he starts to realize how the system has destroyed him.

TTO: He was eventually Spartacus’s right hand man, wasn’t he?

SD: Yeah. Spartacus, Crixus and Oenomaus led the three factions. It was another interesting thing that I find looking forward, in designing this season, I didn’t want want Crixus and Spartacus to be buddy/buddy, chummy, let’s-go-out-together. These are two men who are trying to find common ground, but will never truly be friends.

Historically, if you look at the record, when they do break out, there was a lot of contention. It wasn’t one big happy band. Crixus sets his goal. Historically, they separate, then come back together. They weren’t always on the same page, which is very important. The last thing I want going in to Season 2 is Robin Hood, everybody together with their Merry Men. It wasn’t like that.

TTO: You’re writing Season 2 now? Where are you and what can we expect?

SD: Yes. We’re on Episode 3. It’s an interesting change. Anybody that knows the history of Spartacus obviously knows where this has to go. I always read on the internet, based on Rob’s work with Hercules and Xena, everybody says, “Well, Rob doesn’t care about history.” That’s absolutely not true. Rob does care about history. We are following the broad strokes of the Spartacus story. We can’t be slaves to every detail of what happened. I’m sure you’ve heard many times: We bend history, but we try not to break it.

But this is the story of Spartacus, which is a slave rebellion, so we will be exploring that.

TTO: Do you have a five year plan? A seven year plan? How long is it going to take you to tell this whole story?

SD: I have a five to seven year plan. Definitely enough for five. It could go longer, depending on Starz and the viewership, but definitely at least five planned out. There are so many great moments in the Spartacus story and in history that I’ve never fully seen explored. I also really want the chance to explore the “villain’s” side. The Romans didn’t think they were the villains. They thought Spartacus was the villain. That’s something I really want to explore.

Moving forward, and this will be gradual thing, is not all Romans are bad. Even Batiatus, yes, he’s bad, but he has many different shades to him.

TTO: He has a point of view, but boy, when he promised Spartacus that he’d be reunited with his wife… It hits you like a slug in the gut when you realize the true evilness of that character. His code of honor is such that he’s technically fulfilling the promise he made to Spartacus even as he’s killing this guy’s wife.

SD: Batiatus is looking at a big picture. The thing I love about that character is that he is consumed by trying to get out of his father’s shadow and not being the guy that ruins the family business. That, for him, is just the overreaching goal. It becomes more and more prominent as we go on in the series.

TTO: I confess that I’ve already been shocked many times by this show.

SD: The fantastic thing about Starz is that they let us go to places a lot of other shows won’t go to.

TTO: As a result, the experience for the viewer is that you really don’t know what’s going to happen. Anything can happen, and that’s so rare to be able to say about television.

SD: Anything can happen and anybody can die. We definitely continue that moving on.

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: What happened to the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? I could swear there was a re-release in the 80s where we go inside the alien spacecraft at the end of the movie — but the DVD ends where the original theatrical release did. Am I misremembering? I can’t believe they’d cut that part out! — Nameth, Calgary, Canada

A: No, you’re remembering correctly. The movie originally came out in late 1977, but the director, Steven Spielberg, was unhappy with the edit, as he felt he’d been rushed to make an early release date. The studio, Columbia Pictures, agreed to let him do a re-edit which they would re-release, but only on the condition that he shot new scenes for the end, featuring the “inside” of the ship. They figured this would be a great way to get people who’d seen the film already back into theaters.

And this is exactly what Spielberg did — shooting new scenes to the tune of $2.5 million — and it was released to much fanfare as Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition in 1980.

But Spielberg greatly regretted those interior scenes — he felt that what people imagined about the inside of the ship was better than what could ever be shown, and that he should have left it a mystery.

So when he re-edited the film again for the 1998 Collectors Edition (which is the movie in the current DVD release), he kept some of the new footage from the 1980 reshoot, but not the inside-of-the-ship scenes.

Those “deleted” scenes are still available, however, on the second DVD of the Collectors Edition.

Q: I recently watched Rosemary’s Baby (good movie!) and was struck by the haunting theme music. Any idea how that came about? — Mason, La Joya, CA

A: It’s perfect, isn’t it? The haunting, dream-like lullaby is reminiscent of motherhood, but the reverb and quivering strings, not to mention Farrow’s feeble, resigned, off-key humming, imply something more, something far darker — like the singer is not entirely in her right mind, like she has been drugged or is in the grips of something she can’t control (both of which describe poor Rosemary in the movie).

