Speculation on Boron-7, Insect technology, and the scientists who engineered the political lockdown through religion

I mean, what else could the title even be, lol.

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I prodigiously use the Lexxicon throughout my blogging as point of reference info. It is Lexxcellent for tiny canon details when one is doing research, and very useful to anyone wondering anything about the show.

All pix click back to their sources.

I have brought up that I think Boron 7 was likely a lab planet used by His Shadow's scientists to experiment on manipulating DNA in every way possible. The only things we know about the Boron system are that Giggerota came from Boron 7 and that the Luvliner was near Boron 13, a big moon.

One of the bigger picture conundrums with the Lexx series is that one Insect managed to subjugate a League of 20,000 Planets and further terrorized an extensive part of the Light Universe. We see at the beginning of season two how Rockhound became the first His Divine Shadow, and I have briefly speculated on both motive and method. I have thought quite a lot on how the subjugation actually happened, and I'm about to point some fingers.

Using what we know about Bio-Viziers and especially Grand Bio-Vizier Mantrid and Supreme Bio-Vizier Brizon, it seems obvious that scientists were the key to His Shadow's rule across a universe. These scientists not only knew everything about Insects and His Shadow's ultimate goal to bring a race of Insects back to life, but helped him do it in such heinous ways that one must necessarily wonder why.

We find out in season two that both Mantrid and Brizon were far older than Kai, who was over 2000 years old as an undead assassin. They were both experts on Divine Assassin creation and maintenance. In the very first movie I Worship His Shadow, we see humans were obviously repurposed in a variety of ways even before they were dead as part of their judicial sentencing. The scientists behind this were geniuses, able to manipulate human body parts like toys, and quite able to make them function in any capacity. This observation lends to the conclusion that His Shadow chose a unique quality in his scientists that enabled them to not only stomach what they were doing, but delight in it. They were carefully chosen psychotic geniuses given promises of eternal life, and naturally they excelled at reestablishing a new Divine Order so that they could play without hindrance.

Among their genetic manipulations were bioships using lost Insect technology, human species reorientation, robotic humans, and reusable dead humans. We know by season one's fourth movie Giga Shadow that the last Insect had been kept alive and growing, and that its Essence, protoblood, and probably tissues were used to integrate technology and humans into a new strictly governed society.

The Cluster was the seat of judgement for His Shadow, a small planetoid that deceptively housed a hugely growing Insect that eventually broke free. Think about how many 'big bugs' must have been attempted, and where the Megashadow and Foreshadow were grown, along with the Lexx's DNA being perfected. The massive experimentation had to have happened on another planet, and I can imagine huge hangars, warehouses, labs, and clinics filled with coding tech specialists and equipment, bio coding specialists and equipment, and likely extensive 'housing' for potential subjects. Using Giggerota as an example, evidently inter- and extra- species manipulation and breeding programs were under way in attempts to design a new Divine Assassin, hungry for meat, alive and programmed to reproduce. We don't know if Giggy was a prototype gone wrong or one of many, but she was a problem. It's possible Brizon designed her, or that competitive Mantrid ventured out on his own and designed her, but we never find out. We do know Mantrid was banished at some point and that Giggy was taken to the Cluster for execution, so it's possible these two characters have everything to do with one another (indirectly), and that these particular experimentations might be part of the big personal problem between Mantrid and Brizon. The only problem with this line of thought is the time jag, since Mantrid has apparently been banished for quite some time by the beginning of season two, and Brizon seems to have been semi-retired later in season two. Mantrid and Brizon could have had their own factions of loyal followers in the psychotic science arena that carried on their work. Sorry, this paragraph is turning into its own muse, I need to refocus. Lexx is like that, so much going on that backstory could go on for years.

Back to Boron 7 and government over the League.

Robotic drones in any other type of government on our own earth would be a huge industry of wealth, either for capital venturists or socialist agendas. In the League it had nothing to do with wealth, and the only power allowed at all was Divine Order. In this light, it would seem that top scientists were allowed more freedoms than any other humans in any other capacities. They were free to dream, invent, argue, and corrupt as long as they did it in the name of Order. As long as they helped keep Order rigidly established, they were granted long life, authoritative positions, and all the access to service and equipment that their psychotic hearts desired. So, they became experts at replacing human heads with robot heads, integrating software into scraped out human bodies, growing city sized spaceships that fed on human flesh, you name it, they could find a way to do it. And the more they did it, the more society became clamped down into obedience in lieu of a stunning variety of punishments.

Imagine not knowing if the robotic drone walking by you had been a friend of yours, a coworker, or a family member. That might be their living body, but their head has been replaced with a robot head. Imagine raising your children in a society where you'd never know at any moment whether your future is secure, and that all it would take to lose your life would be to refuse the simplest expectation. Without those psychotic scientists enabling the last Insect, this level of Order could never have been established. Watching both Mantrid and Brizon, they clearly had free will, they clearly didn't feel any regret or shame, and they clearly knew they helped bring all this about. There was no waste on guilt, only on winning at any cost. They were coworkers turned rivals and hellbent on beating the other, no matter how many lives were lost, no matter how horrific their crimes. And surely they were not the only two psychotic scientists in the League of 20,000.

