This is a problem.

The problem is multifaceted, the main one being that I can't get into my own code on xanga like I can on blogger and tumblr, and xanga has not yet constructed a wordpress style widget that I can use.

Anyone can make their own cookie code. However, wordpress style widgets are notorious for shredding script code, and xanga won't allow java in any form.

I've been watching traffic drop off as the EU cookie compliance law has gone into affect, and I've clearly lost about 3/4 of my regular traffic here now. Most of the big stuff has already moved to Lexxperience.com, and I'll continue my Lexx blogging there.

If anything changes and I can insert the cookie code in future, and especially if xanga revives a bit more, I'll be coming back here. In the meantime, please see Lexxperience.com for updates.

Originally posted on 3-20-15 at Lexxperience.com.

That omg moment when you wake up at 5 a.m. nearly 13 years after the show is over and realize that they probably added Thodin to the Divine Assassin collection (you can own them all!) and used him to help with the culling and cleansing in s1ep4's Giga Shadow. Disclaimer- I don't read fanfic. Ever. Unless a friend shoves one in my face and that hasn't happened in years. If a Lexx fan out there has actually written about this happening to Thodin, kudos to you. I'm sure there is at least one Russian fan out there who was brilliant enough to run with this idea.

Thodin, proclaimed Arch-Heretic by His Divine Shadow, is the leader of a small gang of Ostral-B rebels, or "heretics" opposed to the Divine Order when we see him. He was likely much more than that, since leading a strike force into the heart of enemy territory to steal the biggest weapon of mass destruction ever created would take the sort of precision and team loyalty that any black ops team knows means do or die.

We have some idea of how long this had been in the planning stages. In the first movie I Worship His Shadow, we learn that Stanley Tweedle is still carrying one or more secret codes embedded in his teeth. We further learn in the fourth movie Giga Shadow that Stanley was originally caught by Sub-Nebulae mercenaries (Sub-Ns for short) and turned over to His Shadow, who then named him Arch-Traitor and kept him alive for years in the ironic position of processing prisoners as a security guard, which sent strong messages to outlying planets not yet incorporated into the League of 20,000 Planets. Thodin not only knew Stanley Tweedle and mocked his title of Arch-Traitor, but was probably his commanding officer when Stanley was assistant deputy backup courier in charge of getting the codes across enemy territory.

Not turning this into a Stanley bio, but Stanley is crucial to understanding more about Thodin, since he is the last living person to have spoken to him (unless you count the Zev kiss and then the heretic who was immediately eaten by a Cluster Lizard), and their last conversation revealed so much in so little time about their relationship before Thodin was killed.

Click to go to The Pic Bug

Thodin was beyond angry at the sight of Stanley, to the point of distraction from his mission. One might think that if Thodin had been able to set his emotions aside, he might have been able to utilize Stanley's inside knowledge of the Cluster, particularly the finer points on security (makes sense, doesn't it?), but Thodin was so obviously incensed to find Stanley still alive that he couldn't help taking the extra minute to berate Stanley personally for the difficult position his capture had put them all in, on top of the many years Stanley had been humiliated as the Arch Traitor anyway. Meanwhile, Stanley was surprised and relieved to see Thodin still alive since the Reform Planets had been destroyed after his capture, based on coordinates found in one of his teeth. Basically, Thodin had to come re-steal what they had stolen in the first place, except now the Lexx was more than codes- it was fully grown and would have to be flown out.

:edit: 3-22-15 I originally prepublished this post before I was done, which a handful of you saw (12 direct link hits from twitter and G+, additional whole page views also happened before I did this update). The issue I posed to twitter (which turned out to be a nonissue for the one fan who responded) was about how the Ericon raid was played out. I have oscillated from one event to two events back to one event. "The first raid to smuggle out the Lexx codes must have gone off without a hitch until Stanley got caught, after that it turned into a war going back to steal a copy of the Key so they could steal the actual Lexx." I recant that. It was one trip to Ericon for both the codes and the Key, they barely made it out alive, and the Key lived inside Thodin all the years Stanley was prisoner on the Cluster, where the Lexx was being grown. How Thodin actually acquired the key during the heist is left to speculation. It was doubtful he throttled anyone for it since a- the Lexx hadn't been grown yet, and b- it was meant for His Shadow. This makes Thodin the true original captain of the Lexx, and this may be why he was able to willingly pass it along. Everyone afterward has inherited the key by means of death or sexual ecstacy, a spiritual 'death' state.

Click to visit The Pic Bug

Originally, the Lexx was designed by two Ericon biocode specialists, one of whom turned out to be Brizon. The Lexx was meant to be grown on the Cluster for His Shadow, a planet killer more powerful than any weapon that had ever been built in the two universes, including the Foreshadow, which we watched destroy every living thing on Brunnis 2 in only 20 shots (I counted the firing noises, it might have been 19 if editing put two sound effects too close together), leaving behind a blackened dead planet. The Lexx would be able to blow a planet up into pieces with one shot, making the stolen codes (over which a war cost millions of lives) a last desperate hope against a government that had been spreading across the Light Universe for thousands of years engulfing all of humanity, following a war with a race of Insects that had lasted thousands of years more before that. The League of 20,000 Planets forced a restrictive political religion that not only turned humanity into a slave culture, but very literally absorbed humanity into itself, as we see in Giga Shadow. The League didn't hesitate to reward crime syndicates for their cooperation in acquiring and turning over information and hostages, and Stanley Tweedle happened to be the one who got caught attempting to smuggle the stolen codes after the Heretics finally wrested them off Ericon.