The tune was written by polish composer, Krzysztof Komeda, who wrote the scores for several early movies by Roman Polanski (the director of Rosemary’s Baby). Reportedly, Komeda had originally intended to have a professional singer do it, but the singer in question asked for too much money, so they decided to use Farrow. As with so many things done seemingly by happenstance, that choice made the song, and helped make the movie, a classic.

Alas, Komeda, also an influential jazz pianist, died later the same year that the movie was released.

Q: Wouldn’t a genie get awfully bored stuck inside a lamp for thousands of years? — Molly, Bend, OR

A: The story of Aladdin and his magic lamp comes, of course, from One Thousand and One Nights, the ancient collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales. But the original story is not quite the Disney version.

As in the Disney version, poor Aladdin is recruited by an evil sorcerer to retrieve a magic lamp from a booby-trapped cave and is double-crossed by the wizard, trapping him inside. Aladdin accidentally summons a genie by rubbing a magic ring, not the lamp itself. The genie helps Aladdin escape.

Later, Aladdin’s mother accidentally rubs the lamp, summoning a more powerful genie. But again, the genie (or djinn, a magical creature from another dimension) is simply magically bound to the object, not literally inside it.

The whole idea that the genie was inside the lamp came later, as the story was adapted and retold many, many times, by people not familiar with Islamic culture — or the mythology of the djinn.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

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Much of the new Starz series Spartacus: Blood and Sand is famously shot using green-screen technology, where sets and backgrounds are not “real,” but are instead created by CGI.

So what of the other much-talked-about aspect of the series, the show’s vaunted sex scenes and female and male nudity? How real are those?

First, ask yourself: do you really want to know? But if you’re not worried about it spoiling the illusion, read on!

Some of the nudity is absolutely “real.” Those really are Lucy Lawless’s breasts, and many of the extras are obviously really naked.

But some of it is also, well, the magic of television.

Lawless made a big impact at the Television Critics Association conference in July when she told reporters she’d been fitted for a “merkin,” or pubic wig — a red one at that. At the time, not yet finished with the show’s twelve-episode shoot, she said it hadn’t yet been used — but that it might be.

Then again, she implied, there might be bottomless scenes where she wouldn’t use it all

And what of the male nudity? It seems that some of the actors were a little bashful about their, um, size, so the costumers created — there’s no other way to say this — a prosthetic penis. Hilariously, it was dubbed “the Kirk Douglas,” after the star of the original Spartacus movie.

As to which actors did or didn’t wear it, “We can’t give away our trade secrets,” Robert Tapert told reporters.

“We have one person is the cast who insists on being naked,” Lucy Lawless joked to EW’s Michael Ausiello in July. “And we’re like, ‘Bold choice.’ Nobody’s really asking, but if you insist, we’ll shoot it.”

But she didn’t specify that cast member’s name.

As for Andy Whitfield, who plays Spartacus, will he be fully naked at any point this season?

Whitfield implied to Chelsea Handler on the Chelsea Lately talk show that while the character of Spartacus gets naked, the actor himself does not; he used a body double for the scenes.

“They had to search the world for the right … size,” he joked.

And what of the show’s sexual activity itself? Is any of that real?

Nope, that’s all pure acting.

“The sex scenes are always choreographed,” Lawless told reporters just last month. “[There's]’s always a layer [between the actors]. There’s no skin on skin contact apart from the kissing. So, it’s pretty standardized. And then what you think you are seeing in the final cut, it was pretty controlled.”

But Lawless was quick to point out that the sex in Spartacus is anything but porn. “When there’s a sex scene … it is about something else,” she said. “Otherwise, it would be on the Playboy Channel. This is not soft porn.”

“Everything I’ve read, [Rome] was a very visceral place both in its regards to sex and its regards to violence,” co-creator Steven DeKnight told the same group of reporters. “You’ll see some background sex going on. That’s obviously a part of the bigger scene, but once our main characters — there is always something else going on in the sex scene. It’s a discussion, it’s a power play, it’s exploration of love. It’s never just for the sex or titillation.”

