Lexx - Final Episode ...
Dec. 14th, 2004 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxI just got to see it at last, and all I can say is, "Goodbye Lexx."
It's been on Channel Five, British terrestrial TV, since, oh, 1998. I sang "Yo Way Yo" before going in to my finals (I passed - I got 2:1) in 1998.
Last night was the very last episode. The cast suffered permanent changes, notably the heroic death of Kai, last of the Brunnen - G, and Stan's heroism.
And the sad death of Lexx itself, from of all things, senile dementia. After all, it was a living spaceship, and at 6,000 years old it probably had a damned good innings.
I feel that Monday nights aren't going to be the same any more. I already miss Monkey on Channel Four, which I believe has finally come to the end of its run (unless I've lost count somewhere). I almost feel as sad as the day Johnny Alpha died in 2000AD.
Ta - ra, Lexx, Kai, Xev, Stan.
Oh, and I hope that last scene was of that dastardly 790 actually getting eaten ...
Anyone who never saw Lexx will probably be wondering WTF I'm going on about. Well, here is a summary.
The series started in 1997 / 98, and ran until the last episode in 2002. It concerned the unlikeliest characters you ever heard of, and some of the weirdest (and sometimes kinkiest) stories you can imagine.
The first season was a series of four movie - length episodes. That story begins with the death of a species of *ahem* colourful warriors, the Brunnen - G. Think "New Romantics In Space," and you get the idea.
The last of the Brunnen - G was called Kai. He, like all his fellows, was fighting against the forces of His Divine Shadow, a dreadful tyrant which seemed to be made up of shadow, passing from human host to human host down the generations, each time keeping the previous host's brains, and all its memories, in a collection.
His Divine Shadow basically ran The 20,000 Planets from The Cluster, this hive-like capital where people could get sentenced to organ harvesting for the most trivial of crimes. Others were turned into love slaves for sex.
2,000 years pass in blissful devotion to His Divine Shadow.
Enter, then, our human protagonists: the cowardly Stanley H. Tweedle, and Zev Bellringer of B3K, turned into a love slave.
There is a terrorist attack. The central computer is damaged. Cluster Lizards, a sort of six foot hoopsnake - like creature, are released among the general populace. One Cluster Lizard discovers Zev being given a makeover in the Love Slave machine; Zev wakes up to discover she is part Cluster Lizard, part love slave. She manages to give the love programming to a robot head, 790, who imprints on her and follows her everywhere.
Zev and Stan join the terrorists as they try and board The Lexx, the great project of His Divine Shadow: a living insectlike spaceship the size of Manhattan, somewhat looking like a big, wingless, legless dragonfly, with the IQ of a horse, and a weapon capable of taking out whole planets.
Stan, by sheer blind luck, picks up the energy key that controls the Lexx. He, Zev and the besotted 790 hijack the ship.
Unwisely, His Divine Shadow brings Kai, the last of the Brunnen - G, out of stasis and feeds the dead guy some of what is called protoblood, which animates corpses. Kai is programmed to take out the crew of the Lexx. His Divine Shadow also puts the brains of the previous hosts on board the Lexx.
Of course, this is the entirely wrong thing to do, because Kai is fated, by prophecy, to destroy His Divine Shadow. In the process of boarding the Lexx, Kai recovers his memories (he crushes the brain of one of the hosts) and discovers his ethical identity.
This decarbonised, nigh - indestructible, reformed Divine Assassin, joins the rest of the crew of the Lexx as they flee the Light Universe into its mirror image, the Dark Universe, a realm of chaos and lawlessness.
At the end of the first season, Kai has to return for some protoblood, and while he does succeed in obtaining some, he also crushes all but a tiny fragment of the spirit of His Divine Shadow, fulfilling the Prophecy.
In Season 2, that spirit takes Kai over, and forces the Lexx, which had returned to the Dark Universe, back into the Light Universe. The spirit is actually a racial remnant of the Insect Civilisation which the Brunnen - G had fought millennia before. This remnant fuses with Mantrid, a genius who designs self - replicating flying arm drones which consume all matter, turning it into more Mantrid drones.