One of the weird fallouts they created was a small planet full of former Divine Shadow host bodies, which would never die but remain zombies forever without a brain or Essence to guide them, since the brain was removed from every host as a Divine Predecessor and the Essence passed on to each new Divine Shadow. We find out in season four that His Shadow had the Time Prophet killed and reconstructed (by scientists, undoubtedly) into the first of many vampires, more deadly than Divine Assassins since they were created specifically to hunt and destroy them, thanks to Kai fulfilling the prophecy. Seasons one and two were rife with convoluted corruption serving Order, including a fully condoned and thriving sex slave business stretching across the Light Universe, along with mercenaries and cabals, often working together for Order as we see in season two's "Stan's Trial".

The sex slave business relied on an amazing machine called a lusticon that could scan and reconstruct entire bodies in one visit without invasive surgeries and recovery time. That machine alone is so over the top that it's too much to think about and easily dismissed. Genetic manipulation theories and applications must have been shared from the Insect to the scientists, because the technology is so advanced and the idea so extreme that I don't think normal psychotic humans could have thought up and conquered that level of planning and execution. Remember, Insects could pass along a sort of programming software via Essence which would allow them to travel dormant over great sweeps of time across swaths of space and pass on information to others or to offspring without having to teach first. Essence would allow for an endless accumulation of knowledge across the universe. We know very little about the Insect Wars, but we do know some Insect technology was adopted by the Brunnen-G after they finally defeated the Insects long before Kai was born.

Lusticons allowed Order to use humans as still-living sex slaves stripped of their wills without transforming them into robotic drones. These slaves were used to manipulate and elicit others' behaviors per temple brothel conduits throughout the League and beyond, and likely part of the vast mercenary trade Order used to hunt and capture enemies of Order. Included in the DNA manipulation were expiry dates, which necessarily created a demand for more.

Robotic drones were everywhere throughout the Light Universe. On the Cluster we see security drones, and across the Light Universe we see other types of robotic drones that look like they came off assembly lines. 790 was one model, 791 and 792 models were briefly shown in a couple of episodes, and 790 created a 769 in season four. The 700 series were all designed to be attached to still living human bodies, as was the security model. Robotic drones were so common that they were simply part of everything, nothing to turn a head and elicit response. Humans grew up surrounded by and interacting with integrated tech for thousands of years. We don't have a timeline between Rockhound becoming the first His Shadow and Brunnis-2 being destroyed, so we don't know how much time as passed as the League of 20,000 planets was being established. This leaves us to wonder how very long ago Kai's people migrated from Brunnis-1, and how in the world they defeated Insects to begin with, after arriving in the Light Universe, and then how quickly after that defeat the last Insect drifted and then burrowed into what would become the Cluster. If you think about it, the Brunnen-G were indirectly responsible for the League being created, because that last surviving Insect wanted revenge. And if you think even more about that, you can imagine the Brunnen-G being the flag of vitriol behind everything His Shadow did, and that might be why they were so famous that Thodin recognized Kai even after he'd been converted into a Divine Assassin.

Aaaaaand this just turned into a think piece. Moving on.

Thanks to protoblood, His Shadow's collection of psychotic scientists were able to resculpt dead human flesh into interactive programmable machinery used as Divine Assassins. Kai is a very good example, as we see in season three. What was left of his body was so integrated with hardware that he obviously couldn't survive long if he were somehow able to come back to life. The protoblood forced his tissues into a sort of unalive living state, an undead state, if you will. His dead body was coopted into an ironic repurposed usefulness, and even after he got his memories back, he could not initiate his own will upon his own body because his will had been severed for vast software storage upgrade. His programming and the will of others was all Kai had as motivation to do anything. A fun example of this is season three's "Tunnels". He simply engaged his programming in order to facilitate being able to accomplish other actions the Lexx crew expected of him. One of his overriding commands in any capacity was to protect the key to the Lexx, along with its crew. (Kai means "Keeper of the Keys" in Scandinavian, for unaware fans. Cool, huh? See more meanings at Behind the Name. This is completely unrelated to Lexx canon, but I searched it since Kai and key are such similar words.)

I've seen and read loads of science fiction over several decades, and I have never seen anything that comes close to the technological horrors in the Lexx series. The Borg are a problem, yes, but they are barely investigated compared to the technological grip over humans in Lexx. The Borg are simply a runaway program, and with time travel introduced, the solution might be simple enough- go to the origin (non-canon but written by Shatner himself) and change history. There is no time travel in Lexx. The Sith are a problem in Star Wars, and the tech somewhat rivals Lexx, but it's missing the more horrific level of what they call the Dark Side. I know, I dare to impugn. I've had a running list of other scifi atrocities compared to Lexx in my mind for years, and I have yet to see another show cross the lines Lexx crosses into true despair, which feels so much more honest to me. I think painting the bigger picture of humans vs technology reaches a superior intellectual level in Lexx that is too easily dismissed, and the crucial point behind it all is innocent humans being so strapped into a locked position in government that there is no wiggle room with rights and wrongs, no way to survive but to obey, no way to fight and win. The root of the science fiction premise shines in Lexx. There is no prime directive, no Asimov's laws of robotics, only horrors and death and the sheer human will to survive. I think the closest an author has come that I've read is Greg Bear. His visuals are fantastic, and he dares to step into despair. I have compared Lexx material to Tim Burton, George Orwell, Dante, and Satre style storytelling. Edward Scissorhands could easily fit into the Light Universe.

