Review for Lexx: Complete Collection (19 discs)

Introduction

I came late to the joys of Channel 5. Our local transmitter will never be upgraded, now going straight to the digital switchover, and it was only when I pointed a Freeview aerial at another transmitter did I find out what everyone else was enjoying. I live in London by the way. By then it was already too late for Lexx, as Channel 5 was coming to the end of its run, and all I got was a spaceship shaped like a wingless dragonfly, and a dead dude with an odd hairstyle. It looked fascinating, a cross between Farscape and Red Dwarf if anything. Now, some ten years later, Lexx is coming out in complete series form on DVD, courtesy of MediumRare Entertainment. I could finally see what all the fuss was about, and requested the discs with alacrity. And then got cold feet. For Lexx The Complete Series comes on 19 discs, and with a release date just a couple of weeks away, that isn't a lot of time to watch the show. Then again, PR companies usually only send a sample disc, and just one disc is hardly enough to get to know a show's worth. Before I could fret too much, a package was delivered with the first three discs of Lexx, which seems like a happy compromise. Surely the first three mini-movies that comprise three-quarters of the first season ought to be enough to judge the show.


Lexx is the story of the most destructive starship in two universes and its crew of misfits, as they flee from the totalitarian rule of The Divine Shadow, increasingly spurred on their adventures by hunger, fear and lust. There's the giant, living bio-engineered starship Lexx, the half-formed love slave (crossed with a mutant worm) Zev, the ever traitorous Stanley Tweedle, the head of droid 790 (that got the love slave programming that Zev was supposed to get), and then there's Kai, last of the Brunnin-G, destined to defeat the evil insect empire, even though he's been dead for the last 2008 years.

As mentioned, Lexx: The Complete Series comes on 19 discs, apparently the original releases repackaged (although from my brief research it appears that season 4 was never actually released in the UK), comprises 4 seasons, started off with 4 movies, a twenty episode second season, a thirteen episode third season, and a 24-episode fourth Season. I'm just looking at the first three movies, and can only comment on the content upon the discs.


1.1 I Worship His Shadow (89 mins)
Kai is a man with a destiny, the last of the Brunnin-G, he's supposed to defeat the Insect civilisation. The trouble is that he is dead, along with his world, killed by the Divine Shadow. But the Divine Shadow isn't without mercy, and has Kai reanimated and put to use as an assassin. 2008 years later, the Cluster is the Capital of 20000 worlds where the Shadow rules supreme. The moment of supreme destiny is at hand for the Divine Shadow, as the construction of the most powerful spaceship ever is about to be completed, and with the Lexx, peace will be brought to the universe through superior firepower. It isn't the best time for a prison break. The pirate Thodin has sneaked into The Cluster as a prisoner to steal the Lexx, but has been sentenced to death in front of thousands in an arena. A hideously obese woman named Zev has been found guilty of failing in her wifely duties and has been sentenced to transformation into a love slave. And security guard Stanley Tweedle has been sentenced to death for failing to show up for organ extraction punishment after backtalking a superior officer. Thodin manages to escape from the arena and free his allies. Zev gets halfway through the conversion process. She's turned into a hottie, but gets her DNA mixed up with a Cluster Lizard, while the robot 790 that is guarding her gets the love slave conditioning by mistake, and falls head over heels for her. And Stanley Tweedle goes on the run and winds up fleeing with Zev. They all head towards the Lexx. The current incarnation of The Divine Shadow doesn't believe in destiny. He awakens Kai and sets him after the fugitives, with orders to kill them…


