The Lexx Revival Project

Originally posted 3-19-13.

I’ve taken part in a few of the debates over whether there should be more Lexx. I think there should be, if for no other reason than to breathe life back into Lexx merchandising. I’d even be happy (there, I said it) if Disney paid Abrams to do it, and I’m not exactly his biggest fan.

One of Lexx’s biggest fans is uber geek Kirill Yarovoy of Russia, and he definitely thinks there should be more Lexx. In fact, Kirill has been conducting his own research into whether fans want more Lexx, and exactly what they’d like to see in more Lexx. Years of polls and forum debates point overwhelmingly to removing season four from canon and simply returning Lexx to its season one roots that started it all, along with creating spinoffs and prequels in similar fashion.

This is nothing new among the Lexx fandom, but what is different when Kirill starts discussing Lexx is that he’s dead serious. While a number of Lexx fans have created a variety of fan fictions, artwork, actual literature, comics, and even short film, Kirill has gone the next step trying to contact producers, studios, and investors, and he’s done some impressive research into cost and hiring and what fans desire to see in more Lexx.

So what is stopping him?

Aside from needing to get licensed from the Lexx copyright holders, basically the only thing stopping this project is funding. It’s easy to scoff at this point and blow the whole idea off, the big nail in many film project coffins, but Kirill has an idea, and surprisingly, that idea is actually working for other filmmakers. In fact, American fans might not quite appreciate how well this idea has been working for some time around the world.

Crowdfunding is the new fan wave. We’ve all recently seen the wild success of The Veronica Mars Movie Project on Kickstarter. Basically, an account is set up for donations to a specified project, info and links are tweeted and posted around social networks like facebook and youtube, and, fans pretty much help filmmakers nickel and dime their way through production. A sweet reward for this fan loyalty is getting to see the production process as it happens, step by step through filming and editing, and then submitting to film festivals. I’ve been watching two projects in particular the last few months- “COLD” by Eoin Macken and Stolen Light by Andrew Lee Potts. Both filmmakers (we know them as actors in Merlin and Primeval, along with other shows they’ve been in or helped to create) use twitter to alert fans in real time to the daily work they put into their projects, supplementing with image and video media such as instagram and vimeo (for example), and they are very open with fan interaction, which is smart when they solicit fans for production funding.

This gives fans much more access to the entire process than was available even just ten years ago. If fans want to see a project get done, they now have the power to help make that happen, which is so much more fulfilling than waiting for studios to find investors that often cancel the projects before they see completion. (So many shows I love have been canceled in the first or second season because an investor or studio deemed it not worth finishing, even though fans are very vocal about wanting to purchase a completed product.)

Kirill recognizes that fans would like to have an impact on the outcome of the show they love, in this case, Lexx. Kirill set up a forum where fans could discuss the future of Lexx, and asked specifically what they’d like to see, what direction should Lexx go if there is more. He has years of documentation and discussion (mostly in Russian) under his belt and has spent considerable time and effort on trying to develop the idea of a centralized world fandom through “LexxTV“, a site that could become a broadcasting fan forum (it’s not developed yet due to licensing restrictions), strongly reminding me of a metacafe style website, akin to the original Babylon 5 dotcom, only bigger.

This sounds cool, right? So why isn’t it happening yet? Well, mostly because much of this process has been happening in Russia, and despite our wonderful technology, translator programs are still cumbersome and inaccurate enough to make a lot of work for non Russian fans to keep up. Also, international crowdfunding is limiting with U.S. and standard European tech and money exchange. But it certainly hasn’t been for lack of trying.

Kirill started with paypal a few years ago and received between $700-$800 in donations, but since that wasn’t enough to get the project off the ground, he gave all the donations back. Kickstarter was only allowing U.S. funds, and Amazon required U.S. ID. In order to sell the idea (and this is how new projects generally get their start), Kirill needs to make a top-notch promo video with original cast and a lot of VFX to show to producers and studios. This is a delicate process before getting licensed, as fans who have already tried writing books and making videos have discovered. The main thing is to have an idea that a producer can show to the license holder that convinces them what you’re doing is worth some money to them.