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My good friend Dennis Hensley and my partner Michael Jensen (who acted as camera-man) went to the premiere of Spartacus: Blood and Sand last week, and managed to track down the stars and creator of the show to do these terrific interviews:

P.S. You’ll have to forgive Dennis’ getting Lucy’s home-country wrong — he’s not the Xena geek I am (in fact, he hadn’t even seen Spartacus yet when he did these interviews — he and Michael crammed during dinner, and then he winged it!). Anyway, I thought his mistaken-country recover was quick and charming.

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: Will Renee O’Connor guest-star on Lucy Lawless’ upcoming series Spartacus: Blood and Sand? — Jan, Albuquerque, NM

A: The Oracle can reveal that she definitely won’t be appearing in the first season.

“Once Lucy’s there, [having Renee join her] spins it all different for a different group of people and so it’s just not appropriate,” Xena creator (and Lucy Lawless’ husband) Rob Tapert tells the Oracle.

Still, Tapert does leave the door open for a possible future guest spot. “That’s this season,” he adds.

Q: What in the world is going on with V? — James, Key West, FL

A: Whatever it is, it’s not good. ABC will still air the first four episodes of the series in November as scheduled (leaving the series on a cliff-hanger), then hold the remaining nine episodes until March. This was a major surprise, because the buzz for the show has been great (and the Oracle has seen the pilot and can confirm that it’s terrific). ABC says they don’t want the show to be interrupted by the Winter Olympics, which the network is also airing. But ABC has long known about the Olympics.

So what gives? The Oracle thinks it’s two things: the network was genuinely unhappy with the direction the show was going. They shut down production for an initial two weeks (and then an additional four weeks), replacing many of the key creative players.

But there also suddenly seems to be renewed skepticism in the industry for sci-fi in general, what with unexpectedly disastrous ratings for the Fox’s returning Dollhouse and Fringe. NBC recently announced that they’re airing a sci-fi thriller called Day One as a four-hour mini-series, and not as the series it was originally planned to be (it’ll be interesting to see how this works out, because two hours of the “series” had been shot before they decided to turn it into a “mini-series” — something that required creative writing to, more or less, wrap-up the storyline after the fourth hour.)

If Day One, the mini-series, does well, a full-fledged series could still be green-lit. But the fact remains, industry folks are openly wondering if sci-fi can maintain the viewership needed to produce these often expensive, effect-laden shows.

The Oracle cautions viewers to expect more “SyFy”-like rebranding of “sci-fi” projects in the years ahead. Already Flash Forward, whose numbers are also down, is being sold as more of an “action-drama” than as the science fiction series it actually is.

Q: What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? — HolyGrailFan, Prince Edward Island

A: Oh, you’re proud of that one, aren’t you? And you think the Oracle doesn’t know, don’t you? Well, the Oracle knows all: the velocity is eleven meters per second, or 24 miles an hour.

How do I know this? Somebody figured it out.

(Welcome to the internet, home of people with way too much free time!)

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In a presentation today at the annual Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, the producers and stars of the upcoming series Spartacus: Blood and Sand emphasized that it pushes the limits of what’s been seen on television, with graphic violence and plenty of sex and nudity, but that it’s all in the service of a well-told story involving compelling characters.

“Nudity?” said co-star Lucy Lawless after being asked if she gets naked in the the first season. “I’m afraid so. Not entirely, no, and I’m kind of praying that day never comes.”

According to executive producer and co-creator Rob Tapert, “There’s a great deal of nudity, both male and female, and some guys are not as well endowed as others, so we had to create [a prosthetic penis which we called] the ‘Kirk Douglas’ so that certain actors would have [something] they could wear and feel comfortable.”

The prosthetic penis was named in honor the star of the classic 1960 movie, Spartacus, he said with a laugh.

As to which actors did or didn’t wear it, “We can’t give away our trade secrets,” he said.

The Starz network actioner, debuting January 22rd, tells the story of the rebel slave Spartacus who led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 73 BC. The show, which has a reported budget of $2 million an episode, approaches feature film quality, the producers said.

“When Rob and Joshua [Donen] came up with the idea, I was fascinated by it,” said executive producer Sam Raimi. “[The story of Spartacus] is such a great story, and only some of it is recorded, from the point he became a leader of this rebellion. Before that, no one really cared enough about this poor slave to record anything. … It’s the story of a man who was deemed worthless and found great stuff within him. The stuff of great drama.”

