"Cut! Kevin, I want maximum evil, maximum evil! You bystanders: You're about to witness someone being beheaded. It's going to be horrible, so show me horror."

It's midway through the shooting of "Seeds of Faith," the 100th episode of "Xena: Warrior Princess." On this particular August day, the New Zealand weather is fickle, with intermittent rain and sunshine bedeviling the shoot. It's also muddy and cold. Huge lighting rigs are being used to help create a hot, sunny African day, and actors Kevin Smith (Ares) and Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle) are swaddled in cloaks while the scene is reset.

"I've got that desperate, panicky, sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach," mutters the episode's director, New Zealander Garth Maxwell, puffing on a cigarette. "The days are too short and there's not enough time, as always." Maxwell has helmed eight episodes, more than any homegrown director. (Twenty-six of the show's 100 episodes have been directed by New Zealanders).

On average, each "Xena" is shot in eight days, with a second unit taking the same amount of time. "Seeds of Faith" is a relatively normal episode in the world of "Xena," if such a thing exists in a series that dances between times, genres and moods. In recent previous episodes, "Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire" was a complex musical incorporating modern-day music, while "Married With Fishsticks" centered around mermaids who live in a funky, psychedelic grotto. "Seeds of Faith" also marks a pivotal turning point in the series. The identity of the father of Xena's unbom baby is revealed, and there's a "changing of the guard, in terms of deities," according to Smith, who has formally left the series but returns for key episodes. Also back is Xena and Gabrielle's arch nemesis Callisto (Hudson Leick).

"We've just come out of a musical, which was the most fantastic time we've had in many episodes, and now we're on for the 100th. It's quite dark and dirty, so I'm finding it a bit emotional, and I take it home with me a bit more than I normally do," says O'Connor, who has played Gabrielle, Xena's companion, since the series began. "[But] we have a good time here, and that's what it's all about." O'Connor's sentiment sums up the atmosphere on set: highly efficient but very relaxed and informal.

Unquestionably, the anchor is Lucy Lawless, whose presence permeates the set once she arrives. "What's goin' on boys?" she says as she bounds into the "village." It's obvious this is her show, but at the same time she's just one of the crew. Seven months pregnant and sporting her maternity battle smock -- undoubtedly a first in the history of television -- native Lawless chats to the extras, gossips with O'Connor, does stretching exercises in front of everyone and loudly extols the virtues of pregnancy-induced endorphins.

The look and temperment of "Xena" is greatly influenced by its New Zealand production home. "It's really become a weird amalgam of the Kiwi (New Zealander) and American culture," says Lawless, perched on a canvas seat labeled "Lucy's Fan chair." "It's a strange, lively family; a hybrid group."

"The New Zealand crew's influence on 'Xena' has been enormous and immeasurable," says co-executive producer Eric Gruendemann, Renaissance Picture's man on the ground through its New Zealand division, Pacific Renaissance Pictures (PRP). "The shows wouldn't have the same sense of humor, especially in the backdrops and a lot of the stuff we do in the sets and costumes, which comes very much out of the New Zealand sensibility [of] not taking yourself too seriously."

"There's a very intense- collaboration that goes on all the time between the cast, creatives and [crew] which I think has definitely stamped the show as being one that puts its money on the screen in a very tangible way," observes New Zealand producer Chloe Smith, who adds that while PRP has lost the economies of scale it enjoyed when "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" was shooting alongside -- sharing craftspeople and some costumes and sets -- it would still cost 50% more if the series was made in America.

The village scene is set in one of a handful of massive, fixed outdoor sets PRP has built over the years in a park once used for lion safaris. While "Hercules" is now gone, Renaissance's latest series, '%Cleopatra 2525," is shooting in a nearby field, and another, "Jack of All Trades" (starring "Hercules" and "Xena" co-star Bruce Campbell) is in preproduction. Like most "Xena" episodes, "Seeds of Faith" has a mix of internal and external locations, which are shot usually across four PRP-owned "bases" scattered throughout Auckland. They include an old cool-room to store fruit and various warehouses, which house up to 25 interim sets at any one time, as well as props. Ah are unmarked to escape public attention, as are PRP's headquarters.

Laboring in these stage facilities and locations, a seasoned crew puts together the show's unique world, bringing a range of production displines to bear on the show's story lines, which mix myth and fantasy with comedy and drama for a very eclectic palette. "'Xena' is more acrobatic and more violent than 'Hercules,"' says stunt coordinator Peter Bell, who has choreographed all of the show's signature fights and stunts. "When [Xena] goes back to her dark past, that opens a whole area where we can be very brutal with the action scenes, including the odd cutting of the throat and the running through of swords." Bell incorporates a lot of rig work on the series to simulate the gravity-defying aerial moves that have become a hallmark of the series. "She actually runs up walls, runs up guys' bodies, back flips, then kicks them in the head. With a rig, [we] take the viewers' eye from the land moves to aerial moves."