I got a little tough on Kirill and asked a list of questions about cost, crew, and production, mostly to see if I could trip him up and discover whether this was all a big-worded dream. What I got back was an impressive mix of information, enthusiasm, and the kind of frustration that comes with hitting walls for a few years, and I believe if anybody outside the U.S. could actually get Lexx back into space, it would be Kirill.

Along with a short lesson in budget issues and the substages of preproduction, Kirill has adjusted his cost estimate a couple of times based on production cost then and now. For example, a quote from his correspondence- “I can tell you about CGI production cost made about a year ago based on price of Toronto-based Spin-VFX Studio with which I have some contacts and plan to use for Lexx CGI (btw this studio has some former CORE digital employees, that was the studio which worked on CGI in the first season of Lexx). Since Lexx is CGI heavy, my estimated calculation was about $10 million U.S. dollars for CGI alone (minimum), but it’s not a perfect calculation and a little old. After that I found out that the guys from Energia made great Iron Sky CGI for about $2 million, so I guess there is a chance that CGI could be cheaper in terms of production cost and very good in terms of quality.”

Kirill went on to say that the cost needed for a 20-25 episode season five would be $20-$25 million, with $1 million minimum per episode, but preferably having $2-$5 million available per episode, which is the standard price for most U.S. TV dramas these days, totaling anywhere from $40-$100 million for an entire season. He noted some episodes would naturally be less production heavy and therefore not as costly.

But what Kirill is aiming for is at least one promotional episode that would not be directly aired, but shown to more producers and investors, kind of like Paul Donovan did in 1992. So that is where the fans come in, helping to get the initial project off the ground so bigger investors can be pitched. A good example of how this works is CGSociety – Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome.

Kirill told me he has pitched a script synopsis to several producers and studios, and it sounded like a lot of work. He seems to be pretty familiar with the process, but thinks it’s becoming outdated. “What I think is better about crowdfunding is the direct relationships between the people who make the product and the customers, so that customers pay directly to the team that makes the product, and get the products directly once they are made”, and there is a refreshing paragraph on how he feels ratings let everyone down because they’re inaccurate for today’s tech access to the industry, which I agree with. Now that fans around the planet can live stream their favorite shows, regional broadcaster programming and scheduling may have to be dramatically revised if they are to thrive. But that’s going off topic.

This is a lot of stuff. There was quite a lot more. I mentioned to Kirill that some fans are confused about Lexx being an international production, and that Americans in particular don’t understand (I’ve seen this) why Russian fans are interested in Lexx. Why is Lexx meaningful to YOU?

Besides him comparing Putin to His Shadow, Kirill said Lexx was the challenge that started him thinking about society around him at the tender age of ten when Lexx premiered. He stopped taking things as they were for granted and started questioning everything from politics to education to social life. To quote in part-

“Why is Lexx meaningful to me? It’s really hard to tell, it’s a love from first sight, I guess. Once I saw the opening of the first episode with that charming dark space ambience, the rotating legs of the Foreshadow with the purple nebula behind, that speech of Kai’s, the last of the Brunnen-G, about a victory in the war against an Insect Civilization, and a Time Prophet who predicted he would be the one to destroy the Divine Order, and that someday this will happen, but not today as today is the day of his death, the day his story begins- I realized that I already loved it, and every next minute doubled my love. Soon after this episode I started to read everything about protein, DNA, amino acids and space, black holes, fractals, and so on. Lexx influenced me a lot and made me believe in science, instead of the god I was forced to believe before. I was so addicted to protein and gene themes after Lexx that I almost became a microbiologist. Also, the idea of time cycles swayed my philosophical views on the world, as did many other themes of Lexx. Despite it looking like a purely entertaining show, Lexx in fact is quite educational, and education with Lexx was real fun.”

