Stranger In A Strange World screencaps. Like whoa.

[marycrawford]

I was making screencaps for Stranger In A Strange World, the fourth season Hercules episode with the crossover into doppelgänger world, and then elke_tanzer posted this lovely bit of squeeing and plotnoodling about that very episode.

So, there are now 26 pages of screencaps for Stranger In A Strange World. :whistles innocently:

Well, I mean. I have some problems with the Jester, mostly because of what happened later, but as Elke reminded me, this episode has it all in terms of mirror doubles - there's not only Iolaus and the Jester, but there's the delectable Ares, God of Love (Kevin Smith started out as an Elvis impersonator. Hee.), there's Aphrodite in a snit and a high-necked dress, there's Joxer, steely leader of the rebellion, there's madcap femme fatale Xena, there's Gabrielle the executioner...and there's the Sovereign in his leather harness. *g* Plus, yes, Hercules and Ares beating the crap out of each other.

dbw has been making stunning icons with earlier screencaps, btw. Go check them out.





OK, this one's just an excuse to quote this favorite bit of dialogue (yes, again, shut up *g*):

Princess: “What is happening?!”
I: “Well, Hercules is fighting Ares.”
Princess (pleased): “Over me?”
I: “No, over me."




"Like a young David, vulnerable yet incredibly masculine," as Michael Hurst would say.





Iolaus survives. Just.




And more with the canon BDSM. *g*












and for Elke, a desperate attempt to capture some of the big Herc/Ares fight (still blurry, alas - they're too fast! :-)



Man. I should reeeeeaally go to bed. *g*

Comments

[ltlj.livejournal.com]

Very nice caps! I did like Iolaus in the red outfit, once he got rid of the (shudder) hat, and it came open at the chest a little.

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

heh ... I know what you mean. And Herc seems to like the feel of it in that reunion shot up there... :->

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yeah, lose the hat and things look better all round. And I do mean all round. Ahem.

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

Why Mary -- somebody might get the impression that you like this episode! :->

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Yup. I cop to it. I just share Ares' feelings about the miming. *g*

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Oh, my.

I remember liking that episode. Now I know why.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yes. It's, well, it's obvious, isn't it. *g*

[elke-tanzer.livejournal.com]

*pant*

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Hee!

Mary, using the beefcake icon just for you

[dbw.livejournal.com]

Oh my. I did enjoy this episode for so many reasons -- and you've just reminded me of several of them. :-) I feel the need for more icons (there can never be too many HtLJ icons, right?). And thanks for the plug for the icons, by the way.

-debbie

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

There can never be too many HtLJ icons, right?

Absolutely not. They're like chocolates. You can never have just fifty. *g*

Mary (yay!)

[piratewilde.livejournal.com]

Hi. Cool pictures from a fun episode. I have just started to come back to HtLJ, and your fanfiction has only given more wood to the fire as it were. I befriended you, I hope you don't mind.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

No, not at all - I'm very flattered. And stick around, please - we're discussing a new Herc/Iolaus community here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/elke_tanzer/569125.html?view=3189541#t3189541).

[piratewilde.livejournal.com]

Cool

[mythdefied.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that Joxer shot...I've never actually done that whole "forget to breathe" thing before. Forgot how much I loved him in that ep, even if he only had a couple minutes.

Ares screen cap too! I LMFAO during that ep whenever he showed up. What a wonderful way to twist Ares' character.

And it's always a good ep when you have Herc and Ares foreplay beating the crap out of each other!

Such a great ep and wonderful screen caps!

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks! Glad you like the Joxer shot - I made a few more screencaps of him and/or Iolaus, but this was definitely the best closeup. I liked him a lot in this episode, too.

And it's always a good ep when you have Herc and Ares foreplay beating the crap out of each other!

Hee hee. Yeah, I'm fond of that too. It really gets so obvious that they both like to...wrestle...now and then, but they're in denial about it. And I absolutely adore Ares, God of Love. *g*

[maenad.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm sorry for barging into your journal, particularly on so old an entry. Hercules was a show I enjoyed, when it originally aired (I've never been able to resist a sidekick), but I only rediscovered it recently, and found it more entertaining on a second viewing. I meandered over here from your website, in the interest of finding out whether the person who wrote such lovely stories also had interesting things to say about the programme itself. As it turned out, you did. The pictures alone are a delight, but these things are always improved by commentary. I comment here because I happened to watch Stranger in a Strange World last night, and found there was no one at whom I could chatter, which generally leads to excessive flailing, and possibly a brain explosion.