Lawless was asked if she was drawn to the project because it’s a period piece, much like her break-out show, Xena: Warrior Princess.

“I never think about the costumes, never about that,” she said. “It’s about the role and the company you’re in. I nearly didn’t take the role, I was so nervous. I was so happy living in LA, and [by returning to New Zealand, where the show is filmed], I felt like I was going back to Idaho or something. But the role is such a knock-out. Brilliant women’s relationships, very deadly, very subtle. Subtle and deadly, that’s what attracts me.”

Later, she added with a laugh, “Were you surprised to hear me use the word ‘subtle’? I’ve been deadly before, but not often subtle.”

Tapert acknowledged that the look and style of the show, much of which is created using green-screen technology and CGI backgrounds, is already being compared to the movie 300, which used the same technology.

“[300 director] Zach Snyder brought that hyper-realistic style to a period piece,” he said. But “Sin City prior to that had been all-digital backgrounds, along with other shows from Blue’s Clues all the way to Sanctuary. What 300 did so well was make a great deal of money.

“It was easy to point to that and say, it worked in that style,” he added. “It allowed us to actually bring this [elaborate, effects-heavy story] to the screen. There was no way to do it without the artifice, so to speak.”

Several of the participants emphasized that the general tone of the show is very different from that of Xena, on which Lawless, Tapert, and Raimi all worked.

“There’s no nudge-nudge, wink-wink,” Lawless said. “Tonally, it’s like nothing else I’ve done. It’s very real.”

“Spartacus was really a chance to be part of something that was entirely different than what Hercules and Xena was,” Tapert said. “It’s serious, it always tries to be genuine, it’s part of a natural [creative] evolution.”

As for the intense action scenes and graphic violence, head writer Steven DeKnight said, “Everyone knows that action is just a component, a tool that allows you to have a resolution happen differently. You still have to have great drama. This is a show that has action, blood, and sex, all the things you don’t see on network television. But all of that is just the initial wave behind which really good drama is waiting.”

“[The characters] don’t run along the same mores as we have,” Lawless added. “We strikes me [about the time in history] was the singular lack of empathy, and humans are just chattel, and it’s all about status, and if you’re of low status, I can kill you tomorrow. High stakes for people of low status and even for those of higher status.”

Twelve of the show’s first thirteen-episode season have already been filmed.

Renee O’Connor, Lawless’ co-star on Xena, will not make a guest appearance, at least in the first season. “Once Lucy’s there, it’s just not appropriate, that makes it a different thing,” Tapert said. But the show does make use of many of the same behind-the-scenes crew from that show.

“The time we were doing Hercules and Xena, that was a very special time,” Tapert admitted. “And we knew at the time that that would never happen again. We had pretty much untold creative freedom, we could do musicals and comedies.”

With Spartacus, he says, they have a different kind of freedom, including a network that is encouraging them to push limits.

“I [once] said to myself, ‘We’ve gone too far,’ and the executives from Starz got the director on the phone and said, ‘You haven’t gone far enough.’ And so the director said, ‘Now I’m gonna show them!’”

As for the crew he worked with before, “They know this is a different ride, entirely different than Hercules and Xena, but will boldly go where no one has gone before. Action is just a component, it just builds the characters, rather than stops to show you an action scene. What I’m happiest about is that it’s a well written show.”

“With an amazing new star,” added Lawless, referring to Andy Whitfield, who plays Spartacus.

Might the show have a musical episode as Xena once did? “I did Viva Laughlin,” DeKnight quipped, referring to a 2007 musical series that was a notorious bomb. “I don’t think they’ll be any musicals.”

Other than the behind-the-scenes joke about the prosthetic penis, does the series include references to the classic 1960 film? “I was blown away by [that movie] when I saw it as a kid, and then when I was older, I realized what it was really all about,” DeKnight said. “You will hear [the classic line] ”I am Spartacus,’ but it’s very different.”

The trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand

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Editor’s Note: In honor of this week’s season finale of Legend of the Seeker, we offer not the usual snarky recap, but a review of both the last episode, and of the entire season.

Rating of the finale:

Five Torches (Out of Five)

Rating of the entire season:

Four Torches (Out of Five)

And so it ends. The first season of the syndicated fantasy series Legend of the Seeker has come to a close.

The entire season was good, but the finale episode was downright fantastic.