And, again, there was much more. Kirill Yarovoy has a passion for Lexx that has already spanned twenty years and will undoubtedly span twenty more. He’s been persistent and amazingly patient in his quest to keep Lexx growing. If you’d like to contact Kirill directly, he can be reached through a link on his site. Click this pic to go there.

Want to know more about Lexx? You can find Kirill’s Lexx blog at http://vk.com/iwhds, and the links near the bottom of my own Lexx Index will take you to lots more sites about Lexx.

Want to know more about what could go into more Lexx before you help fund the filming process? Kirill has put together a summary for me that he compiled from his research into what fans want. He would ultimately like to have the original producers and directors back, or at least to do a review of the script. He has spent the years since 2005 on development of the complex concept of the scripts for season 5 and three prequels about the Insect Wars. This is the summary, with a couple of things in parentheses added by me.

1- carefully preserved style, atmoshpere and feel of old lexx, with a lot of dark satire and philoshopical themes about problems of modern society

2- well-developed and finished plot that ties all seasons and prequels together with natural feel like everything was planned from beginning by supreme beans

3- all plot holes of previous seasons patched, no new holes created… perhaps

4- every old question answered and even more new brain-drilling questions asked

5- possible production issues and workarounds taken into account

6- well balanced compromise between the desires of all kinds of old Lexx fans and fans of other scifi series and movies

7- very intriguing epic finale that will turn the entire Lexx story upside down and will leave you wondering “WHAT THE HELL THIS ALL SUPPOSE TO MEAN?” just like the David Lynch movies and Twin Peaks did

8- and before its does, it will return LEXX to fan-favorite season 1 roots, which includes 2 hours episode format with more lexxploration of violent dark zone and enigmatic origin of Prince, less sex and more romantic dreaming with Eva Habermann as Zev and Michael McManus as ALIVE but still deadly Kai. But don’t worry! Xenia Seeberg as Xev will not be replaced by Zev, and still present with Brian Downey as Stan and hopefully Jeff Hirshfield as 790, which wants to make love with 2 persons this time (Zev and Xev? intriguing), so you will still have your passion and sexual tension. Also you should not worry about the aging of actors, as with the magic of make-up and today’s VFX you will barely notice the difference, however if you will do, even aging already explained by plot. (I would point to the movie Surrogates as a good example of the magic of makeup.)

A crowdfunding account is still in process of being created that satisfies the exchange structure for a world fandom. I will edit here with a link as soon as that happens.

Please share this article on facebook and twitter 
http://lexxperience.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-lexx-revival-project.html 

:edit: 4-2-13

Want to see how Lexx was made the first time? Click the button!

:edit: 8-28-14

I've been fairly verbal about thinking Bradley James would make an awesome Thodin if backstory ever gets filmed --> click.

The Dark Zone and the Cycles of Time

Originally posted 1-17-14.

This post contains a LOT of spoilers. If you’ve not seen Lexx, go watch it *right now* and then come back here to sink your teeth into some cool stuff.

For a Lexxellent experience, enjoy the soundtrack while you read. Pictures in this post click back to their sources.

Kai: Welcome to the Dark Zone.

Zev: The Dark Zone?

Stan: We’re IN the Dark Zone?

Zev: So, what are we supposed to do now?

Kai: Perhaps you should find yourselves a home.

Stan: But the Dark Zone is full of depravity and evilness and darkness!

Kai: My ancestors came from the Dark Zone. I was taught that although there are not many good planets, there are some. Perhaps you should find one.

Zev: You mean we should find one. We are together in this.

Kai: I’m dead. I have no future.

Two universes coexist in the same place, in the same space, at the same time. The Light Universe is home to the League of 20,000 Planets, brought to Order by His Divine Shadow after the millennia-long Insect Wars. The Dark Zone is the ancestral home of the Brunnen-G, who defeated the Insects some time after migrating to the Light Universe to escape their dying sun.

