One of the difficulties in doing 'Highlander' is we found that episodes that -- without Immortals didn't work as well, because it's like Superman taking on some guy who's robbing a bank. It doesn't work. The hero is judged up against the ferocity of the villain. So we wanted to create some sort of story where it wasn't just the guy is the best swordsman in the western world, or the guy is the best swordsman in China, or the guy is the best swordsman in Hoboken. We wanted to do a story where someone else could use something else for an edge. And so we figured on layering the story in a way that played on Duncan's profound sense of his own personal guilt. Guilt that he'd survived and other people have died, guilt for the mistakes that he's made over all of these years. So we created a bad guy who had a great sense of psychology and Freud and all of these things... and a little bit of Jung... and who could deal with symbols and deal with long-forgotten memories and bring them out.

So the idea was to do a story where MacLeod was facing an Immortal that he believed to be an illusion and a dream. And then create an Immortal that Duncan could go to as a shrink, who would say, "The best way to defeat the Immortal who is in your dreams is to deny his existence." It's kind of like, um, the best trick the devil had, was to convince everyone that he doesn't exist.

So we took that premise and thought, 'Okay. Here you have an Immortal who knows he can't defeat MacLeod in a fair fight. But the rules of the Game says he has to approach MacLeod and beat him one-on-one with a sword. So we needed to create something that Duncan would deny the Immortal's, this Immortal's existence. So we slowly tried to drive Duncan crazy, and then send him to a shrink that said to him, "Only if -- the only way you can defeat these bad dreams is by denying the existence of the illusion."

So Duncan sees the illusion, finally, and believes that it's an illusion, but it turns out to be real. And it's only through chance that he realizes that this is real and defends and saves his life.

It plays on his own sense of guilt -- guilt for all the characters who died, and he lived. Guilt because he couldn't save his clan, because he is Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod and he is the clan leader. And yet he couldn't save his clan, um, so he carries all of that with him.

We just wanted to create a different kind of villain, you know, to make it more interesting. It gets old week after week after week after week, having the 'best gun in town' come to town, so I thought this would be interesting. Also, it gave us an opportunity for different visuals, a different look on the show, and play a little darker.

Anne Lindsey was an interesting character on the show. Her relationship with MacLeod was developing, and, you know, she was peripherally involved in his life. Essentially, I think, you know, as writers we always wanted to have a strong love interest for MacLeod. Tessa was dead at this point. MacLeod had been having adventures. But Anne Lindsey was kind of a counterweight to him -- she saved lives; she was a doctor, so she really had a different role in life, and she did not know about MacLeod's immortality.

At the same time, there were some on-screen sparks between the two, but I think the audience really wanted -- and I think we understood that -- really wanted this relationship to either go somewhere or not. And I think we felt it was too early to, you know, to bring Anne into the fold or to let her know about MacLeod being immortal. At this point, she didn't realize that he was an Immortal at all.

I think in writing an on-screen romance between your lead character and someone else, or your lead characters, you can always write great scenes, but when the actors get in the room, I think that spark, that spark of attaction is either there or it isn't, and there's not much you can do about it. And probably in a sense, as good as the actors are, not a lot the actors can do about it. That is, it's a very real thing, a very natural thing. And I think by then some of us sensed that there wasn't a real on-screen attraction between these two characters, between MacLeod and Dr. Anne Lindsey. I think some of the fans were very disappointed that Anne eventually left the show, that that character eventually went off, but I think in some ways MacLeod would be tied down when he had a relationship, a strong love interest, as he had with Tessa, and I think we were very leery of tying him down that way.

I think in some ways it structured that show, that particular episode, "Shadows". Anne Lindsey couldn't really learn MacLeod's secret or that would have drawn her further into his world, so we had to make a decision, I think, as to whether or not she was going to learn who and what MacLeod really was or stay on the outside. So throughout the episode, you feel that tension of these two characters.

You feel the frustration that MacLeod feels, as well, because if he brings Anne into his world, he's afraid she'll be in danger. He really doesn't want Anne to learn about what's going on, and he keeps her at a distance. He keeps her at arm's length throughout the piece, and I think you can feel that throughout the episode. And in the end, he makes the decision not to tell her what's happening with him.