If the first season of Seeker had a flaw, it was that it was a little too true to its source material, the novels of Terry Goodkind upon which the show is based: it’s not that they aren’t fine books, and it’s not that the show hewed religiously close to them (it didn’t).

It’s just that many of the elements that didn’t quite gel on screen seemed to have been taken directly from the books: the mythology of the Mord Sith, the lame-ish reason why Richard and Kahlan can’t ever express their love for each other, and, quite frankly, the Confessor’s powers in general (especially the blood-rage).

It’s not that these things didn’t made sense; it’s simply that their explanation required complicated exposition that might work fine in a book, but that interrupted the flow of a TV story.

In other words, these elements weren’t seamless.

The finale, on the other hand, was practically perfect in every way.

The overall arc of the season was, of course, about the fact that Richard was destined to kill Darken Rahl.

But by the end of the last episode before the finale, it was all looking a little too destined. Richard had assembled all three of the Boxes of Orden, not to mention the Book of Counted Shadows, and he and his companions had come up with a pretty good plan to take on Rahl: have Kahlan “confess” Richard, enabling him to use the power of the boxes without having them turn him evil.

In other words, there wasn’t much tension. I was happy for Richard, but when it comes to a gripping adventure, the last you want is for your “all-powerful” villain to be the decided underdog.

Then came the opening sequence of “Reckoning,” the finale, where Richard and Kahlan finally try to put their plan into effect — only to immediately see it completely screwed up as one of the Mord Sith interrupts them mid-spell, and then Rahl suddenly appears (in a particularly cool special effect) to kill Richard.

The inevitable showdown that we’d long expected — and, frankly, was getting a little boring to hear about — was suddenly completely shaken up. The story went off in a completely unexpected direction (where, it turns out, a rare combination of the magic of the Confessor, the Mord Sith, and the Boxes of Orden had propelled Richard many years into the future).

Frankly, that opening sequence was so great I’m a little confused why it wasn’t the last scene in the episode before. Talk about a great would-be cliff-hanger!

Richard and Kahlan’s plan thwarted, the story veered off into a truly terrific episode where both Richard and Kahlan had to confront their greatest challenge yet: their loss of each other. Better still, Kahlan had to do it without her Confessor powers, and Richard had to do it without any prophecy (or Zeddicus) to guide him.

The inevitable show-down between Richard and Rahl, when it did finally come, was both unexpected and thoroughly satisfying — which is really saying something, given all the build-up. And the reunion between Richard and Kahlan was pretty much the best moment the two of them had all season long — which is exactly as it should have been.

“Reckoning” was, quite simply, the best episode of the season.

What of the entire season? The strong episodes (e.g. “Puppeteer,” “Mirror,” “Cursed”) were excellent, the weaker ones (e.g. “Deception,” “Sanctuary”) were borderline unwatchable.

But the season was unquestionably better, and more consistently “good,” than the first season of the producers’ previous TV project, Xena: Warrior Princess. (Then again, maybe it should have been better, given that the producers of Legend had the experience of six seasons of Xena, not to mention several other series, enabling them to hone their game. But it’s very fair to say that they have broken some seriously new ground on Seeker, and are not simply revisiting past successes.)

Some special mention must be made of Bruce Spence, the actor who plays Zeddicus. While Craig Horner and (even more so) Bridget Regan are fine in their respective roles, Spence is a revelation — by turns, commanding, touching, and funny. He has the smallest part of the three leads, but he easily makes the strongest impression. He’s clearly an old pro.

All in all, Legend of the Seeker is extremely well-done fantasy.

Contrary to many previous press reports, as of last week, Disney had apparently still not officially renewed the show for a second season (though as before, things look very good). But if there was ever a show that deserved another season, it’s this one.

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It’s hard not to be impressed by Rob Tapert. Along with his creative partners Sam Raimi and Joshua Donen, the man is responsible for some of the best, and most influential fantasy television of all time: first, Xena: Warrior Princess, which starred his wife Lucy Lawless, and now Legend of the Seeker, a surprisingly watchable adaptation of the Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth novels.

Recently, I chatted with Rob via phone from New Zealand, and he soon made it clear what a perfectionist he is — which is an obvious source of frustration in the blindingly fast production pace of series television. As of this posting (and contrary to some other reports), Legend of the Seeker has still not “officially” been picked up for a second season (although it looks very, very likely), but that hasn’t stopped Tapert from micro-analyzing everything about the first season and gearing up for an even better second one.