The Lexx passes from the Light Universe to the Dark Zone and back a couple of times via a fractal core during its journeys. The story begins in the first season with the Light Universe and progresses with escape into the Dark Zone, and back to the Light Universe in search of protoblood, which keeps Kai animated. From there the Lexx travels across the Light Universe throughout season two until it is forced to withdraw back into the Dark Zone, where it stays throughout seasons three and four.

The Dark Zone contains Brunnis, the ancestral home of the Brunnen-G, Fire and Water from season three, and Earth from season four. Key characters from the Dark Zone include Poet Man, Prince, May, Priest, and Vlad.

The Light Universe contains the Cluster, which is His Shadow’s ruling seat over the League of 20,000 Planets, the Ostral-B heretics, and a number of worlds and space vessels/establishments that the Lexx encounters. Key characters from the Light Universe include His Shadow, Thodin, Bog, Yottskry, and Brizon.

Key characters who show up in both universes are Stanley Tweedle, Kai, Zev Bellringer, Xev Bellringer, 790, Giggerota (Queen, Genevieve), Lyekka, Mantrid, (Schlemmi) Fifi, (Laleen) Bunny, Moss, Lomea, (Wozzard) Dr. Ernst Longbore, and the Time Prophet. (More information on reincarnated characters at Lexx Wiki.)

“Time as you know had a beginning and time has an end and then time begins again. As we shall each live our lives again exactly as before, I have been gifted to see into the old cycles of time. Not very clearly mind you, but I have learned that in the future-past the Brunnen-G, the great victor in the war against the insect civilisation, shall be destroyed at the hand of His Shadow. But after His Shadow leaves the Cluster they will be destroyed at the hands of the Brunnen-G. This has happened before and it will happen again.” — The Time Prophet

Do you see the symbol on the Time Prophet’s head covering? It represents the cycles of time, which are endless because they start over again, over and over and over. His Shadow asked a couple of his officers if they believed time truly went in a circle or in a straight line. There is no answer, of course. However, that spiral looks suspiciously like a Lorenz attractor so I’m going a step further. The Time Prophet admitted she couldn’t see into the old cycles of time very clearly, which is odd considering she also says everything happens the same as before, and even more odd that she is able to be extremely precise and give Stanley Tweedle map room coordinates to Kai’s memory sheet in the Memory Catacombs via another Brunnen-G’s memory sheet from thousands of years before. This from a transcript of Super Nova-

[The columns go down. The blades stop]

[Stan wraps his stump and staggers through corridors, into a room full of plastic sheets. He puts his hand on a disc and sees a memory]

GENERAL: And it is with great pride that I confer upon you, Krato, the medal of ultimate honour for defeating the insects at the battle of Wirin. All Brunnen G, all human race are forever in your debt

[Stan staggers on. He touches another disc, and sees a hand, writing]

BG: Days pass quickly now, and our sun continues to die. I fear that one day, Brunnis will do the same, and we will have to leave, go to -

[Stan collapses, pulling a sheet down over his face. He sees a memory of the Time Prophet, speaking to an unseen man]

TIME: Stanley Tweedle

BG: Stanley Tweedle? Time Prophet, my name is not Stanley Tweedle. My name is, er -

TIME: It matters not. By seeing into the future past, I know that 5000 years after your death, Stanley Tweedle will visit the Brunnen G memory catacombs. He will touch your memory

BG: Ah, but my question was about the mineral deposits on Aureliun 4 -

TIME: Forget about the mineral deposits! This is important. Stanley, you are the only one who can save Kai and Zev. You must go to section 83, row 249, plot 35. There you will find a stone cover. Lift it

BG: But -

TIME: Go now!

[Stan gets up]

STAN: Section 83, row 249, plot – 30?

[He can't remember, so he goes back and touches the sheet again]

TIME: 5!