1.2 Super Nova (90 mins)
Lost in the parallel universe of the Dark Zone, the Lexx and its crew contemplate their next move. 790 is searching for a habitable world that they might call home, while Stanley is trying to get carnal with Zev. Zev may be a love slave now, with a heightened libido, desperate for sex, but even she has standards. But she does want Kai, Kai who happens to be dead and uninterested in sex. She believes that if they can find his original homeworld of Brunnis, they may learn of a way of bringing him back to life, which does mean that she has to try and persuade Stanley, the only man capable of captaining the Lexx, to go searching for Brunnis. The planet that they find isn't promising. Its inhabitants originally abandoned Brunnis, as its sun was about to go supernova. They managed to stabilise it with orbiting satellites, but the world is still empty and barren. There are still structures standing though, including an automated library. The problem is that a rather eccentric AI poet, who failed to escape Brunnis with the others of his race, has supplanted the AI librarian. They're not going to get any light reading in this particular archive. Meanwhile, the Divine Predecessors (the disembodied brains of former Divine Shadows stored aboard Lexx), have hatched a plan to take back the ship, using the services of the cannibal woman Gigerota.


1.3 Eating Pattern (90 mins)
Lexx is hungry, which given that Lexx provides the food needs for the crew, means that the crew is hungry as well. In what appears to be an empty and barren universe, that doesn't bode well for Stanley Tweedle's stomach. Yet when they pick up a transmission from an eccentric man, inviting them all to a world of plenty, Stanley isn't inclined to alter course. Instead, they try asking the Divine Predecessors for help, and when they aren't forthcoming, they try waking Kai. Except that Kai is dead, I mean dead dead, not alive dead. By this time, Lexx is acting on its own, and has altered course to a likely looking world. It's an abandoned dump of a world, with plenty of garbage to eat, and some nice soft ground in which to bury Kai. But rather than head back to the ship after the impromptu funeral, Zev spots someone moving in an ancient looking building. Stanley advises discretion rather than valour, and Zev really out to have listened. The warped remnants of civilisation exist here, the man from the transmission, Bug is king, and the few survivors wager their body parts in exchange for a drug called Pattern. Pattern is extracted from those body parts, and the one thing that this world needs is the influx of new, clean, flesh.

The Discs

It looks as if the original discs have been repackaged, rather than any substantial attempts at re-mastering and re-authoring. Certainly, the three discs I saw were single layer efforts, squeezing in some two hours of video each. As you would expect, there is the occasional moment of pixellation and compression artefacts, when the action on the 4:3 image gets a little frenetic, but by and large it's still an acceptable enough watch. The CGI is definitely showing its age now though, and the image has an overall softness to it that harks back to a lower definition, NTSC era. Audio comes in DD 2.0 English flavour, which has just enough Prologic oomph to make a fair bit of impact on the ears. The dialogue is clear throughout, although subtitles are missed when it comes to the various moments of sci-fi babble. I also found the music of Lexx to be very appealing, taking a leaf from Blade Runner's electronica hooks, offering something epic and immersive.

Extras

The three discs that I got appear to be the original single layer discs that were first released. All three get nicely animated menus.

Disc 1 has a 15-minute featurette with creator and writer Paul Donovan, as well as writers Lex Gigeroff, and Jeffrey Hirschfield. They talk about the inception of the series, offer some behind the scenes gossip and snippets of information, as well as showing off the original promo reel that preceded the production of the show.

Disc 2 also gets a 16-minute featurette with Paul, Lex, and Jeff again. This time they talk about the CGI and special effects of Lexx, with clips from the show, and interviews with the cast and crew that created all these strange worlds and vistas, these oddball creatures and bizarre technology.


Disc 3's 16-minute featurette looks at the casting of the show, with interviews with all the main cast members, as well as some brief input from the guest stars in the third film, including Rutger Hauer.

The press release with the show promises Making of Featurettes, Behind the scenes interviews, Deleted Scenes, and On Set Interviews, so no doubt there are more goodies on the other 16 discs. Incidentally, the runtime for the series is taken from the press release, but it seems to me to be half the length that it should be.