And what else do psychotic scientists do when they get bored? They twist the human brain into even more toys. Shreds of brains were used to interface programming, brains were fed to Cluster lizards in a stadium filled with screaming fans loyal to His Shadow, brains were nonchalantly wiped and reprogrammed over minor misdeeds. Any brain lesser than a psychotic genius was subjugated, point blank. It didn't matter the perceived freedom or rank, all brains must serve Order or suffer the consequences. The question of human souls and wills, rights and dignities never even came up. Brains were usable and expendable, like any other human part, and that was all. A sense of self was allowed only in relation to obedience to Order.

Ultimately, the brains of His Shadow's former hosts, the Divine Predecessors, were enshrined, but both Brizon and Mantrid realized that at some point, their own brains would become useless, as well. Mantrid came up with a plan to evacuate his own brain as software into better hardware, and Brizon intended to simply outlast everyone in his own brain. The fate of the Light Universe boiled down to two human brains duking it out, long after His Shadow was destroyed. Well, actually, part of the perversion of Mantrid's transference was being incorporated via Essence, so a copy of His Shadow continued in a corrupted form through him. (One must wonder if Kai were ever purged completely after season two. Also, Vlad lived on into season four.)

This has gotten terribly long, but you can see how much I've thought about this TV show. I know others have spent considerable time writing up backstory, prequels, sequels, spinoff ideas, character synopses, etc. One of the latest to come out is Sanguinessa's fanfic Tales from a Parallel Universe series going deeper behind the scenes with more characters humanizing the extreme conditions we see in the Lexx TV series (click to purchase from Amazon, I receive no compensation for that). I know of other fans who have constructed entire histories around the brief blurbs we see in the show, so they probably think about all this at least as much as I do, if not more.

Lexx is currently owned and distributed by Echo Bridge Acquisition Corp LLC.

Syfy channel's connection to Echo Bridge Home Entertainment can be made through Asylum. Echo Bridge acquired Alliance Atlantis in 2008. Alliance Atlantis purchased Salter Street Films in 2001.

My blog is protected under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

I repeat my DISCLAIMER- This Lexx blog is a fan blog. I make no money here, and I have nothing to do with potential Lexx projects that spring up in rumors every little bit. I am not staff to anyone, nor an employer. I do not represent anyone who has ever been involved in the making of Lexx or merchandise associated with the Lexx property. I am not currently selling merchandise or receiving compensation for link swapping and sharing. I will never ask for or accept donations for anything I do online. If you find a site asking for money in my name, that is NOT me. I will continue to be a Lexx fan and keep building this fan blog, all cost here coming straight out of my pocket. Lexx is a hobby I enjoy, and like many fans I hope to see more Lexx one day.

I'd like to add that my stats are going crazy this year. A lot of fans out there seem to be in a tizzy over Lexx, many of the hits coming from new searches and then methodically reading this entire blog. Since I'm not seeing this level of activity in the older fandom groups and forums, I conclude this is a new generation of fans, possibly who grew up with their parents watching Lexx, possibly running into more accessible film merch now, possibly wondering what that weird sex in space show is all about.

The Lexx cult continues. Hats off to Paul Donovan and the Supreme Beans.

• interviews

Oh, yeah, meant to bring up the mothbreeders. Maybe another time.

a fondness for balloons

Well, someone's a Lexx fan, my Lexxperience dotcom is popping. Numbers doubled this month. From the beginning of this blog to now, which will be 3 years old next week, statcounter has logged 1,589 cities from 105 countries, and since I've rigorously blocked pingbacks and totally crunch spam, those are mostly real people. You guys see me struggle with bots on Pinky blog, well, Lexxperience gets way less app spam to the point of being almost negligible.

I apologize profusely for not being more involved with the fan base. If you are keeping up as a reader on my blog hub, then you know why, so I'm not going to drag it out here.

Yes, I still have every intention of continuing the review posts. Again, thank you so much for reading.

Also, since I'm pointing out that this blog will be 3 years old next week, I may as well bring up that my original GrandFortuna's League of 20,000 Planets fansite on Xanga will be 13 years old in September. I lost loads of stats during 2 sitemeter crashes and then the big Xanga server move, but at one point I was clocking 3000 hits a week, and one post had over 10K hits before the server move.

some of you might remember how this all got started

And amazingly, I STILL run into Lexx fans all over the world on twitter, tumbr, facebook, and other places who say they thought they were the only one in the world who liked Lexx. I just wanna say to all the TV review sites who thumbed this show down, my stats beat yours and you can suck it. Also, hazing a show for kneejerk hits is a dick move and only shows your low IQ for missing all the deeper backstory and innuendo that opened up and exposed reams of delicate religious and political controversies before it was fashionable to do so on social medias.

Lexx fans will never die. Keep looking for each other, guys.

:edit: By the way, this Lexxperience blog is now registered and verified with trustedsite.

Zev vs Xev

Click for the complete Lexx series at Amazon.com

Pix click to sources.

One of cult scifi's hottest debates is Zev or Xev. Both in real life are cool European models/actresses. But this isn't real life, is it?