STAN: All right

That was a pretty awesome bit of pinpoint prophecy, and adds more questions to the time philosophy. If she can see all times as ‘now’, then she has a remarkable and probably overwhelming gift. More interesting, she seems to be timeless herself, since we see her being accessed for advice also by Kai and His Shadow. There is no mention of how this happens or where she resides, but she seems to be outside of time itself. We don’t know if people must enter a hypnotic or dream state to reach her and we have no clue if she’s part of a religion, but we do find out in season four that Vlad kills her. Maybe… From the Lexx Wiki.

• Vlad’s older form is played by Anna Cameron, the same actress that played the Time Prophet. It is unknown if this is intended to suggest that Vlad may have been produced from the remains of the Time Prophet, in the same way that the assassin Kai was produced from the original Brunnen-G warrior.
• Though Vlad is believed to have killed the time prophet, this could be interpreted as the time-prophet’s death being used in the creation of Vlad.
• Actually, Vlad herself states that she travelled to see the Time Prophet, who revealed to her that she would find Kai on Earth eventually. Vlad then states that she killed the Time Prophet.

I find it extremely interesting that the Time Prophet focuses on such a narrow part of prophecy when so much other stuff happens, and you could argue that much of this becomes self fulfilling prophecy, and even make the leap to reading between the lines to see that these prophecies may have been subtly aimed at Zev, as though she were a kind of subtext catalyst, because she is Kai’s motivator on several occasions since Kai cannot motivate himself, being undead without a will.

Before I go deeper, let’s do a quick review. There are several things that HAD to happen in order for all the rest to happen.

Oddly, the very first thing that happens is Kai exposes his people to His Shadow’s planet killer (we learn this in season two’s Brigadoom), then throws himself right at His Shadow’s feet in a kamikaze attempt to kill him. That right there creates the perfect feedback loop for becoming the last of the Brunnen-G in the prophecy. If the Time Prophet had never told him, would he have done this?

The next big thing that went precisely perfectly wrong before the prophecy could be fulfilled was Stanley Tweedle slapping Thodin’s bug bomb and causing it to become damaged. Because the bug bomb was damaged, it detonated the wrong cable and the cluster lizards were set free.

Because the cluster lizards roamed freely, Zev’s attendant robot during her sentencing was destroyed by a cluster lizard, which also accidentally knocked the lever that activated the lusticon she was strapped to. That resulted in not only killing the cluster lizard, but shoving some of its tissue into the lusticon just before it engaged, resulting in Zev’s love slave transformation incorporating cluster lizard DNA into hers, effectively creating a hybrid. That made her strong enough to pull free of her straps. Then she shoved the robot head left over from the savaged attendant robot into the final phase of the lusticon’s brainwashing program, accidentally creating a robot head that would obey her every command.

Meanwhile, everything going wrong with software and equipment malfunctions meant that Thodin was inadvertently brought back to the sentencing chamber, where he freed his gang and a cannibal named Giggerota.

After that the catalyst became a Zev/790 combo unlocking doors and fleeing through the judicial compound to the special projects area with Stanley Tweedle, where they met Thodin and his crew of Ostral-B heretics intent on stealing the Lexx.

Because everything was going out of control, His Shadow activated Kai, last of the Brunnen-G who was bioengineered into an undead assassin, which was the final variable in an equation of everything going perfectly wrong.

Chances are, Thodin would never have succeeded in stealing the Lexx even if his original plan had gone perfectly. Because everything went WRONG, the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes was swiped by a prisoner with a low grade security guard job, a love slave, a robot head, a cannibal, and a dead guy. None of them had a clue what they were doing and what was really going on. They had no plan to execute and no one to help them. They ultimately go on to fulfill the prophecy.

Kai could have done none of this by himself, obviously.

Onward. And back to the spiral symbol on the Time Prophet’s hat. Headpiece. Whatever. This is a Lorenz attractor and if you want to know more you can click it to go to the wikipedia page it came from.