Now, "Shadows" was interesting because, first of all, I'm the only "Immortal" to have ever killed MacLeod, albeit in a dream sequence. The whole idea of "Shadows" being a nightmare image rather than a real opponent was kind of interesting to play with, because I got to double the role of the Shadow.

"Shadows" was the only episode that we had five swordfights in one episode, and on a seven-day shooting schedule, that's quite a bit. We actually shot a fight on day one, and on day two, and so on and so forth.

The Shadow costume, because it's replicating the image of this statue, was a black gown that went almost all the way to the ground, because it had to cover you right down to your ankle-bones. It had long, hanging sleeves, what are called tippets. And then it had a hood that went over and in front of the face, under which I wore a fencing mask that was blacked out, so there's no preipheral vision whatsoever. It's sort of like a horse with blinders. You can't see anything at all. I had to have the sleeves sewn shut because the swinging moves of the sword would actually have the sleeves swinging around the cross-hilt of the sword and catching it and arresting it halfway through a move and whatnot. So I'm fighting the costume. I can't even bend my knees, because as soon as I do, the next step will step on the inside of the hem and I'll walk up the inside of my own costume.

So I did four of the fight scenes involving the Shadow, and as luck would have it, I was also a bit ill, so all of the fights that were done in the dojo, which were the longest, most complex fights, I was running a fever of 102. normally, wearing all of this nonsense under the lights of the studio and whatnot, so between takes I would just pass out on this gym mat that they had laid down for me.

One of the things about the episode which was also interesting was because for the longest time, you don't know whether it IS a real person or a nightmare image, and I went with the idea of -- nightmare images repeat themselves, so I thought, 'How are we going to get five swordfights' -- and a kata, a beautiful, beautiful sword kata' -- if you'll notice, ends at the exact spot it started out from, as katas are supposed to do. Adrian did it beautifully -- 'How are we going to get five swordfights into one episode?' I mean, I -- as an actor, I take as long to learn fights as any other actor, even thought I've choreographed them. So the idea of nightmare images repeating themselves, I thought, 'well, perfectly legitimate -- we'll use the same phrase again and again and again in each fight scene' and see if anybody picks up on the fact that it's just like a video image looping.

The other thing was because it's unrealistic, the cadence to the fight is not the way a normal human would fight, which is totally nonsyncopated -- bam, bu-bam, bu-bu-bu bu-bam, bu-bam -- like this, almost like a musical bar. It's just wham, wham, wham, like this, and what I was trying to reproduce was the feeling of an accelerated human heartbeat, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, as you would if you were in the throes of a nightmare.

So, in a way, it was a very interesting thing to do, being 'reality, nonreality, which is which' sort of thing until the last scene where Mac realizes because of the ring on the glove, that it is actually Garrick this time, and of course, at the very end, he's also under the influence of sleeping drugs, so in the last fight scene, MacLeod is a little bit whacked out. Then, at the very end, we thought, 'well, let's have some fun with this,' so we did the shot of the taking of the head from the PoV of the head. And we had this special camera rig hooked up with two handles, so the operator grasped it sort of like this [crosses his arms in front of his chest], looking at MacLeod as he delivered the decapitating blow, and then the camera operator did 'whoomp whoomp whoomp' [rotates / uncrosses arms], so you sort of had the PoV of the head coming off the body, flipping over once and landing sideways on the rug, which was a little bit grotesque in an interesting sort of way, but we thought, 'What the heck. Play with it.'

In "Shadows", we had shot the episode, or a large part of the episode's flashback, out at Fantasy Gardens in Vancouver, which stood in for London in the 1600s. And in that particular flashback, MacLeod's friend, played by Garwin Sanford, another Immortal, is going to be burned at the stake, because they think he's a witch. We had dozens of extras. They were in great character; they did a fabulous job. We had these peasants jumping up and down and screaming 'Burn him, burn him, burn him!' When it came time for a break and for lunch, our extras went over to the lunch wagon and found that Jackie Chan, who was shooting "Rumble in the Bronx" in another part of Fantasy Gardens, another part of this location, had had -- his extras had gone for lunch and had taken OUR extras' food. So our extras weren't in any mood to fool around, and they're about ready to burn Jackie Chan's crew, I think, at the stake at that point.