This is Lexx.

In a coexistent universe overlapping our own, in the same place, at the same time, Order was making a mockery of the human race across a League of 20,000 Planets. Human beings had been locked into a darker than Orwellian regime for thousands of years, and there was no such thing as freedom of choice, reality TV, or even shopping. Although all of humanity living under His Shadow played their parts in that rigidly controlled and regulated society, women especially were considered inferior, relegated by government to reproduction and slave service if they were unfit for other useful fields, such as bureaucracy and military. Make one mistake, and you could disappear into a judicial process that would repurpose your usefulness into parts for robotic drones. Everyone had a place.

Zev's place was in a box.

B3K- Lexx Wiki

The wife bank was a huge government sanctioned processing center, one of probably several kinds of what we'd innocently call boarding schools, for parents in menial roles that didn't allow room for parenting. At least their girls in the wife banks would be housed and fed during their reeducation into the mundane roles of laborer, service, wife, and prostitute. There was no shame in the programming schools taking over for kids who came from lesser families, for kids who didn't fit in with the aggressive compliance that Order required from families higher up on the food chain (literally).

ThePicBug

At first glance, we assume Zev wound up at the wife bank because she was abandoned, but if we look at the hopelessness pervading all of humanity under the Shadow of Order, I believe her parents either did what they thought was right or were pressured into doing it, maybe both. Best let go early before the horrors of Correction removed her later. No doubt this also included children who asked too many questions and took initiatives that were not in compliance with Order, and were therefore in constant danger of disappearing, being swallowed up in Corrections and never heard from again. I'm sure parents openly questioning or protesting children being removed from their families or whatever social structure there was were met with equal retribution, quashing all thought of doubting Order. Thinking outside the box wasn't allowed. Problem solving skills came with hefty guidelines, and coloring inside the lines led to longer lives.

ThePicBug

So being turned over to the wife bank nearly from birth may actually have extended Zev's life. As we watch her emotionally mature through the series, we realize her natural questioning and initiative were already deeply rooted and she would never be able to accept living as a slave to Order, in any capacity, confirmed by her rapid decline into harsh sentencing after she automatically defended herself almost as soon as she had graduated the wife bank. I believe her parents extended her chances for survival when they submitted her to the wife bank, even if the whole scene seems lame and inexcusable from our point of view. What else could they do? She'd have questioned everything growing up and drawn attention to herself.

ThePicBug

It's very hard to imagine a society without concepts for family solidarity, holiday gatherings, or even the possibility of happiness. Such large scale repression made it impossible for families to thrive at all unless they wholeheartedly supported Order and used their every waking moment to excel in serving it, as we see in the scene of children being awarded Merits of Service. Their parents likely ranked much higher and were more deeply entrenched in loyalty, and therefore had access to opportunities and the perks that came with them. Under His Shadow, this loyalty undoubtedly went far beyond anything we think of as Big Brother, as we see good children being rewarded with special invitations to mass executions akin to Superbowl sized sporting events.

We aren't privy to much of Zev's brainwashing, but we can assume some of it was pretty explicit so she'd be ready to be a good wife. Lexx fans have seen me dancing daintily around ignoring her matron coaching her on the "tower of power" scenes in the past, which immediately clue us in on how deeply sexist and layered society would be around her once she got out of that box. Lexx very clearly shows us both child and sex slavery in efficiently short scenes that leave us hanging with disturbing clues to how deeply controlling His Shadow has become over billions and billions of people that amount to him as little more than cattle in a breeding program.

I wrote all of the above to contrast the 'smut in space' mentality some scifi reviewers have had for Lexx. Fine, if that sells the show, because that's one way to sell the deeper content. Of course it's smut in space, a love slave escaped on the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes.

I Worship His Shadow- part 8- Zev Bellringer

I could do an entire chapter on lusticons and what their impact would be on our own society. In Zev's world, however, they were little more than sophisticated DNA resequencers that forced women into such menial roles that they had expiry dates. They were remade to be used up and thrown away. Yes, they were remade into Beauty itself, the stuff of dreamers and poets, but along with that their minds were also stripped down to compulsive service and little else. To give readers some context, I'll cross the line of bad taste and simply ask- which would you prefer, your wife to be a real person like original Zev, or a mistress that's nothing more than a responsive doll? It's a trick question, because deep down we all want both, don't we? Be honest and admit it- we want to be able to use people without repurcussion and consequence, without guilt and self loathing. And Order makes this possible. No guilt, no conscience. Just a lusticon and a very smoothly running society. If you don't want to be made into a love slave, you do your time in a box and color inside the lines. Once you're a love slave, you're no longer a citizen. You are government property and allotted like merchandise with no regard to your feelings, your misery, your sadness, and leaving behind everyone you ever cared about or loved.

It's really important to see this from the Lexx point of view to really get all the rest of Lexx. So many viewers admit confusion, especially by season four, when it's really quite simple. All broken people want is real love, forgiveness, freedom... If you've never been around that kind of broken, you probably won't get Lexx.

