I Worship His Shadow- part 9- Thodin

Originally posted 1-10-13. Navigation links go back to the original blog.

This is part 9.
Go back to part 8.
Go on to part 10. (Continue to part 10 on this blog.)
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Images from photobucket.com/lexxpix. Thumbnails click to original size.

Thodin is revered in our household. I once had a blog named Thodin. My oldest daughter named her first car Thodin. Aside from breaking out into the Dammit Janet song whenever we see Barry Bostwick, we Hail Thodin, winner of His Shadow’s Award Of Merit… 

We first saw this little bug coach on the prisoner transport in part 2.

“It’s your day of justice, Thodin!”

  

Remember how I was wondering how long Zev had been bolted to her slab? Yeah, this guy has been sitting in this tiny little bug thing just as long, or even longer, who knows. This little bug style prisoner chariot (so love the symbolism, a human inside a bug, like he’s been eaten) is remote walked to the holo judge, essentially taking cuts in front of the blue person who was behind Zev. Please note that the bug coach is bolted to a drop chain before anything is even said.

 

   

“You- Thodin of the Ostral B Pair- are accused of- ” (new voice cuts in while her hologram freezes)- “Due to the special nature of this crime, the arch heretic Thodin of the Ostral B Pair will be tried in Cobalt Stadium. Following that, his sentence will be immediately executed for the entertainment of His Shadow’s loyal followers.”

  

Ok, gotta cut in already. First of all, the fill in the blank part is HER voice, unlike the previous prisoners’ names being filled in by a different voice, leading me to wonder if the people originally acting the parts of the other court officials for the holorecorder were even still alive. So this judge is either still ~alive~, or they had her record this particular prisoner’s name for a special reason, maybe both.

At this point, the bug coach is whisked straight up to the stadium.

   

As Thodin is being delivered to Cobalt Stadium full of screaming people, Zev is being delivered to an empty room full of more machinery.

   

Without warning, her slab brakes to a lurching stop, jerking poor exhausted Zev really hard like a rag doll.

 

Her robot escort steps around to the other side of the machine a little out of view, and without a word starts working. There are no explanations, no soothing words of comfort, just the robot throwing switches, turning knobs, and pressing buttons with their accompanying unnerving noises, and it locks her slab into position. The prisoner is beyond any more personalized courtesies, however mockishly cruel they were before. Her status on the Cluster as prisoner has officially been reduced to object. She’s no longer a citizen of the Cluster, now she is property of the Cluster.

  

Again without warning, Zev’s slab flips back to a horiztonal position.

 

She has time for one surprised gasp before a screen slides over to her face and a Divine Cleric pronounces, “In the execution of this sentence you are hereby cleansed of your crime against the People of 20,000 Planets, may His Merciful Shadow fall upon you.” What do you say at this point? Zev says, “Whatever.” Like it really matters any more, unless a person is still so enthralled with a belief in His Shadow even now that they might ridiculously feel some relief that they are forgiven, even in the face of more torture.

  

Meanwhile- panning into Cobalt Stadium, we can see that it is huge, not only many stories off the ground, but a further number of stories high in its construction. It is like an evil crown over the Cluster below, filled to bursting with perhaps as many as a hundred thousand bloodthirsty fans screaming for more entertainment and cheering on the executions.

    

As the prisoner’s bug coach is lowered onto the platform, the holo judge towers in giant form over it and calls out, “The arch heretic, pirate, and rebel of the Ostral-B Pair, Thodin!” while the crowd goes wild yelling, “Tho-din! Tho-din!”

   

The bug coach opens by remote, and we finally see Thodin, cuffed to inner walls that look like the coach is crafted from a genuine bug exoskeleton. The first thing we see are some awesome boots that mean business, and after that an odd warrior outfit that can only be Ostral B culture. We never get anything else on that, but we get a better look later. Thodin seems pretty calm despite being surrounded by a stadium full of people screaming for his execution and uncomfortably near cluster lizards banging and rattling their cage bars, hissing spit and fighting over the chance to get at him. Their high pitched screamy squeals whip the crowd into a frenzy.

   

(Coolest Barry Bostwick role ~ever~.)

(The Cluster version of Judge Judy…)

Whoever this Thodin is, he looks pretty tough, isn’t getting rattled at all. Is he this accepting of his death? Is he going to explode in furious retorts? There is no way this guy has a snowball’s chance in hell.

  

    

I’m an MST3K fan, I eat cheesy stuff up, but Cluster lizards are awesome badass, the live action feel is top quality, these things are ~alive~, and gunning for Thodin. I bet they stink to high heaven, too.

So what’s he doing, going into a meditation while they violently fling themselves at him?

    

Heck, no! Thodin has a plan! What the hell….?