Lexx fans have pretty big discussions about the Cycles of Time and everything beginning again and happening again. The following is a very well summarized look at the typical thoughts that pop into people’s heads as they watch Lexx, from the Lexx Wiki.

“What is not certain is how the interaction of the two universes affects the cycles of time as the Light Zone, after its Big Crunch, will presumably experience another Big Bang, resulting in a new universe. This could be considered to be a new cycle of time, but would not be a synchronised event with the Dark Zone, meaning events could not play out exactly as before. If the cycles of time are independent of the interactions of the two universes, then it is unclear when or how the cycles of time end and begin again.

Another trail of thought is that the Light Zone cannot enter a big bang phase until the Dark Zone has collapsed. In such a case, both universes could theoretically begin at the same time, despite their endings being at different points in time.”

This is a real conundrum. Let me propose something different. Quantum chaos theory notes that something looping over and over will eventually go off course just because initial conditions aren’t precisely met the same way at the beginning of each new loop. Because something is very slightly off, there is very slight change over many loops. Eventually something might change enough to be noticeable, but only if you skip across all the loops in between when you look at it. I think the Time Prophet’s inability to see clearly into the cycles of time could plausibly be blamed on quantum chaos.

Over a great deal of loops you wind up with a different pattern going on that might not look like the original loop at all (although in the Time Cycles philosophy there doesn’t seem to be an original because time has been looping forever). I think this solves the next conundrum of the two universes getting out of synch. They may have originally looped together, but after all the big stuff that happens around the Lexx, this becomes impossible. If the loop synch becomes broken, can it even keep looping any more? What if the Cycles of Time could be broken into becoming a straight line that is no longer affected by all the loops that came before it? 

Another thing that grabs my attention is His Shadow’s obsession with Order. I’m sure the writers didn’t intend this level of content analysis, but it would be very easy to plug bifurcation theory into the Cycles of Time and the time loops suddenly behaving very differently. Bifurcation theory notes that although a change might be very small, it could throw a dynamic system into a completely different trajectory or history of events. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you will. Or as Xev tells Prince in season three, the Lexx is not just a tiny grain of sand that will tip the balance in the war between Fire and Water, but a whole desert of sand.

Case in point. Mantrid escapes his prison world and eventually collapses the Light Universe ~because~ the Lexx showed up in his life. If the Lexx had never traveled to Mantrid, the Light Universe would never have collapsed. That is the tiny change (very tiny in two whole universes) that completely tipped the Cycles of Time over from repeating, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s possible for them to repeat any more because there is no more reset back to the original starting point. This particular cycle of time that we are watching is the last of the repeating cycles. That’s why THIS cycle of time is so important. These tiny little changes that added up over the cycles finally reach a climax level where just one more change breaks the ordered dynamic system down into chaos.

His Shadow was obsessed with Order. Just saying. It’s interesting that he created the very thing that brought about his demise. Actually, plans for the Lexx were stolen from the Ostral-B heretics to begin with, so whoever came up with the plans to bioengineer a weaponized space bug in the first place is the original grain of sand that would eventually foil the Cycles of Time. Because the only way out of the complete human genocide that His Shadow had planned was to tip the world upside down and break it apart. I’m sure they had no idea what was coming.

If you’ve not seen Lexx or perhaps hadn’t gotten to season four yet, or maybe just never thought about it that much, Earth is in the Dark Zone, in the same universe the Brunnen-G originated in many thousands of years before. If we do a little simple math, we can work our way backward and add up the 4000 years of stasis in the cryopods while the Lexx drifted, and the 5000 year gap where the Time Prophet spoke to the Brunnen-G citizen about Stan finding Kai in the Memory Catacombs, that is 9000 years. We also know Kai had been dead for 2000 years by the time they all met on the Lexx, and Brunnis 2 had been settled for awhile already before His Shadow blew it up, so Brunnis 2 was blown up 4000 + 2000 = 6000 years before Lexx arrived to Earth, and 3000 years before that Kai’s people were still on Brunnis 1. Kai’s people migrated from the Dark Zone to the Light Universe at least 7000 to 8000 years ago. Who knows how many times this had happened in the Cycles of Time before the Light Universe collapsed. I don’t think Lexx was a part of the Cycles of Time for many, many loops. Incremental changes.