All it took was one confused punch after being publicly insulted

So Zev majorly failed years of repressed wife preparation and found herself slung into the heart of the mass butchering of other poor souls not toeing the lines, actually felt ripped off that instead of being put out of her misery she'd be stripped of the last of her menial rights and be forced to ride that tower of power the rest of her quickly expiring days, and not even against her will because even that would be taken away from her via brainwashing program, and how do you even process all that while you're bolted to a slab and nothing but machines and a robot around you? Zev grew up without the warmth of humanity, yet she so beautifully expresses that very thing through the rest of the series.

So let's psyche eval Zev, the escaped love slave. First of all, surreal. Can you even imagine making it through the lusticon and suddenly the world around you has changed? The robot is broken, there's bloody cluster lizard mess and a giant (at least twelve feet long) decapitated cluster lizard on the floor, and whadayaknow, the bands are suddenly easy to pull away from their bolts on the slab. Zev doesn't seem very phased, because her entire life has been so boxed. She's simply in another box right now, a room with automatic equipment still going. And she's had a really long stupid day/week (we have no idea how long she was bolted to that slab for the trip to the Cluster), her crankiness has leveled up exponentially from the new cluster lizard DNA just incorporated into all her cells, and she's in no mood to waste time freaking out about anything. She's just pissed. And you know how funny ugly situations get when a person is a way past cranky. That's right, let's toss a robot head into a brainwashing program and giggle. Surreal.

These come from ThePicBug and click out to larger.

  

Seeing her reflection was a shock. Her struggle with Stan over who would be the human shield was pure instinctual reflex. The grab for the robot head to open the door happened in that hyper aware 'we're gonna die' state. Her dive through the doors and into fugitive escape with Stanley was coincidence. The world just kept flipping upside down over and over. We never see Zev (or Xev) go through this kind of pure flight response again. Everything she goes through after her initial flight response is calculated and consciously thought through, defying the fate that was originally intended for her as a mindless love slave. (I'm still facepalming over 'smut in space'. Really? How shallow are some of these reviewers?)

ThePicBug

By the time we reach season two, we've all fallen in love with Zev. She's way more than feisty and gorgeous, she's real. She's sad and determined and hopeful, and pretty much the tie that binds the crew into a gang with some semblance of a mission. Zev is a decision maker, despite growing up brainwashed in a box, and she very sternly draws her lines around right and wrong. In her heart of hearts, she knows what the good is that she longs for, because she's been so deep in the bad. She's a strong moral character even though she's still trapped in a DNA reboot meant to deconstruct morality into the control mechanism of Order.

The Pic Bug

And then she sacrifices her life to save an undead assassin and a traitor. I wept. I don't get very gooey over TV, but that scene ripped me apart. In the midst of being trapped in experimental medical torture fetish, she is the one who makes the moral decision to fight for the right, and since she never grew up being taught what was right, she got that from her own heart. The depths of Zev came out fighting in a greedy world with no hope left, and she died loving the loveless wanderers who had accidentally helped her escape Order. To see a Divine Assassin kneel and lift her slave bands out of her molecular remains was devastating to everyone but himself, because he could not feel it. But intellectually, that was a defining moment after billions had lived out thousands of years of slavery across a galaxy. The fandom went into shock.

The Pic Bug

And then the fandom split into camps of delight and outrage when a plant used a recombinant DNA process to reconstruct Zev's remains with the DNA of an astronaut from Potatohoe, and we get our beautiful love slave reborn, complete with memories, because Lyekka the plant felt sorry for Stanley's loneliness. Think about this- a living 'lusticon' function, a remanufacturing out of love, no brainwashing this time, and Xev is reborn and given back to the crew as a gift. It was weird and sweet and weird... And it's not our Zev, but it's still Xev, as she knows herself, but redefined. Kinda creepy, but still very beautiful. So... is she part Potatohoe-an? Sort of the astronaut's daughter? Did Lyekka impart any plant DNA into her as well? None of these questions seem to come up, but she's definitely still part reconstituted cluster lizard. (@bonenado adds "out of instant potatoes".)

The Pic Bug

We watch Xev struggle through the rest of the series with what is it she really wants. First we see her relive what seems like teenager/young adult years, except now she's no longer in a box and sparkling with the delight and joy of sexual discovery. As season two goes on, we watch her mature and take sides on right and wrong, tolerating abuse from Mantrid and then stepping up in Brigadoom to fight for a cause. By the time season two ends, Xev knows exactly what love is, and how deeply it will sacrifice itself.

The Pic Bug

Throughout season three we watch Xev go through the heartbreaking layers of being sweetly romanced by nefarious evil with ulterior motive. Xev starts out innocently believing she has finally found love at long last, only to realize she's been used for purposes that go against her strengthening moral principles. Considering that Xev came from deep in the heart of uncompromising moral deprivation, Prince finds she's not so easy to seduce, and even rivals his indestructible ambition with her indestructible cluster lizard tenacity, going so far as to outlast him on his own planet, outwit him at his own game, and even threaten him with her own brand of instinctual cluster lizard evil. She definitely has an edge over falling prey to the Prince of darkness, being only half human, a first for the planet Fire, which allows only human souls to pass into its realm.

