Alexandra Tydings at DragonCon 2001

In August 2001, Alex Tydings and Claudia Christian appeared at the DragonCon convention in Atlanta, GA and discussed Hourglass with the audience at a Saturday panel. Alex Tydings later appeared at a panel by Xena costars Claire "Alti" Stansfield and Tim "Eli" Omundson and commented further. Below is a video excerpt of Alex's talk (AVI format, approx. 3.9 megabytes) as well as a transcript of all of Alex's Hourglass-related comments. Thanks to Jody Leak for the video encoding.

Click on the image above to download video clip.

Audience member: What is Hourglass? Not all of us know...

Alexandra Tydings: Hourglass is the new series that Claudia Christian and I are doing. We created it, right now we're in development. Looks like we're probably going to be shooting in Australia in the spring, and everything going according to plan, on the air next fall.

And the premise is...and we don't know where it will be airing yet because we're just figuring all that stuff out...probably syndication but possibly network, possibly a cable station...we're not sure.

The way it works is, you've got to pull together...it's sort of like if you want to buy a bicycle and you go to your parents for some money, and they give you some of it, and you go to your aunt and uncle, and then you use your allowance, and...so we've got a couple of foreign territories that are on now, and the people who are involved...Steven Sears, who was executive producer of Xena, and now Sheena...Peter Bergman, who's executive producer of Lost World...with those guys in it, and we've already sold two territories...I mean, and me and Claudia, come on.

Audience member: What's the premise?

Alex: The premise is...it's an hour-long action show, starring me and Claudia, and it's a time travel show and Claudia and I are modern girls who want to go to the future, end up in the past by accident, and spend the series time-travelling through the past through real moments in history, specifically moments when women were coming into power. Every series will be based in real history with real characters: Pope Joan, the female pirates, Queen Boadicea...there's a gold mine.

Audience member: Who got that great idea?

Alex: The two of us. Yeah, we came up with it together. Me and Claudia and a bottle of wine.

Audience: (Applause)

Audience member: You guys have been busy.

Alex: We have been so busy it's ridiculous. And just wait...oh my God. I don't want to think about it. Anyway...next?

Audience member: Where is Claudia?

Claire Stansfield: Claudia has a line around the block. She's signing autographs upstairs.

Audience member: Would you want to bring in any of the actors from Xena, such as Tim [Omundson] or Lucy [Lawless] or Renee [O'Connor]...?

Alex: No, I don't like any of them.

Claire: That would be a really bad idea, to have Lucy on the show probably wouldn't work well for ratings...

Audience: (Laughter)

[Alex walks around from behind the table and sits on the edge of it.]

Alex: Am I gonna break the table if I sit down?

Claire: No, if I didn't break the table you will not.

Alex: Thanks, babe. Yeah, of course, abolutely. The whole idea is to work with our friends and do what we want to do and play.

Audience member: There in the past you could visit them on the Xena set.

Alex: Absolutely, and visit Hercules and visit Babylon 5...seriously, why the hell not? Whatever we can get the rights for, man, we'll do it.

Audience: (Applause)

Alex: Yeah, have a reunion.

Tim Omundson: So I don't have to be Eli...what if I was like "Elli"...and I'll wear a blue mu-mu instead of a green one.

Alex: Good idea, yes. I'll get you up on stage and let you do a little dance for charity also.

Audience: (Applause)

Tim: As long as it's for the kids.

Audience member: Once you start doing convention, are you going to have Creation run them?

Alex: Creation has offered...Creation wants the exclusive...

Audience: No!

Alex: ...but I'm not sure exactly how people would feel about that! So, my idea...and actually I haven't talked to Claudia about this yet, I probably shouldn't say this...we can say it's a rumor. My idea is, because we're gonna be in Australia filming nine months out of the year, and in our down time she's gonna want to direct, I'm gonna want to do features...we won't have that much time to do that many conventions. My idea is one big convention a year, just like Lucy and Renee have done, and I want it to be...I want it to be free. And I want all of the proceeds...whatever money does come in from pictures or whatever, to go to the Trevor Foundation or whoever we choose...just one good one a year for charity.

Audience: (Applause)

Alex: Centrally located, of course. I like New York personally, but...

Audience: (Applause)

Alex: What about Bali, or Morocco? Nothing's wrong with anything, man, we'll figure it out.

Audience member: Rent a ship, we'll do a cruise party.

Alex: That sounds dangerous. It looks like we're probably going to be shooting on the Gold Coast in Australia, yeah. And Paris Jefferson, who played Athena... [points to Paris's photo on the wall] ...there she is, gorgeous woman...she just did a feature on the Gold Coast, so she's given us the names of the restaurants, the hotels, and where to buy the makeup, and the whole thing. It's hot over there. I like it hot.

Audience member: Do you think that Hourglass will ever have the fanfic base that Xena has?

Alex: I don't know why not. (jokingly) I mean, you guys probably guessed that Claudia and I aren't really very comfortable with the idea of subtext, or anyone thinking that there might be something going on between us, so you know...if the producers really want it, we'll let them do something.

Audience member: I just wanted to follow up on that, because we just had an interesting discussion about many people saying actually they preferred not seeing a consummation of Xena and Gabrielle, because it makes the magic go away. How are you going to handle it?

Alex: I don't know. We'll figure it out. I just wrote the first script, I didn't write the whole series. And I thought about that also, I thought about...when you just asked me that question about the fan fiction, I wonder if Xena had been what everyone wanted it to be if there would have been as much of a fan fiction kind of craze, because...I don't know. I mean, at this point we're not really going in there with a whole lot of strategy, you know. We just want to go and make a great show that we're proud of. That has a little bit of a heart, that we believe in and can look back in fifty years and say yeah, we kicked ass and we did something cool.