  

How maddening must it have been to sit there and let a mechanoid bug crawl out of his nose? And how long did it sit in his skull? Before he was ever even caught and cuffed into the bug coach he had that little thing sitting inside his head.

As it flies clear, the bug says, “Bug bomb activated. Bug bomb searching, Thodin.” See, there it is right above his head, looking like one of those remote control helicopters you get for Christmas, only teeny tiny. (And that was in his head.)

I don’t know about you guys, but my interest in and respect for Thodin just shot up a thousand points. How COOL is it that this guy smuggled a ~bug bomb~ into a stadium full of screaming people and cluster lizards through all that security right under His Divine Shadow’s nose? THIS GUY HAS A PLAN. Hot and sexy just got hotter and sexier. The fact that he has no pants isn’t even why I said that.

So the screaming is going on, no one seems to notice a teensy little bug droid taking off out of Thodin’s face, and we start getting the bug bomb activity relay that Thodin must also be hearing, because it talks to him by name. We don’t know if the relay is going to something implanted in Thodin’s ear or brain or what, but after the stuff we’ve seen happen to prisoners in the judicial tower, are we surprised? The level of tech His Shadow uses gets so buried in barbaric, dare I say macabre looking machinery and behavior that I’m not sure anything else would surprise me from here on out. Bug tech is obviously far above average human capacity, as is the barbaric nature of the society built around it.

“Bug bomb searching, Thodin. Turning left.”

  

That robot is different from the previous 790 robots we’ve seen that escort and execute prisoners. 790 robots are still mostly human with robot heads replacing the original heads, but this one is much more mechanoid and later we see is used more for policing duties. We never find out what they are called, and unless someone can link me to a script scan, I’m not sure they were named. You can see this one has human hands, but everything else about its former human body has been adapted to biomechanoid. It could be a human in a special geared up suit, you say, and I say just wait, you see they’re pretty stupid later on like their brains have been wiped or replaced.

If this isn’t lending itself to a really good question forming in your mind about now, I’ll ask it for you- if this is such a bug oriented society, with the leader exhibiting a hive like predispositioned mind, and everything in charge seems to be decapitated or deconstructed humans, why aren’t bugs just running the place? That is a really good question. Hang onto it.

Thodin’s little bug bomb seems to be looking for a very specific target…

  

Back in Cobalt Stadium, the sentencing is gearing up. A couple of gigantic screens pop up for His Divine Shadow’s loyal followers’ entertainment. Gotta be able to see every grisley detail, right? I mean, who knows how far these people traveled and at what expense to sit in this very special arena on this day? It’s not like they paid for football tickets on the internet, their society doesn’t work like that. I have a feeling this is an invitation only kind of thing in the League of 20,000 Planets. What the heck is the guy displayed on the right side screen doing…

  

Whatever he’s doing, it’s driving the cluster lizards into a crazy, frothy frenzy, not to mention the spectators. Hold on a second, egads, he’s pulling a fresh brain out of a newly stripped skull, no doubt off a pile of brains and skulls just delivered from the judicial tower. Wonder if Argon Protopi’s head wound up on this pile. As fast as things have been moving along in the executions, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is actually Argon’s brain we’re seeing.

  

And not to put too light a point on how savagely bloodthirsty this crowd is, it looks like a fun family night out… Look at those cute little uniforms and those happy smiling faces!

..and the nice man holding up a fresh brain for the cluster lizards….

If this were a regular formula movie, the bug bomb would find the target and Thodin would escape against all odds and save the day before the next hour is up. But this isn’t happening on our planet for an earth audience. This is happening in another universe in a society maliciously molded by a bug overlord of some kind, where little kids gleefully scream for death, because seeing cluster lizards eating the brains of heretics is ~fun~. Stayed tuned, I have already started work on the next part, because I know the suspense of this super slow posting is nearly killing some of you.

Do you like Thodin? See more about Barry Bostwick – IMDb.

Due to what seem like haphazard marketing strategies, there is at least one release for a particular year and region that leaves the bug bomb activity relay off the soundtrack. You’re going to run into this kind of unmatchy stuff in Lexx, which I believe in the long run makes Lexx more collectible. Whoever can collect all the different releases with all the different edits ~wins~. I own the complete original Salter Street release for Region 1, which will reflect in all my Lexx film study posts. If you own other versions and want to compare notes, have a ball in the comments.

This is part 9.
Go back to part 8.
Go on to part 10. (Continue to part 10 on this blog.)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.

Find Lexx.
iTunes – TV Shows – Lexx, Season 1
Watch Lexx Online | Netflix
Watch Lexx on Hulu
Watch Lexx Online – TV.com
Echo Bridge Entertainment – Lexx
Amazon.com: lexx: Movies & TV