To live outside the law you must be honest--Bob Dylan, "Absolutely Sweet Marie"

***

I wish I was a fly on the wall at CBS when this series was pitched, and they got to the part where one of the leads--a ROLE MODEL, for crying out loud!--was a THIEF!! "Well, she's not really a THIEF, you see; she doesn't take anything that belongs to anybody else--"

SHE?!

"Hey, it's been done before. There was this old series in the Sixties about a cat burglar who uses his talents for good--in fact it was called It Takes a Thief--"

But this is a SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON!!

We hardly think of Sheila as being a controversial character, because we know what she ended up being after the fact. On paper, though, before the first episode aired, she must have seemed like a programmer's worst nightmare. Good thing CBS saw reason, or at least fine-tuned Sheila's character into what we all know and love. (Well, most of us; I'm sure there are some out there who don't like her; more on that later.)

It seems that the role of Thief did make some broadcasters nervous. According to a correspondent named Paula, the series opening as broadcast in Spain refers to both Sheila and Presto as mages (magicians). Well, I suppose, in a kind of limited sense, Sheila was closer to Presto than to any of the others. And this from Dutch fan Mark Bartels: " I read how the American crowd reacted to the nom de guerre 'Thief' for Sheila. Dutch television translated it as 'Verpleegster,' which means 'Nurse' in English. Funny stuff, yes?" I have to wonder if "Nurse" is a character class TSR would recognize.

Her weapon is the most passive of the bunch: a cape and hood that render the wearer invisible. This one has very clear roots back to the RPG (role-playing game) of Dungeons & Dragons as the famous Cloak of Invisibility. This cloak is not wearer-specific; one of Venger's lizard-men uses it in "Servant of Evil". On one occasion, in "The Dragons' Graveyard", the power of the cape is undone by a magically-created whirlwind.

Whether she knows it or not, by being selective in how she uses the cloak, Sheila's not only following the wisdom of Bob Dylan quoted above but also of Mahatma Gandhi. You'll recall that Gandhi advocated civil disobedience--peacefully refusing to acknowledge certain laws--as a weapon in his campaign to turn India into a sovereign nation instead of a British colony. As part of that campaign, however, he repeatedly told his followers to obey all other laws. That way, the British could not disregard the protestors as just a lawless rabble. By choosing which laws to break, they could be shown to have (1) a legitimate grievance and (2) the discipline to go for the goal.

Rambling as this history lesson may seem, I believe that it goes a long way toward explaining why Sheila is Sheila. She chose to use her stealth against Venger and his allies; not for personal gain or out of any desire for power. Usually, she steals back the weapons that have been taken from the gang, returning things to their rightful owners. (Imagine someone else using a cloak that renders the wearer not just invisible, but not there at all. In the hands of someone who WAS a thief, it would be pretty powerful.) Looking back on the 27 episodes, the worst Sheila can be accused of is trespassing.

Of course, it also helps to have a kid brother in tow. Sheila was a role model in the Realm as well as for the viewers back home, whether she liked it or not, and had to keep her head together in order to make sure that Bobby did the same. The series would have been (or could have been) drastically different had Bobby not come along for the ride.

For one thing, many fans would argue, Sheila would have had a clearer shot at Hank. I'm not in agreement, but quite a few fans have looked at their "body language" and assumed that those two had something going on. And I'll grant a few sequences in which they're leaning on each other for what seems to be more than back support. However, I could point to a similar scene between Hank and Diana, between Diana and Presto, between Hank and Eric(!), between Venger and Sheila(!!)--this could be its own webpage. Anyway, as to whether there was anything romantic between Hank and Sheila, I'm going to wait until one of the show's writers/producers/whoever finds the series "bible" and has it posted on one of the D&D web sites (this one, Leslie's, whoever).

For another, it might not have given her a chance to show her "samurai eyebrows". I talked about this trait on Hank's page. Look at Sheila in "Night of No Tomorrow" as she calls to Tiamat to lure her back into the cave. Look at her eyes. This girl means business. It's the kind of look a big sister would have had to develop just to get through the day with a rowdy little brother like Bobby underfoot.

Not that she doesn't like Bobby. She loves him for himself, and she loves him because they're family. There aren't many overt clues as to Sheila's feelings about family, although there are a lot of hints. I think the clearest indication, though, was Sheilas's trial in "Quest of the Skeleton Warrior". When she knows for certain that she's absolutely alone, her worst fear, she freezes up, settling down into the fetal position. When Hank's voice cuts through the Salvador Dali landscape, her response is almost an anthem: "I'm not alone? Then I'm not afraid!"

Eric may well criticize Sheila for being gullible, although that's just his perspective on her openness toward other people. She befriends Sorlarz, who turned out to be worth it; and Karina, who almost got her killed. (I'm convinced that Kathy Selbert's original script for "Citadel of Shadow" had Sheila killed--or at least severely injured--by the blowback of throwing the rings at Venger, and that Karina brought her back to demonstrate her own redemption. As if the networks would ever show anything like that on Saturday morning! Of course, that plot twist would be all in a day's programming in Japanese anime, but that's another webpage.) She takes Terry under her wing, and (even she doesn't know why or how) understands the gibberish speech of a fairy-like creature. And when Hank seems to go over to the other side in "Traitor", she takes it hard. Very hard. So maybe there was something going on.

After all, they were of an age. The current state of civilization doesn't like to entertain the concept of teenaged brides as natural. Yet Sheila and Diana had already passed that biological boundary. Indeed, Sorlarz/Sir Lawrence proposes to Sheila, and her refusal is out of loyalty to the gang; she doesn't tell him "but I'm too young". If anything, she gives Sir Lawrence a dreamy smile that indicates that she might not think he's such a bad catch. The most overt clue is the truly audacious put-down Diana hands Eric in "Citadel of Shadow". Diana has been brought to tears by Eric's insults, to which Diana tells Sheila, "He's just having one of his days, Sheila; ignore him." When I got the tapes back out to prepare this website, after years away from them, and heard that line, my jaw dropped: were the girls making a menstrual joke at Eric's expense?

Sheila is the most lachrymose character of the group. Tears of joy appear at the end of "Valley of the Unicorns", and touch Ayisha's ragdoll and Sorlarz's face; tears of sadness well up in "Traitor", "Citadel of Shadow" and "Quest of the Skeleton Warrior". Japanese shorthand for the arts describes them as emotional or unemotional: "wet" or "dry". This may be one of the reasons some fans of the series dismiss Sheila as the weakest of the characters. This holds true only if you buy into the macho position that emotion equals weakness. I believe that emotion is its own kind of strength. In any case, Sheila was one of the reasons Dungeons and Dragons was perhaps the "wettest" show of its kind.