| A "Light Universe" and a "Dark Zone" keep good and bad apart for the characters of Lexx, even though it's often hard to tell the difference between the two in this offbeat and unique sci-fi show that delights in its own nastiness. With flashes of nudity and surgical gore, and a collection of extreme hairstyles and accents, the show's overall look is often akin to a sci-fi Eurotrash. Aboard the stolen 10-kilometre-long spaceship Lexx (designed to look like a dragonfly) are the "Dirty Three-and-a-Half": insufferable coward Stanley H. Tweedle (Brian Downey), the Edward Scissorhands clone and 2000-years-dead Kai (Michael McManus), decapitated and lovestruck robot head 790 (voiced by writer Jeffrey Hirschfield), and the skimpily wardrobed Zev (Eva Habermann), replaced for Season Two by Xev (Xenia Seeberg). A disregard both for genre conventions and good taste makes the show a constant series of surprises: by the time of the third season, the expression "anything goes" had long passed being understatement. On this tape: A new, shorter title sequence opens the gender questioning "Love Grows". The Lexx accidentally eats a garbage dumper and the toxic cargo has an adverse effect on everyone--to say the least. Their sex organs are swapped! A cliffhanger surprise leads directly into "White Trash", where we find a yokel clan family have been stowed away since before the destruction of The Cluster. For those who haven't been paying attention, we're reminded that Lyekker is still aboard. This volume's documentary centres on the FX houses in Canada and Germany. --Paul Tonks |
