Trivialities

This week we have a short offering. As you probably know, I ran a Hercules and Xena trivia challenge the past few weeks, with the prize up for grabs being an official Xena: Warrior Princess Fan Club Kit for the new season!

I received several dozen entries, and was kind of happy to find that nobody got a perfect score. While I was typing it up I was afraid that the questions were too easy! Of course, if I hadn't had all the answers in front of me, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten a perfect score either.

I gave one point for each correct answer, and gave partial credit for some other answers. For your edification and enlightenment, here are the questions with their correct answers, as well as a few sundry comments from me.

1. How many different characters has Michael Hurst played during his tenure on both Hercules and Xena? (And for bonus points, can you name them?)

I thought this was the hardest question in the challenge, and I wasn't disappointed. Only two people got it right, and only one person successfully named all the roles!

Michael Hurst has, in fact, played ten different characters on Hercules and Xena. They are (in no particular order):

• Iolaus. This should have been obvious to anybody. His first appearance in this role was in the first TV movie, Hercules & The Amazon Women.
• Iolaus 2, the jester from the alternate universe. He first appeared in the episode Stranger in a Strange World (H64), and was featured in much of the fifth season of Hercules.
• Widow Twanky, the dance instructor that first appeared in ...And Fancy Free (H67).
• Charon, ferryman of the River Styx. This character first appeared in Hercules in the Underworld, and Michael reprised the role in the Xena episode Mortal Beloved (X16).
• Orestes, Prince (and later King) of Attica. This character first appeared in King For a Day (H32).
• Jean-Pierre, a French Revolutionary in the episode Les Contemptibles (H54).
• Writer/producer Paul Robert Coyle in Yes Virginia, There is a Hercules (H74) and For Those of You Just Joining Us (H90).
• Dahak, personification of evil while he possessed Iolaus. Some people may not count this one, but they are different characters.
• Legless Drunk who lives in a pigsty outside Twanky's home in Greece is Burning (H96).
• Aelus, an intoxicated victim of the hellfire in Hercules in the Underworld.

Those last two were the hardest, certainly. They required some digging to uncover.

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