Dear Reader,
This is the first in a series of migrations of posts from my former blog, which was orphaned A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. I was reviewing obscure Sci Fi TV shows that I enjoyed in my youth.
Lexx is mildly more dramatic than soft core porn. And that's not a bad thing. Spanning thousands of years and featuring a crew of misfits aboard a gigantic insectoid starship, Lexx involves just about every fetish there is. From bondage to cyber-fetishism, Lexx had it all. The series began as four TV movies, which relied heavily on CGI and were released in 1997. In 1998/1999, the series debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel to a ready audience. Think "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" meets "Twin Peaks" with a dose of Skinemax.
Lexx starred Michael McManus, Brian Downey, and Xenia Seaburg, who replaced Eva Haberman as Xev from Series 2 onward. It was a Canadian/German co-production. It featured heavy innuendo and little else, but in terms of setting it was brilliant: human civilization and the Insect Civilization were ancient enemies, the insects having been defeated in the distant past. But one insect survived, and implanted its consciousness inside a human host who ruled as "His Divine Shadow," a cooler title not existing.
His Divine Shadow engineered the Lexx, a massive, planet-destroying insectoid starship which was stolen by Stanley Tweedle, a disgraced freedom fighter and former security guard, Zev/Xev, a Cluster Lizard/Love Slave Hybrid,790, a disembodied robot head, and Kai, Last of the Brunnen-G warriors who defeated the Insects thousands of years ago. Kai is dead: he has no ambitions, no desires, no feelings. He acts out of a renewed sense of honor after having been used, bodily, by His Divine Shadow as an assassin for 2,000 years. Kai does not seek life; his friends seek it for him. He himself believes that "The Dead should not interfere with the Living." Zev/Xev is a formerly ugly woman transformed into a beautiful love slave. During her transformation process, her DNA got mixed up with a vicious Cluster Lizard and she inherits super-strength and vivacity from her Cluster Lizard side, as well as the ability to curl up in a circle and roll at rapid speed. 790 received the brainwashing treatment meant for Zev, and after his body was consumed by a the Cluster Lizard that merged with Zev, he became a robot head and self-appointed love martyr (later in the series, a reprogrammed 790 fixated on Kai). Stanley is the only pure human of the cast, and he is a cowardly, selfish, lustful bastard who happens to inherit the key to the Lexx, enabling him to command its planet-destroying faculties.
If you like B-Movies, you'd probably like Lexx. There's loads of satire, sarcasm, necrophilia, and intentional cheesiness. It's like The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The Series. It's not for everyone though. Lexx can be offputting to those who were raised on morally upright science fiction. It's not a show that takes itself seriously, at least not until the 3rd series, where the crew of the Lexx are literally caught between heaven and hell, in the form of two planets in a parallel universe that function as a real afterlife for the souls our heroes have encountered in the Light Universe. The 4th series relocates the action to a pastiche of modern-day Earth circa 2000 AD, and explores the consequences of the Lexx crew's interference in the afterlife. It turns out that Earth is at the very center of the darkest part of the Dark Zone, the universe of chaos and depravity. But we knew that already: just read my review of Millennium.
His Divine Shadow engineered the Lexx, a massive, planet-destroying insectoid starship which was stolen by Stanley Tweedle, a disgraced freedom fighter and former security guard, Zev/Xev, a Cluster Lizard/Love Slave Hybrid,790, a disembodied robot head, and Kai, Last of the Brunnen-G warriors who defeated the Insects thousands of years ago. Kai is dead: he has no ambitions, no desires, no feelings. He acts out of a renewed sense of honor after having been used, bodily, by His Divine Shadow as an assassin for 2,000 years. Kai does not seek life; his friends seek it for him. He himself believes that "The Dead should not interfere with the Living." Zev/Xev is a formerly ugly woman transformed into a beautiful love slave. During her transformation process, her DNA got mixed up with a vicious Cluster Lizard and she inherits super-strength and vivacity from her Cluster Lizard side, as well as the ability to curl up in a circle and roll at rapid speed. 790 received the brainwashing treatment meant for Zev, and after his body was consumed by a the Cluster Lizard that merged with Zev, he became a robot head and self-appointed love martyr (later in the series, a reprogrammed 790 fixated on Kai). Stanley is the only pure human of the cast, and he is a cowardly, selfish, lustful bastard who happens to inherit the key to the Lexx, enabling him to command its planet-destroying faculties.
If you like B-Movies, you'd probably like Lexx. There's loads of satire, sarcasm, necrophilia, and intentional cheesiness. It's like The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The Series. It's not for everyone though. Lexx can be offputting to those who were raised on morally upright science fiction. It's not a show that takes itself seriously, at least not until the 3rd series, where the crew of the Lexx are literally caught between heaven and hell, in the form of two planets in a parallel universe that function as a real afterlife for the souls our heroes have encountered in the Light Universe. The 4th series relocates the action to a pastiche of modern-day Earth circa 2000 AD, and explores the consequences of the Lexx crew's interference in the afterlife. It turns out that Earth is at the very center of the darkest part of the Dark Zone, the universe of chaos and depravity. But we knew that already: just read my review of Millennium.