TheTorchOnline: One of the things that’s really struck me about the Legend of the Seeker is how sexy it is, what with Bridget and Craig and Mistress Denna — how you’ve made fantasy a little more “adult” and sophisticated. Is that intentional?

Rob Tapert: The intention is always to try and make something sexy. The original source material, the Terry Goodkind’s books, they were in and of themselves very sexy, and they actually went much further in various sexual proclivities than we’re able to do on a syndicated show, so the original source material had that in it, and I think part of that was the original appeal to my partners, Josh Donen and Sam Raimi on this who both read the book and it was kind of Sam who said, “I’d love to take this material and, you know, make this our return to television.”

Then, of course, you get lucky in casting. Craig [Horner] and Bridget [Regan] were able to bring this to life wonderfully and, although you wouldn’t know it yet, as the season goes on, from where we are now, it actually gets better and kind of more sexy.

TTO: It’s one thing to read about Mistress Deena’s skintight leather; it’s another thing to actually see it. Are you ever pressured to tone it down or do you film two scenes, one for the airing and one for the DVD?

RT: We don’t have time to do two versions. It is the epitome of fast turnaround television. ABC Disney is a partner on this, they have slightly different standards than when we were doing Hercules and Xena, but that said, their standards and practice board has been by most standards and practices, incredibly easy to work with and very liberal in what they will allow us to portray on TV, so oddly enough, they have never really come and said you can’t sexually show something. Oddly enough, their concerns have been more about hero protection, oh, he shouldn’t run some guy through a second time or something like that.

So really, I think that considering what you could run up against at a network, and working with Disney who has a brand, this has been something that we’ve been fortunate that everybody involved has allowed us to push the boundaries and continue to push them.

TTO: I once read Woody Allen say that whenever he gets an idea for a movie, the resulting movie he said, I think, was something like 50 to 80 percent of his original inspiration and he’s always sort of disappointed. Now that you’ve finished the whole season, looking back, remembering when you first had the inspiration to turn this into a TV series, how close or how good have you realized that initial inspiration?

RT: Fifty percent.

TTO: So you’re a perfectionist!

RT: Well, I think there are things, areas that we can improve upon. I think going into a second season, once we know what the show is, what everyone’s capable of and where we can extend and reach, I think that there is always room for improvement.

That said, there’s a lot of things that we really like a great deal. Sometimes you go, “Oh, we can do better with effects. We could do better fights.  We could do better this.  We could do better that.”

TTO: Well, the fights can’t be too much better ‘cause they’re pretty darn good.

RT: And we can service the stars perhaps better. Tell stories that just are skewed a little bit more towards building even better heroes, so – but if I say 50 percent maybe 50 to 60.

TTO: Now when do you sit down and hash out the next season arc and start writing the scripts? Has that already begun?

RT: Ken Biller and the writing staff are on hiatus right now. There’s a rough shape as to what some things would be in season two, and then beginning in May, we’ll have conversations about some more specifics.

TTO: When Legend debuted, it seemed like you knew it would existed in the huge shadow cast by Xena, and you dealt with it by sort of being the anti-Xena. Do you feel that the show has now established its own identity and moved out of Xena’s shadow and now you’re freer to go wherever the story takes you?

RT: It was never in that shadow. There was a very conscious determination made to not embrace some of the elements which was what I’m gonna call the post-modern take on things. This is very much a straight fantasy show in the totally in a Lord of the Rings sense as opposed to what Hercules certainly was and Xena to a more schizophrenic degree was. It would get acknowledged often that it was a show and doing a show and through some modern sensibilities and playing specifically to the audience knowing certain things or some of the audience knowing, so it was entirely different. And so this show has never done that and I actually think you actually can’t go back and redo totally a show that was a decade old.

TTO: What about the books? Do they cast a big shadow over the show? Do you feel that they are a starting point or an ongoing reference? How often does it come up, “Well, in the book, this happened”?

RT: You know what? If you go to watch the DVD commentary on Lord of the Rings and in one of the appendiums, Peter Jackson says, “Oh, if Tolkein was alive, I don’t think he would like what I did.” I speak to Terry periodically, I think as the show went on, the heroes that were in his mind, the actions that the actors and that we use in our stories are reflective of the theories that he wrote about. We certainly pulled lots and lots and lots of stuff from the book, props, story elements, taking episode and reinterpreting them so that they work as a television show, you know, the Mistress Denna, large swatches of the book. And season two will have elements that are done, book two and book three of the series.