The look of "Seeds of Faith," and all 'Xena" episodes since day one, is determined by Rob Gillies, who oversees production design, props and the art department for all of PRP's shows. Gillies describes his overall approach to "Xena" as a "little bit more edgy" than the other PRP offerings. As with each key creative attached to the series, including the directors, he has little more than a week to prepare each episode, and describes the process as working out "50% how 'it'll look, 50% how we can do that." Learning from "Hercules," which had the same time constraints, Gillies has a coordinator working solely on "Xena," plus alternating art direction teams to spread the workload. "We've pretty much stuck with our formula because it works within our time framework, except that the episodes seem to get more outlandish. It's crazy stuff. But, you know, that's what keeps it interesting," he says. Gillies estimates 3,000 sets have been set up for "Xena" to date, and that's a "conservative" figure, he notes. He regularly wins the top design nod at New Zealand's annual TV awards, held in November, and 1999 was no exception, although for the first time the series also won best drama (based on the two-parter'"The Debt").

Makeup artist Francia Smeets and costume designer Jane Holland have once again had to adapt to a completely new location with "Seeds of Faith." The African setting is merely the next in a lively array of geography Xena and Gabrielle have traipsed through, which to date has included China, India, Rome and the supematural netherworld. However, Smeets says for her it is a "lot less complicated" than some previous episodes when there have been specific changes, such as the Indian cycle of stories. "We do have a standard look, but in this series we've gone a bit lighter on the makeup," she says. "There's no particular reason, I think it's just nice to have a little change." "Xena" can ratchet up the gore element when requited, Smeets says, with the producers being "quite reasonable" about the amount of blood used.

As with most episodes, Holland, who currently oversees a team of around 40, has tried to keep the number of fittings to two for the main characters because of the short lead time. "It's pretty fast and furious, but there's definitely a certain look and style, and there are lot of reference points because the series has been going for so long," says Holland. "But we're always making new things, doing new things and just trying to find different ways of doing something that's been done before." While much of the garb is recycled, some are made from scratch, including the leatherwork and dyeing, as are props. PRP has vast wardrobe and prop storerooms at the back of its main offices, as well as some other prop stores alongside its various studios. Both departments are completely self-contained; no ready-made products are bought for the series.

Some of the scenes in "Seeds of Faith" also involve visual effects, including one scene conceming the revelation of the origins of Xena's child. George Port, who joined the show at the beginning of the last season as its New Zealand effects supervisor, has already identified what effects are needed and gone through the script with the director. Some effects can be handled by the art or costume departments, but this one is a computer-generated eerie light that will be inserted later by Flat Earth in Los Angeles.

"We basically set up everything and make sure that's it's shot properly and as far as we can within the framework of a seven-day shoot," says Port. "The first day I walked in, I looked at some of the stuff we'd done and thought, 'This is terrible,' but now, if you have a look at a episodes such as 'Fallen Angel' and 'Them Bones, Them Bones,' the work they've done is terrific, the integration's really good and everything is working much better."

While never on set, Kiwi casting director Di Rowan is on the front line. Working with L.A.based casting director Beth Hymson-Ayer, Rowan fills the screen with warriors, wizards and various not-quite-human roles. In the hectic leadup to each episode of "Xena," the first stop a director has is with Rowan to decide on a suitable cast. She prefers to see no more than 10 candidates for an important supporting role, who are filmed in auditions. Unless time is pressing, seven of those tapes will be presented to each director. "When [the American] directors step off the plane, they usually come to me bleary-eyed, and I'11 fill them up with coffee and tell them we've got three hours to cast the show," she says.

Unlike earlier episodes of "Xena," imported actors nowadays are only used every four or five episodes, says Rowan, who has up to 5,000 actors on her books, and works on the basis that anyone in New Zealand is a potential talent for the series. For "Seeds of Faith," she has found an African-American, James Gaylin, a singer who now resides in New Zealand and has played bit parts previously, to play an important role as a priest, and put forward Peter Rowley, one of the country's best-known comedians, as Ares' hapless sidekick.

"I guess we're running a school for 'Xena' actors," she says. "We do have some very good actors [who] I try to keep for bigger roles, then we have people I tend to use for the medium-size roles and then people for smaller ones. But within that structure, we have people who come from nowhere and I'll give them one or two lines because they've got natural talent, and then they slowly build up."

That also applies to the crew, many of whom have graduated in skills by working on various PRP series producer Smith estimates a third of the crew associated with "Hercules" moved over to Sony's "The Vertical Limit" and New Line's "The Lord of the Rings" when the series was canceled). The contributions "Xena" has made to the New Zealand production industry are multilayered and pervasive. In an economic sense, Smith estimates the series has injected around NZ$110 million (U.S.$60 million) into the economy to date.

"I think what these shows give back to New Zealand is obviously a workforce fully engaged and the personal offshoots of that are evident in a freelance industry," says Smith. "It has added to an industry feeling of confidence that there is, in fact, the ability to attract work of this longevity, and to sustain it."

As for how long "Xena" can keep delivering its New Zealand infused formula for success, Smith thinks there's "definitely" another year in the series.

"It has the potential to continue on beyond that, [as] there's an emotional heart to this series, which always can find new aspects to work around," she says.

Adds Gruendemann: "I certainly feel we have another season or two in us, certainly in terms of the storytelling. Whether Lucy or Rob want to continue after that is anybody's guess, but we certainly plan to be here for the long haul. It's still a hell of a lot of fun to make, which is very nice, because you can't say that about too many shows after five years."

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