The Pic Bug

After the shock of going through season three, season four feels a little confusing, but stay focused. Remember that Zev/Xev came from Order. She came from repression, matured through the kinds of moral ambiguity that break people, she discovered her strength against evil, and now she's finally reached a place in the Two Universes that has never been touched by the long arms of Order- Earth. We don't know if Earth humans are a surviving remnant that escaped the Insect Wars many millennia ago, much like Kai's people did for awhile, but Earth has developed all kinds of evils of its own, from governments to black market, and we get to see what happens when a genuine love slave created in the darkest heart of true evil does when she's kidnapped for porn, used to spike reality show ratings, fought over for unrequited love, captured for black market organ theft, handling a real job as a counselor, and most of all, finding out what Kai would have been like if he'd been born on Earth and how their relationship would have turned out.

Original Zev is played by Lisa Hynes.

Zev is played by Eva Habermann.

Xev is played by Xenia Seeberg.

Unlike many fans, I do not have a preference for one actress or another, and don't wish to see canon changed. The continuity works just fine for me, and I appreciate Zev/Xev in all her forms. Remembering that her character essence is what this show is all about means more to me than having favorite actors. I think they all did wonderful work and sincerely portrayed so many offenses against women with sweetness and strength of form. Following Zev's/Xev's journey across the Two Universes has deeply affected me personally, and if/when I come back to another post on Zev/Xev, I'd like to look more deeply into her role in the prophecies about the cycles of time.

More reading from other fans-
Zev and Xev Bellringer of B3K
Zev&Xev

Thodin, when he was young, perhaps

From a post on my LEXX- The Dark Zone Stories thread at syfydesigns.com

This is why I still think Bradley James would be a good Thodin if there are ever any Lexx remakes or back stories.

Why Lexx Is Important

Originally posted 12-7-12.

Images click back to original source at The PIC Bug.

 

Escapism is becoming a global concept that drives media sales, and I’m full on board with it. At first you think video games and tv shows are just ways that people avoid real life, but that’s not true. In the really old days of mythology, people used stories full of heroes and villains and dire situations and sparkling rewards not only to entertain, but to structure a belief system to model their lives on. Escapism provides that same opportunity to investigate the possibilities of making choices and taking actions, exploring beliefs in the moralities and motivations of characters, opening our minds to much more than the redundancy our lives sometimes feel like.

 

Lexx as a story introduces us to the same kinds of horrors we’ve heard of before in both our world history and in our libraries full of thousands of years of stories, but on a scale that instantly transports us into a new way of looking at the human condition. The story of the Lexx does not originate on Earth, and is not tainted with any of our preset belief systems or histories. Humanity is stripped of all earthly assumptions and is reconstructed into an entirely new mythology asking the viewer what would really happen if… How would characters really behave if… What is so refreshing about Lexx is that it not only dares to strip away our presuppositions, but dares to do so with a combination of grimness and flippancy that will change the way you look at human history on Earth.

 

The first season of Lexx is four movies, set in the Two Universes over a 6000 year time span, and largely centers on the Cluster, the home planet to His Divine Shadow who governs the League of 20,000 Planets. His Shadow makes Darth Vadar look like a cute little kitten with a ball of yarn. His Shadow makes Hitler look like a 14 year old novice. His Shadow is so evil that I would dare to quip even Satan is envious and aspires to be like him. Basically, the first season of Lexx is like Orwell on steroids. If you like dark *anything* in literature and other media, be it dark humor or dark situations or dark characters, it is here on the Lexx. But be warned- you cannot come into the Lexx assuming these humans have ever known your viewpoints on life. They haven’t. They will not behave in any expected way that humans behave in any other media. Lexx as a four-series story often mystifies audiences because they don’t understand that these characters have never known life as we’ve known it here on this earth. There is no such thing as psychological health, basic human rights, freedom of choice, or even just shopping. These things have never existed, and I know it’s difficult sometimes for the audience to realize the depth of that.

 

The second season of Lexx is pretty much everything you wanted to see go horribly wrong in Star Trek or any other scifi show you might have watched. There is no happy ending, good doesn’t triumph over evil, selfishness can sometimes be the only salvation, but it is awesomely funny and awful and cute and dark. This season is like a Lexx comic book on video, and I think it’s probably vital to see it that way if you don’t understand or appreciate the ‘point’. The point is always our core four on the Lexx, nothing else. This is their story, and like our own lives, their stories don’t always have a moral. What I get out of season two is that the characters lives are like my life, and the lives of people I see around me- random and chaotic, happenstance and chance, and what meaning we draw from our experiences is our own and very personal. As we follow Stan, Xev, Kai, and 790 on their journey, we feel drawn into them because they are more like our real selves than any characters we’ve ever known.

 

Stan is the Everyman, the average person who winds up caught in the stuff all around him everywhere he goes. He’d *like* to be the hero, but he’s a normal person with normal flaws, and it’s easy to see how we might also be just like him. Stan feels jilted by circumstances beyond his control, and takes them personally. He accidentally winds up commanding the most powerful weapon of destruction ever built in the Two Universes. He’s not an evil man, but he’s a nearly broken one who survived what other people didn’t. Throughout the show we see how his simplest sadness has blown up into a wretchedness that must still be lived with somehow, as we get the hint that his one special love (possibly never realized beyond the crush stage) died as a result of his failure in the war against His Shadow. (If you’re a Lexx fan and didn’t catch this, you need to go rewatch the whole thing *right now*.) If we don’t know these things about Stan, it’s easy to blow him off as shallow and cranky, and I think some men can really empathize with that.