[But] there are very few authors who go, “Oh my God, they got my book 100 percent right. There it is on the screen. Geez, I never needed to write it.  They should have just made a movie out of it.”

So, that said, so we do use the materials. We do try to honor them, you know, once again Sam Raimi went to Terry Goodkind and said, “I want to make your book into a series,” and Terry agreed. He’d been approached over time by other people.

TTO: So you created Xena, one of the most influential TV shows of all time. Now you’ve got Legend, a show that has some of the best special effects ever seen on television. Do you ever get frustrated by the lack of respect that fantasy gets from the industry and the critics?

RT: I just care about the chance to get up and tell the stories and be involved in the process. It’s a genre that I’ve always loved and I look at myself as a fan and as a fanboy. So what I like is like to be entertained, so all I can hope for is that I’m given a chance as a producer to make material that I want to tune in and watch. So whether, you know, I’m never going to change that Hollywood studio that executives have a generally a disregard for fantasy, that it’s a poor art form. I’m not gonna change that.

All I can do is try to tell stories that move and excite me and hopefully move and excite people who also like fantasy. So it’s the opportunity to get up to bat and do those kind of things that is exciting. The acceptance of the general populace or of Hollywood or of any of those things, it’s just not important.

TTO: It must get frustrating though when you see great work being done, not just by you, but by the people you’re working with and it’s not being recognized. It’s not being given the credit it deserves.

RT: I thought that when we were back doing both Xena and Hercules that Ngila Dixon who was doing the costumes on both shows at the time, she did some fantastic work and it took her going off to Lord of the Rings to really get recognized, but in many ways, I thought her work on Xena in particular was spectacular and certainly in the world of fast turnaround TV. So it’s more the people who give 150 percent. They fail to get any recognition whether it’s the writers or the costume people or the BPs. That’s more the thing that I wish I could have an influence over, but I can’t, so I try to give those people the respect they deserve personally.

TTO: On the other hand, the people who worked on some of these other shows that are long forgotten that were airing at the same time as Xena don’t have legions of fans and conferences and internet websites and so your colleagues may not have an Emmy on the wall, but they have the adulation of legions of fans, which accounts for something, I think. In fact, I just finished a long article on one of the Xena episodes. I could talk about the show forever.

RT: Which episode?

TTO: It was the Norse trilogy. I wrote the article and I posted it, and then somebody told me that in the Xenaverse, you know, those are not considered among the best of the episodes.

RT: I actually really enjoyed them and like them and for R.J. Stewart and myself, it was — it allowed us to do the things that we love to do with that show. It gave us some boyish joy in our middle age, which was taking different elements and combine them, so taking the ring and Beowulf and kind of mashing them together and finding a story there our stars could influence those things.

But it was one of the lowest-rated shows, and it repeated very poorly and I came away with an entirely different take that I still think has some validity. I thought that the syndicated audience did not like to go in the snowy and cold environments, so it didn’t have any of the lush warmth or tropical or exterior or any of that stuff that the series generally had and that those colder episodes never repeated well.

TTO: Is that also true of the darker episodes, like an episode like “The Debt”?  Is it the same sort of the thing, the audience just didn’t like it when they went into the darkness?

RT: “The Debt” repeated okay. I think the fans liked them, but yes, over the long run the comedies, by the time we get to Oxygen and they’re running the sprockets off it, comedies repeated the best, no question about it.

Related Coverage:

Craig Horner Interview: “Seeker” Star is Holding Up Just Fine

Xena Movie “Just Won’t Happen,” Says Creator Rob Tapert

Sex and Violence is “Spartacus” Will Be Unlike Anything on TV

Is Xena’s “Norse Trilogy” Television’s Best Fantasy Ever?

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The first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a new series starring Lucy Lawless that tells the story of the legendary rebel Roman slave, finished shooting this week in New Zealand, and those involved say it includes graphic sex and violence unlike anything ever seen on television.

“[The network] has given us quite a bit of rope with which to hang ourselves,” says Rob Tapert, the co-creator of Xena: Warrior Princess who is executive producing along with Joshua Donen and Spiderman’s Sam Raimi. “It’s unlike anything we’ve done before, because it is very hard and very explicit. It’s harder than 300,” he says, referring to Zack Synder’s explicit 2006 movie adaptation of the graphic novel.