The lovely thing about the episode, aside from its zaniness and, well, Ares, is the way it forces you to examine the way the characters tick. One is forcefully reminded that, as well as being lifelong foes, Hercules and Ares are brothers, as they momentarily forget all past, present and future quarrels to stare in consternation at... whatever it is the jester thinks he's doing. The difference in the alternate characters is interesting: the way flicking the good/evil switch changes Hercules, Xena and Ares, the way Iolaus, Aphrodite and Joxer have altered their outlook to fit the world without changing sides. Joxer is particularly nice here because he's probably this world's version of Iolaus-- he reminds me of nothing so much as Iolaus in Hero's Heart: hardened and cynical, but basically a good man trying to get by in a world that makes no sense whatsoever. There's a nice symmetry to their respective prison breaks, and the way they fall easily into comradeship. It only saddens me a little that they skipped the 'look, I'm not your Iolaus,' conversation they must have had between Joxer first thrusting the knife into his hands, and Iolaus brooding on the matter in a corner. I get why-- he's already had this conversation with everybody and his dog and besides, they're leaning towards comedy in this episode. Everybody else is having a ball doing... heaven knows what, Chicago, maybe, but leave Joxer and Iolaus alone and they start doing Julius Caesar, which isn't funny at all, so they minimise it. It's just a pity that the one time somebody pays attention to what he's saying, understands the ramifications and immediately treats him as himself rather than as the man he resembles, they skip it.

Anyway, I realise I'm a complete stranger blathering at you, and I apologise for it. I also wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your stories-- I have a particular fondness for the third part of Five Things That Never Happened to Iolaus of Thebes and Aftermath. And I am quite done bothering you now, I promise.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! Never apologize - I am delighted when new fans show up in this tiny fandom. Feel free to comment/email/whatever any time. :-)

You make some excellent points about Stranger: I was struck by "Everybody else is having a ball doing... heaven knows what, Chicago, maybe, but leave Joxer and Iolaus alone and they start doing Julius Caesar", which, YES.

There was a dramatic intensity, a connection about AU!Joxer and Iolaus here that I loved, and you're right that didn't really mesh with the outrageousness of the rest of the episode. (And now I keep seeing Xena do the 'He Had It Coming' number from Chicago.) That's probably also why they didn't develop Iolaus' decision to assasinate the Sovereign a little more, the way I would have liked, with more weight being given to the consequences: 'I'm going to kill someone who is very very hard to kill, and in doing so I'm murdering my best friend'.

I wonder what happened to rebel!Joxer between the first AU episode and the second, where Nebula has taken the empire for herself in the Sovereign's wake.

Thank you for the story feedback! You have no idea how much I love getting feedback, seriously, and your kind comments made me grin like a loon. I'm so glad you enjoyed the stories.

Also, your icon keeps pinging at me. Is it from Sandman? Possibly the Orpheus special? (That was the first Sandman I ever read.)

[maenad.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. You're very kind.

I get that, too. With Xena's hair as it is, and the acrobatic sex, I'd swear she was channelling Velma. Number seventeen-- the spread eagle! That was the difference between Stranger in a Strange World and Stranger and Stranger. The first one had a contrast between the outdoor setting of most of the 'real' world plot, with the sky above them and solid ground beneath them and a real mud puddle for Aphrodite to dive into, and the elaborate stage set of the alternate world, all closed in and improbably decorated. It was difficult to believe there was a real world outside the palace, with farms and armies and temples in it. Joxer and his people, in their realistic prison cell, show up because you need some measure of sanity to move the plot along, and by then Iolaus has clearly reached the point where, if he doesn't find another normal person, he's just going to start kicking people in the head at random and damn the consequences. It's just thematically odd. You're right, though: it would have been nice if the murder plot had been less rushed. If they'd had another twenty minutes or so to play with they might have developed a nice contrast between the psychotic theatricality of the aristocracy and the real tensions of a rebellion, with an honest debate over whether to take strategy #1: kill the Sovereign and hope the ensuing chaos solves the hind's blood problem too, or strategy #2: recover the hind's blood, bringing the gods back into the fight to take their own revenge on the Sovereign. It's #2 that they need to use to get out of this, never really discuss and that ultimately (more or less) succeeds, but only after the least convincing assassination attempt in (alternate) history.

The sequel had a much more real-world feel to it. It still had the court craziness, largely covered by Nebula playing a kind of combination Sovereign/alternate-Xena character, but they were largely focused on trying to convince the audience that the jester was a real person from a real world with real problems, not a one off joke that had mostly been forgotten. So they had outdoor scenes, a traditional villain in Ares, a traditional serpent to battle, a standard quest plot with the kind of shiny orb at the end of it that you'd expect to find hidden in a labyrinth-- what was going on at the court was almost irrelevant, just an excuse to keep Ares out of the way until the end. It's a world in which the existence of alternate-Joxer is much more plausible, but where he isn't needed, because Hercules is largely alone with the jester, and whatever happened there, sanity didn't have much to do with it.

I wish I knew what happened to him. He can't have died, and if Nebula had caught him I suspect he'd have been one of the first to go. In my head, he and Salmoneus (a rebel ascetic monk. Wears sackcloth, only eats rice and incidentally knows how to kill you using only his big toe) work largely in secret, these days, smuggling as many of Nebula's prisoners as they can rescue out to Rome, a city technically under the Empress' control, but so distant, obscure and passive that she never remembers to look there. Er. Possibly I've thought too much about this.

That's precisely where the icon is from. Poor, daft Orpheus. The first Sandman I ever read was The Wake, because it was the only one I could find at the time. It put an odd perspective on the rest of the series, though.