 

Zev is that sweet dream that never quite comes true, a love slave who missed her programming, beautiful and strong and yet sadly alone, smarter than she should be but seduced by her own weaknesses, and ultimately the product of the society around her. A lot of people can identify with feeling caught in this kind of flux, at odds with their physical and emotional needs and duped at every turn by users. “Life is not fair. I know that well.” Raised in a box and schooled by holograms for the wife bank, absurdity of being takes on a unique glimmer in Zev/Xev. All she wants is to love and be loved, but alas, she cannot love Stanley Tweedle, although their relationship grows into something more like brother and sister during their journey on the Lexx. They do care about one another, and are the only family each other has.

 

Kai, well, he’s had his life completely stripped away and is forced to commit horrible deeds, then has to ‘live’ in an animated state with the terrible memories and no way to feel passionately upset about it. The conundrum of feeling intellectually disgusted or upset with no emotions is a very difficult one for many fans to grasp, and it’s very hard not to anthropomorphize one’s own feelings onto his character. So many of us feel drained of our wills in the machine of society, forced to carry on without the dreams we once had or the feelings we once cherished, any noble efforts dashed down without our being able to stop it. Kai is a glaring reality, a souvenir of the Cluster, someone who triggers spontaneous empathy in others simply by being a walking scar, and there is no way to save him. What I especially notice about Kai is that he evokes the same kinds of imagery used in Native American and Asian storytelling about heroes who become tragically separated from their people and are forced to wander alone.

 

As for 790, who wouldn’t want a sassy robot head zooming around the house on his little cart? I’m not a big fan of robots in general, in spite of all the scifi I watch, but I ~love~ 790, he’s awesome. He has a scrap of human brain in his noggin, but we’re not clear whose (possibly originally female in a vague teaser extra), and since it is only used to interface his programming instructions to a body he no longer has, we’re never sure whether his growing inclination toward jealousy and evil near the end have anything to do with somehow being human. 790 robot drones are used on the Cluster and throughout the League of 20,000 Planets to carry out a variety of jobs, most noticeably escorting humans through procedures, rituals, and trials. They operate machinery and pretty much do all the mundane menial stuff humans can’t tolerate long or well without causing problems. Such as executing death sentences… They have no minds of their own because their heads have been replaced with robot heads, but still retain human bodies, which are probably easier on upkeep and maintenance and can be recycled back into the protein bank. Our 790 is the perfect human joke back on His Shadow, if you want to take it so far as noting that even a tiny shred of human brain slipped through the cracks and helped create havoc for His Shadow.

 

The third season of Lexx goes all Dante and magnificently carries scifi into an artisan world of philosophy and even religion. I don’t think any other scifi show has dared to take on anything this deep and still stubbornly retain its integrity through its characters, and manage to stay true to its original underlying theme. The Lexx itself doesn’t lose any significance as the star of the show while our characters are faced with all new challenges and *finally* a real question of morality and ethics, which I think is a natural progression when we remember they came from such an utter lack of fortitude and grace in philosophical thinking. The Cluster allowed no education in Thought or the development of critical thinking, so Xev and Stan are almost like intellectual babes up against the very essence of evil incarnated, and all his cruel and subtle trickeries. This season is almost painful to watch in a good way, if you have the sort of mind that enjoys gnawing the bones of philosophical debate. Fortunately, this season is also easy to digest, the intellectual being so layered into our characters’ foibles and desires. I am enamored of season three’s astonishing level of storytelling, and the characters were all played so well, to me watching season three of Lexx is like the best of theater and commands a deeper level of respect.

 

The fourth season of Lexx is difficult to quantify, so my favorite way of defining the whole season is “omg, they found Earth“. And it is super weird because the final situation in season 3 carries over and modifies what happens to the Earth, bringing the inhabitants of Fire and Water with them. The philosophical theater of season three erupts into political vaudeville on Earth, with morals and ethics exploding into a comical mockery. I think this is the perfect way to end their journey on the Lexx, if you consider that our heroes escaped from despicable evil on the Cluster and somehow still retain a certain naivete about despicable evil happening around them on Earth, even when Xev becomes overwhelmed by her Cluster lizard DNA and starts eating people. Nothing is sacred as our heroes take on everything unholy Earth has to offer.

 

One key element to the entire series is that the Lexx escapes from evil, outruns evil, blows up evil, defeats evil, runs into more evil, is used by evil, and dies during a war with evil- through everything, Stan, Xev, and Kai never experience a real relief from evil. They face it head on everywhere they go, and deal with it only as denizens who have escaped from His Divine Shadow can. I don’t think they ever questioned the existence of evil, it’s just everywhere you go, and you do what you’ve gotta do to survive it. Somehow that puts the human ingredient back into scifi storytelling for me. I don’t know about other scifi fans, but I think that’s such a nice change from the way other shows take the time to draw the line between ~metaphorical~ good and evil with rules and regs. Forget political correctness, forget tiptoeing around, forget the intellectual elevation above basic instinct. There is no rule book with Lexx. They blew it up.