If you don’t like the quantum chaos theories flattening out the Cycles of Time, I have another plausible explanation for why the Time Prophet couldn’t see very clearly into future past. According to holographic principal, what we think is the world around us is really a projection from a different dimensional location. Viewing future past events would be like looking into projected reflections. This can create an illusion of Cycles of Time when you see repeating reflections (this trick can be done with mirrors facing one another, or a camera taking a picture of you holding a picture of it in a mirror, you can really mangle your brain on this). Instead of events happening over and over exactly the same as before, as she says, they happen only once but are reflected to infinity, so it ~looks~ like time loops repeat themselves. In that case, the Cycles of Time are an illusion, but the Time Prophet still has the really cool gift of seeing all times as now.

And if you don’t like the Cycles of Time dissolving into illusion, just hold that thought, because I’m still working on a way that time looping could hold water in fiction fizzix. 

I was probably still going more places with this, but it’s gotten really long and I’m worn out. Time to move on.

I Worship His Shadow- part 8- Zev Bellringer

Originally posted 12-1-12. Navigation links go back to the original blog.

This is part 8.
Go back to part 7.
Go on to part 9. (Continue to part 9 on this blog.)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.

Images from photobucket.com/lexxpix. Thumbnails click to original size.

While Stanley Tweedle is going through a nasty Cluster parody of Theatre of the Absurd, his female counterpart in this story is about to be, well, let’s find out. We rejoin her in the judicial chamber, where she’s just witnessed Argon Protopi being gutted and brained for useful components and the protein bank. Argon’s screams are barely over when her slab moves forward into position and her hologram advocate begins. “My client- (inserted voice here) Zev Bellringer of B3K- is innocent of the charge of- (pause for glitch)- failing to perform her wifely duties and humiliating her husband in the temple, and throws herself on the mercy of this court, secure in the knowledge that His Shadow’s wisdom will prevail upon these proceedings.”

I can’t keep from wondering how many hours now she’s been bolted to this slab. I try to imagine having to stand like that on those tiny footholds and never getting to put your arms down or go to the bathroom, and how terribly hungry you’d get. But we also don’t know other stuff, like the smells around her- old metal and electronics, stale air perhaps, lots and lots of death… I can imagine this part of the building smelling like a slaughter house. I encourage Lexx fans to visit slaughter houses to really get that sensation of how awful being a prisoner is on the Cluster, and to realize that these experiences are at the heart of any kind of meaning behind the rest of the movies and series. For fans who don’t ‘get’ the different seasons, you have to remember THIS is what shapes the minds and actions of our core four. What is the meaning of existence, where do you find it, and how do you know?

  

Like Argon before her, an assembly clamps to Zev’s head while a robot activates the automated memory software. “Memory search commencing.” You may notice this is 790′s voice now if you’ve seen any of the Lexx movies or series before.

 

I don’t know about you guys, but the idea of having my head clamped into place just sux, and I bet having the holojudge staring at her like this sucked for Zev, too.

Imagine this thing jabbing into your head for a memory search.

Like Argon, it looks like it about made her sick, but it starts working instantly, and the screen shows the search flitting through several memories. There were more, but dang hard to get on screen grabs.

   

Kinda curious about those bars… We find out what that’s all about in season 2.

The screen settles on a memory, focuses a little, we see a boy and people in the background, and apparently Zev is the one saying, “You are my every dream come true” in a pretty, cultured voice.