Stan picks up a playmate, a plant called Lyekka, who is always hungry. The first Lyekka assumes human form, regenerates Zev after she is liquidised (a new actress, Xenia Seeburg, takes on the role from Eva Habermann) and sacrifices her life to try and save the universe from Mantrid.
The Lexx' crew tries to fight Mantrid, but finds they are too late, and Mantrid's drones consume the entire Light Universe, leaving Lexx stranded for 4,000 years in the Dark Universe.
Season 3 takes place around a pair of orbiting planets, Fire and Water. With Lexx feeling very hungry after 4,000 years drifting between stars, the crew cannot leave, and they become the playthings of the sadistic, and indestructible, Prince.
In order to save Stan, who is dead, Lexx is forced to destroy both worlds. Souls liberated from Fire and Water (bad and good, respectively) fall to the nearby little blue planet, Earth.
The final season sees the crew on Earth, in the darkest part of the Dark Universe. Lyekka reappears, and threatens to destroy the planet. 790, who is evil, tries to destroy Stan and Zev on numerous occasions. In the end, as the 6,000 year old Lexx suffers senile dementia and starts dying, 790 orders Lexx to destroy Earth. Kai, himself about to die truly, tows a large nuclear accelerator into the heart of Lyekka where it creates the Higgs Boson, and reduces Lyekka, an asteroid twice the size of the Moon, to an object the size of a pea.
Kai, truly alive for the first time in 6,000 years thanks to a bargain he made with the Tricksterish figure of Prince, aka Death, dies, and takes out Lyekka, saving the Universe. Lexx, sadly, also dies, but leaves behind a baby Lexx for Stan and Zev to fly out to find a new home - their quest from the start. And as 790 mourns the loss of the Kai he loved (whose death was precipitated by 790's own scheming) and drifts through space, Baby Lexx comes along and eats the little bastard.
Yo Way Yo. End of story.
It's been on Channel Five, British terrestrial TV, since, oh, 1998. I sang "Yo Way Yo" before going in to my finals (I passed - I got 2:1) in 1998.
Last night was the very last episode. The cast suffered permanent changes, notably the heroic death of Kai, last of the Brunnen - G, and Stan's heroism.
And the sad death of Lexx itself, from of all things, senile dementia. After all, it was a living spaceship, and at 6,000 years old it probably had a damned good innings.
I feel that Monday nights aren't going to be the same any more. I already miss Monkey on Channel Four, which I believe has finally come to the end of its run (unless I've lost count somewhere). I almost feel as sad as the day Johnny Alpha died in 2000AD.
Ta - ra, Lexx, Kai, Xev, Stan.
Oh, and I hope that last scene was of that dastardly 790 actually getting eaten ...
Anyone who never saw Lexx will probably be wondering WTF I'm going on about. Well, here is a summary.
The series started in 1997 / 98, and ran until the last episode in 2002. It concerned the unlikeliest characters you ever heard of, and some of the weirdest (and sometimes kinkiest) stories you can imagine.
The first season was a series of four movie - length episodes. That story begins with the death of a species of *ahem* colourful warriors, the Brunnen - G. Think "New Romantics In Space," and you get the idea.
The last of the Brunnen - G was called Kai. He, like all his fellows, was fighting against the forces of His Divine Shadow, a dreadful tyrant which seemed to be made up of shadow, passing from human host to human host down the generations, each time keeping the previous host's brains, and all its memories, in a collection.
His Divine Shadow basically ran The 20,000 Planets from The Cluster, this hive-like capital where people could get sentenced to organ harvesting for the most trivial of crimes. Others were turned into love slaves for sex.
2,000 years pass in blissful devotion to His Divine Shadow.
Enter, then, our human protagonists: the cowardly Stanley H. Tweedle, and Zev Bellringer of B3K, turned into a love slave.