 

Originally posted as an about page on my Lexx blog at Xanga, which does not have mobile viewing (yet), so I'm reposting a copy here for mobile devices. The server move began on September 1, 2013. Navigation links in this copy go back to the original blog.

Save Lexx

This blog is undergoing a server move that may take a few more weeks (months?) to complete, but that isn't stopping me from creating new material. Apologies for posts that are difficult to read. This blog is also currently NOT viewable on mobile and other devices. In the past it had awesome mobile viewing, and I have faith it will again. The Xanga Team have moved 2M+ blogs and are still rewriting the tech codes into the new servers, so please be patient. Thank you so much for stopping by, and thank you Xanga Team for doing all this hard work, without which this blog simply would have been lost.

–You can still reach all the content via the left side columns, scroll down for new posts and archives.

Lexx, the Dark Zone, scifi- Laptop screencaps used in not for profit blog episode and character reviews and film study at http://grandfortuna.xanga.com and http://lexxperience.blogspot.com Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Click for Lexx Index

The History of this Blog 2-1-2014

I created this blog in September of 2004, originally just a blog until Lexx fans started contacting me asking for more Lexx. I forgot I had put a tracker on my blog and discovered a year later I was getting some pretty nice traffic because of Lexx, so I turned the blog into a Lexx fan site in 2005. I was still pretty green when I visited my first Lexx forum on Nov 9, 2005.

By 2006 it had become clear this blog was one of the top Lexx fan sites for active traffic and a publicist offered me autonomous web hosting, which I declined. Bill Wanstrom called me on my phone once, that was pretty cool. Thanks to my blundering aspie ways and an orchestrated train wreck, even the Lexx actors knew who I was when I helped Lexxzone man a booth at Megacon in 2007.

Back then it was still a pretty big secret that I have lupus, and my health took a nosedive during summer of 2007. By 2009 I feared I might not regain normal health again and started pulling my public blogs into private. By early 2012 I had been off the grid and dealing with hard stuff for so long that I started deleting big chunks of my creations and storage. Including Lexx. The only reason I didn’t delete this blog is because I had paid for lifetime on it and wouldn’t be able to get the money back. I considered starting this blog over, no Lexx, and came back public in July of 2012.

Within of month of going public, my traffic boomed big time after I mentioned Lexx. I had been curiously noticing regular traffic checking my blog the entire time it was closed to the public, interestingly, the traffic meter worked just fine the whole time, and Lexx fans consistently showed up from bookmarks that should have no longer existed but redirected to my blog anyway. The areas that monitored this blog the most were Moscow, the Los Angeles/San Francisco metro area, and the UK, and very quickly that grew to worldwide response again once I started blogging Lexx posts. By last spring I was getting numbers like this.

  

Two more people have generously offered me autonomous web hosting since the big Xanga migration announcement. Again, I declined and grit my teeth preparing for probably the largest server move and salvage operation in blogging history. In order to keep this blog not only visible but still interactive and growing I had to invest more money, actually quite a bit more, and keep my faith that the new hosting site would make my blog even cooler than before. In the past Xanga has given me excellent internal tracking and mobile viewing and so many other really nice perks. And please notice that you haven’t been subjected to ANY ads all these years. You’re welcome.

Now that the Xanga Team are getting workable codes and formats and widgets and stuff back on again, I will continue building what I hope becomes the biggest Lexx film review on the internet. My friend Myke has been letting me host weekly Lexx watches in his chatroom, which we also live tweet. Echo Bridge Entertainment recently retweeted me on twitter, which was really cool.

Going forward I’d like to host hangout chats with other Lexx fans and fan site builders/owners/contributors. I’m still working on my own tech for that, so it might be a little longer. If you are interested in becoming part of this endeavor, please to follow my Lexx page on Google plus.

The visible traffic counter you see on this blog in the upper left column is broken. I only keep it because it has the original date that I installed it. The poor counter has been through its own server move, the Xanga migration, and several other maladies along the way. The count you are seeing started over when I opened this blog back up or something, you can see the zeros before that. I allowed my paid subscription to lapse when I thought I’d never be Lexxing again and lost all my previous stats, so the charts going back through the years all have zeros on them now, as you can see from this snip. The truer conservative count is closer to .5+M on this blog.

This (below) is what traffic has been looking like since I made this blog public again. Bear in mind the orange charts are the broken reinstalled meter, not the excellent internal Xanga meter from the purple snips. I’ve been aware for several months that site meter doesn’t seem to recognize some of the newer browsers and/or disregards newer device IPs as spam or something, and lately I can’t even set my correct time on it, so no telling how much is missing off these reported numbers. Beneath this site meter chart are some quick snips I grabbed before the migration closed my blog on September 1st 2013, each snip shows the internal Xanga count at the time and clicks directly to the post it came from.

 the making of Lexx

 Lexx index

 Ellen Dubin interview with Wormhole Riders

I think it’s safe to say that Lexx fans want more Lexx. I’m very anxiously waiting for Xanga to get the internal trackers back up so I can see what is really going on with this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to real time. I decided to copy my fan blog over to here just in case. I'm extremely busy on several projects, so I've naturally put the continuing film review on hold for a little while. Since it's one of my favorite hobbies, I expect to get back to it, hopefully before this year is out. Guess we'll see what happens.