“We have something different,” promises Tapert.

The show, which will bow in January of next year, is being produced for Starz Entertainment, the premium cable network, which estimates that each episode will cost over $2 million. The first season will run thirteen episodes.

“We’re going to cut it back on Starz, which is premium cable, so that they feel it fits within the R-rating slot,” Tapert says. “If it went into a theater, it would definitely be R-rated.”

It’s not just the violence that’s explicit. “Violence and sex,” Tapert says.

Spartacus is played by Australian Andy Whitfield. Lawless, Tapert’s real-life wife, plays Lucretia, the owner of the gladiator school where Spartacus is imprisoned.

“The guys and girls who star in it are stars,” Tapert says. “That is exciting and reassuring.”

The historical Spartacus was a gladiator-slave who lived in Rome from 109 BC to 71 BC. In 73 BC, he led a slave rebellion that eventually included 140,000 escaped slaves.

“The first season is a retelling of the legend of Spartacus leading up to him getting out of the slave prison,” Tapert says.

As with Xena: Warrior Princess, the show will also feature strong female characters. “I come from the Joss Whedon camp, so I love strong women, and I love big sweeping romantic arcs that will probably end badly, just like Joss always does,” showrunner Steven DeKnight (Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) told TV.ign.com.

The action-adventure series will also include gay characters, both male and female. “All of the above,” Tapert says.

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Rob Tapert, the co-creator of television’s Xena: Warrior Princess, has given up hope that there will ever be a live-action feature film version of the classic show, at least not any time soon or starring series leads Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor.

“It’s something that just won’t happen,” Tapert told TheTorchOnline.com in an exclusive interview. “I don’t think it’s going to happen for Lucy and Renee. In twenty years or ten years, in some amount of years, like McGyver, like Charlie’s Angels, it [could] happen like that [with other actresses].”

Rumors of a feature film adaptation of the series, which ran in syndication from 1995 to 2001, have circulated for years, and all the principles had indicated in interviews that they’d be eager to participate.

“I thought for a heartbeat it would [get made],” Tapert said, “but at the end of the day, the rules of motion picture marketing, where they have to commit $25 million to open a movie, in this environment, the momentum you need to get a movie made isn’t there to get a Xena movie made.”

One problem for a film version concerned the fact that NBC Universal Television Group controls the rights to the show, not Tapert or co-creators John Schulian or R.J. Stewart.

Tapert’s pessimism stems from the rights question, which still hasn’t been resolved, and the lack of funding. “It’s a question of [rights and financing],” he says. “All of the above.”

The show was canceled after a six-year run, but still enjoys a huge cult following, both online and at annual real-time conventions.

Over the course of the show, the character of Xena returned from the dead many times; the warrior princess even died in the series finale. But now the character, at least as interpreted by actress Lucy Lawless, appears to be dead for good.

For more Xena and fantasy-related news, follow us on Twitter.

Other TheTorchOnline.com Xena Coverage:

Is Xena’s “Norse Trilogy” Television’s Best Fantasy Ever?

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Xena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless has signed to play the proprietor of a gladiator camp in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a new series that retells the historical story of a rebel Roman slave, coming next January on Starz. The series is executive produced by frequent collaborators (and the executive producers of Xena) Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi.

The show is a big investment for Starz, a premium cable channel, with a per-episode cost of more than $2 million. As with Xena, the show will be shot in New Zealand, but much of the show will be reportedly be shot on “virtual” sets, mixing live actors and CGI backcrops.

The historical Spartacus lived from 109 to 71 BC. A slave and gladiator, he led an uprising against the Roman Republic in 73 BC. With 200 followers, he escaped the gladiator school of Lentulus Batiatus, the male basis for the character presumably played by Lawless.  Spartacus was eventually joined by 140,000 escaped slaves; together they successfully fought the Republic until their defeat in early 71 BC. Unlike the famous crucifixion scene in the popular 1960 movie, Spartacus’ body was never found.

Like Spartacus, the character of Xena frequently battled Roman emperors and soldiers, and even fought as a gladiator several times herself.

Raimi created the syndicated fantasy series Legend of the Seeker, and he and Tapert are currently that show’s executive producers. Tapert is married to Lawless.

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