Conclusion

Now that's an ability that I have long since let atrophy. I had to use my suspension of disbelief with this show. Back in the dark days of cheap special effects, model shots, and gorilla suits, the viewer had to do half the work in accepting the reality of TV fantasy and sci-fi. Lexx comes from the early days of TV CGI, back when the pinnacle of the industry was Babylon 5, and switching between CG and live action was always a jarring conversion. Lexx didn't have the budget of Babylon 5. To modern eyes it looks like a collection of poorly rendered cut scenes. But engaging that old suspension of disbelief works wonders, especially as the writing, the characters and the story are all so strong. It also looks as if Lexx pioneered the idea of a digital backlot, years before Sky Captain claimed to do the same thing. When I initially saw Lexx, I caught it at the hind end of its run, when the bizarre characters were now on contemporary Earth for some strange reason. It made very little sense at the time, but starting now from the beginning means that the show's internal logic is clear at least.


The first three Lexx movies turned out to be a great deal of fun, with an interesting story, and some very quirky and bizarre characters. It does indeed feel like a cross between Red Dwarf and Farscape, but with a very dark edge to it, that is balanced with a raw sexiness that isn't usually associated with TV sci-fi. It was around this time that TV space operas decided to be as anti-Star Trek as possible, dirty, grimy, and anti-heroic. These traits typified shows like Farscape, and Lexx with its crew of fugitives takes that ethos to its limit. These are people from the hind end of humanity, with no goals other than staying alive, and assuming they have enough food in their stomach, satisfying whatever venal needs they may develop. Yet even with that starting point, there's a universe of possibilities when it comes to the stories that can be told, although there is a whole lot of cannibalism in these first three films. It's also an interesting universe where the technology is organic, which makes for a very bizarre and intriguing look for the show, and often disgusting.


The characters certainly provide for some interesting variation. The anti-hero of the piece, the cowardly and self-serving Stanley Tweedle is something of a cross between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf, duplicitous and egotistical, yet more interested in his own gratification than furthering any ambition. Kai is an enigma, the last of the Brunnin-G. We only get a glimpse of who he really is, or was, before he's killed and then resurrected as an assassin. This Kai has a dry, almost arid sense of humour, and adds much to the show's already dark wit. Then there is Zev, the unexpected sex interest of the show. I say unexpected, as she starts off as the bride that no one wants, obese and ridden with acne. As her punishment for not being up to her prospective husband's standards, she's supposed to be turned into a pliant, obedient sex slave. The transformation half works. She gets the body of a sex goddess, but her personality remains unaltered, while a last minute hitch means that her DNA is combined with that of a cluster worm, which gives her some odd abilities and some ravenous appetites. This ought to be to Stanley's advantage, but Zev still has enough of a standard to avoid his advances. At the same time, she falls for Kai, who through being dead can't return her feelings. And a frustrated love triangle is formed that serves as the twisted emotional heart of the show.


The show also gets some interesting guest stars in the first three films to help kick things off. Barry Bostwick makes for a rather unlikely Han Solo type in the first episode, a piratical freedom fighter that is trying to save the galaxy from the predations of the Divine Shadow. A lot more appealing is Tim Curry, as a hologram in the library of Brunnis that is more than a little insane. The third episode is the best of all, with Rutger Hauer chewing the scenery as Bug, king and drug lord of the abandoned planet, with a bizarre hairstyle and an excess of lip-gloss.


I can't tell if these first three films are representative of the series as a whole, but they certainly get things off to a resounding start. Lexx is the perfect antithesis to the bright and shiny space operas of the world. It's grimy and base, with an interesting collection of antiheroes at its heart. It doesn't at all take itself seriously, with a deliciously wry sense of humour, always on the verge of winking at the camera, but somehow managing to pull back. The stories are also very appealing, and surprisingly strong in sci-fi, given that sense of humour. It also isn't shy of tackling a few issues, and having a message to its stories, such as the drug dependent culture in Eating Pattern, although once again it never stoops to preach or judge in the same way that Trek might do. You just have to remember to suspend that disbelief at the door on your way in to the show. It's from that era where TV CGI looked like Playstation cutscenes. It may have been cutting edge for 1998, but not so much now. Its effects have dated far more quickly more traditional effects work would have, but the style and energy of its storytelling still appeal today. It's well worth shelling out for if you want a little sex and grunge in your sci-fi space opera.