 

The boy steps forward with a you’ve gotta be kidding me look, then turns and angrily screams, “There must be a mistake! There’s no way I can marry that COW!”

   

As we hear a shocked, possibly terrified, and definitely confused “Husband! I shall serve… I shall love…”, we see Zev rolling her eyes at the memory, obviously well aware of how screwing up this badly canceled out how demeaning the whole experience was. Ridiculous is a word that hardly begins to describe it. She’s on trial, and death can be its only outcome…

   

I can’t help interjecting here that the boy’s parents, as I assume them to be, are so intriguing that I had to go back and really look at them frame by frame as this all went down in the temple. We’re already getting the strong hint that women are about as 3rd class as it gets in this societal structure, and the boy’s mother is as passive as a cow in a sunny pasture herself, evidently so brainwashed into the expected behaviors of the system that she barely reacts at all to Zev’s appearance or her son’s anger. I mean, I almost feel like she is on a crapload of xanax or something. Likewise, the boy’s father doesn’t seem very perturbed beyond mild surprise, either, and as I watch the background behind them, I see another robot as part of the ‘wedding party’, as it were. This temple they’re in leaves a LOT of questions open and hanging.

Ok, here comes the good part. Watch the parents’ faces as the boy turns and screams again, “She makes me want to throw up! Get her out of here!”

      

Go Zev!!! ~Poor~ Zev, omg, she’s about to be executed just for having a perfectly normal healthy reaction to being treated badly.  “Memory search complete.”  The clamp lets go of her head. She knows what’s coming next.

  

“You- Zev Bellringer of B3K- have been found guilty of failing to perform your wifely duties and humiliating your husband in the temple.” I feel awful for her, I imagine the pain in her head from being jabbed with that probe must really suck on top of hearing this.

  

“You are hereby sentenced to be transformed into a love slave and to be given to Seminary 166145 to be used for their pleasure, may His Shadow fall upon you.”  Whaaaa???

  

How old is this hologram program, anyway? I’m asking because I am noticing the lines across the judge’s image, like something in the electronics or software is worn out. Kinda creepy thinking that the guy used as the model for this program might be long since dead himself. The rail clangs over to a different track than the one Argon’s slab followed, and Zev’s slab moves forward toward another room as her defense advocate stands there smiling at her, frozen in place.

 

A robot walks along with the slab as she cries out, “Oh, please! Put me out of my misery! I volunteer for the protein bank!”

   

“I don’t want to live this terrible life anymore!”

   

And her slab follows the robot into the next room.

So, there is punishment worse than death, such as being reprogrammed to serve those who would continue to mistreat you, or even to live on in pieces and parts in things like robotic drones. I wonder how many of these ‘trials’ this robot has assisted with. Would you care if your body was forced to live on without your head? I think it would be creepy to have other people’s bodies walking around without their original heads, but I think everyone in the League of 20,000 is so used to it they don’t even think about it any more.

Zev’s trial makes me think a *lot* about not only the penal system on the Cluster, but the rigid societal control His Shadow must have throughout the League of 20,000 Planets. You slip up even just a little bit, that’s all the excuse they need to whisk you away and repurpose you. I think the whole gender class structure is just a cover for something far more menacing. If you can brainwash people to follow preset ruts without allowing them to think outside the lines, and then reinforce it with instant retribution in the form of immediate and absolute removal from society, never to be seen or heard from again, you wind up with a lot of people toeing the line and living in denial just to survive. Thinking about it only makes you miserable, saying something about it probably gets you killed sooner or later.

Trapped by high tech in low culture. His Shadow is a genius. Humans are so easy…

Original Zev Bellringer is played by Lisa Hynes – IMDb, but is credited in I Worship His Shadow as Lisa Hines.

Am I Lexxing too slowly? Order it for yourself from Echo Bridge Entertainment- Lexx

This is part 8.
Go back to part 7.
Go on to part 9. (Continue to part 9 on this blog.)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.