There is a terrorist attack. The central computer is damaged. Cluster Lizards, a sort of six foot hoopsnake - like creature, are released among the general populace. One Cluster Lizard discovers Zev being given a makeover in the Love Slave machine; Zev wakes up to discover she is part Cluster Lizard, part love slave. She manages to give the love programming to a robot head, 790, who imprints on her and follows her everywhere.
Zev and Stan join the terrorists as they try and board The Lexx, the great project of His Divine Shadow: a living insectlike spaceship the size of Manhattan, somewhat looking like a big, wingless, legless dragonfly, with the IQ of a horse, and a weapon capable of taking out whole planets.
Stan, by sheer blind luck, picks up the energy key that controls the Lexx. He, Zev and the besotted 790 hijack the ship.
Unwisely, His Divine Shadow brings Kai, the last of the Brunnen - G, out of stasis and feeds the dead guy some of what is called protoblood, which animates corpses. Kai is programmed to take out the crew of the Lexx. His Divine Shadow also puts the brains of the previous hosts on board the Lexx.
Of course, this is the entirely wrong thing to do, because Kai is fated, by prophecy, to destroy His Divine Shadow. In the process of boarding the Lexx, Kai recovers his memories (he crushes the brain of one of the hosts) and discovers his ethical identity.
This decarbonised, nigh - indestructible, reformed Divine Assassin, joins the rest of the crew of the Lexx as they flee the Light Universe into its mirror image, the Dark Universe, a realm of chaos and lawlessness.
At the end of the first season, Kai has to return for some protoblood, and while he does succeed in obtaining some, he also crushes all but a tiny fragment of the spirit of His Divine Shadow, fulfilling the Prophecy.
In Season 2, that spirit takes Kai over, and forces the Lexx, which had returned to the Dark Universe, back into the Light Universe. The spirit is actually a racial remnant of the Insect Civilisation which the Brunnen - G had fought millennia before. This remnant fuses with Mantrid, a genius who designs self - replicating flying arm drones which consume all matter, turning it into more Mantrid drones.
Stan picks up a playmate, a plant called Lyekka, who is always hungry. The first Lyekka assumes human form, regenerates Zev after she is liquidised (a new actress, Xenia Seeburg, takes on the role from Eva Habermann) and sacrifices her life to try and save the universe from Mantrid.
The Lexx' crew tries to fight Mantrid, but finds they are too late, and Mantrid's drones consume the entire Light Universe, leaving Lexx stranded for 4,000 years in the Dark Universe.
Season 3 takes place around a pair of orbiting planets, Fire and Water. With Lexx feeling very hungry after 4,000 years drifting between stars, the crew cannot leave, and they become the playthings of the sadistic, and indestructible, Prince.
In order to save Stan, who is dead, Lexx is forced to destroy both worlds. Souls liberated from Fire and Water (bad and good, respectively) fall to the nearby little blue planet, Earth.
The final season sees the crew on Earth, in the darkest part of the Dark Universe. Lyekka reappears, and threatens to destroy the planet. 790, who is evil, tries to destroy Stan and Zev on numerous occasions. In the end, as the 6,000 year old Lexx suffers senile dementia and starts dying, 790 orders Lexx to destroy Earth. Kai, himself about to die truly, tows a large nuclear accelerator into the heart of Lyekka where it creates the Higgs Boson, and reduces Lyekka, an asteroid twice the size of the Moon, to an object the size of a pea.
Kai, truly alive for the first time in 6,000 years thanks to a bargain he made with the Tricksterish figure of Prince, aka Death, dies, and takes out Lyekka, saving the Universe. Lexx, sadly, also dies, but leaves behind a baby Lexx for Stan and Zev to fly out to find a new home - their quest from the start. And as 790 mourns the loss of the Kai he loved (whose death was precipitated by 790's own scheming) and drifts through space, Baby Lexx comes along and eats the little bastard.
Yo Way Yo. End of story.