The planet of Ostral-B, above all the other Reform Planets, was apparently famous as a staunch hold-out from the League and became synonymous with heretics and traitors, which is most likely League-speak. Joining the resistance meant politically aligning with Ostral-B, which was very dangerous since His Shadow had the resources to wipe out all life on a planet in minutes. As we must imagine, defense technology had developed into planet-level cloaking capabilities, which is confirmed in season two's Brigadoom. Since Brunnis 2 was destroyed 2000 years before Thodin's attempt to steal the Lexx, we don't know whether Brunnis 2 was part of the Ostral-B reform alliance or if the Ostral-B alliance came later. We do know that the Ostral-B were aware of the Brunnen-G being lost to history, and could reasonably make the assumption that they either once shared technology or one may have grown out of the other from another time further back, which could also conceivably make the Brunnen-G and Ostral-B very distantly related, as Vulcans and Romulans are in the Trek universe. But all that is speculation. For now, let us assume that Thodin and Stanley Tweedle were both actually from Ostral-B.

I have mentioned the curious incongruity between what appears to be low level culture and high level tech keeping that culture in place on the Cluster and throughout the League. That Thodin and his gang look a bit like steampunk warriors belies the sheer knowledge and experience they had with Insect technology for what must have been not only lifelong but intergenerational warfare. We can probably assume from even this small amount of information gathering that Thodin was an extremely high-ranked and well-known person bordering on legend across the Light Universe. The Cluster had evidently been attempting to acquire this publicly named Arch Heretic for years, as we see they already have his judicial proceedings prerecorded for very swift justice and execution. Ironically, it would seem that Thodin and his rebels might have somehow previously infiltrated the Cluster's automatic coding locks and procedures and used being captured as a sure way in without getting caught, because they were ingeniously already caught. I also believe they chose the gate change, but this is still highly debatable, and they obviously had no idea their own Stanley Tweedle would be manning that particular switch, just as Stanley had no idea they were on board the transport to which he was refusing to give docking permission. From I Worship His Shadow- Part 2- The Cluster, "A security guard with 991 demerits is almost late reporting to work at Department 511 Level 4. A prisoner transport has been diverted to Gate 511. This is Thodin's day of justice... "

This being the most important day in the history of the two universes, we're very surprised to see Thodin killed early on, after surviving so much war in the first place. His presence turned out to be crucial as he carried a copy of the Key to the Lexx, biotech created to reside within the body of its captain, which should have been His Shadow. As Thodin rants to Stanley about the war on Ericon where millions died so he could get the Key, we don't yet realize that Stanley failing to smuggle the Lexx codes in the first place is the reason it must be stolen now after it is grown. The Key, originating from Insect Essence and biocoded along with the Lexx, is the only way to operate the Lexx, using a host as an interfacing catalyst. If the codes had been smuggled successfully, Thodin would already be on the brink of using the Lexx himself as its captain, instead of stealing it.

~~~~~~~~~

:edit: 3-22-15 Since I'm coming back to this two days later, that's go ahead and switch gears before I get lost in the history obsessing again.

Thodin was played by Barry Bostwick. I don't think he has a twitter, but here he is on facebook.

Ok, THODIN. This outfit is outrageously awesome. I've seen all kinds of speculation in forums through the years about what kind of warrior outfit this is, is there any significance, on and on. First of all, get standardized military uniforms out of your head. This isn't Earth, and it's not the Cluster. Next, notice the vibrant colors, much like the Brunnen-G. Kai wasn't wearing a warrior outfit when he was killed. Now think about what Thodin was actually doing, his goals, how he aimed to achieve his goals. I'm going to jump to a scenario that helps me visualize a little more what's actually going on.

Thodin and his gang of heretics wanted to be caught so they could get to the Lexx. They wound up on a transport carrying Zev Bellringer and Giggerota. Zev is from B3K. It's highly improbable that Zev had ever been off-planet, so I'm going to assume that the prisoners on this transport were gathered from B3K. Giggerota was charged with ravaging temples and eating priests, a setting which seems to be a theme when we look back through Zev's memories and conceivably fits in with being assigned to a wife bank training center and then going berzerk. But why are the heretics on B3K? Because the Reform Planets have all been destroyed. These are presumably the last of the heretics hiding out among the B3K citizenry, and we know that B3K is part of the League of 20,000 Planets. Thodin has probably been lurking in a base of underground operations on B3K ever since Stanley got caught. Or, who knows, maybe they had previously infiltrated the League and established this base before it all went down, and now it came in handy.

So if Thodin is hiding and wants to get caught so he can get into the Cluster and steal the Lexx, what does he need to do to get caught? Well, I'd call donning a ceremonial Ostral-B outfit and wearing it in public on B3K a good way to get some big attention real fast. From there it wouldn't take much for Thodin and a few co-conspitators tussling with authorities and being recognized to wind up exactly where they wanted to be, on a transport heading to the Cluster for special execution. We know Thodin smuggled in a bug bomb which was preprogrammed with blueprints and detailed instructions, so it's likely that B3K was an ideal place to lay down an undercover information pipeline that might have gone all the way into the Cluster. That would explain how they were able to get the gate change, which apparently got them as close to the Lexx as possible once they were inside. From there, Thodin and his gang acquired black packs and then managed to quickly reach the Lexx, so they clearly had help on the inside regarding building plans, codes, timing, you name it. This plan must have taken years to set up. (Remember that when you see Stanley slapping at the bug bomb.) At any rate, I can imagine how apropos it would have been, had Thodin successfully pulled off the Lexx heist, to blast up the Cluster wearing ceremonial Ostral-B garb after his planet had been blown up. BOOYA!!

Click to see The Pic Bug

There are two things that Thodin unwittingly did that weren't according to plan and unintentionally made huge differences later. After the bug bomb detonated and he was pulling his heretics off the prisoner slabs, Thodin caved to releasing a prisoner known as Giggerota the Wicked. Giggerota is later responsible for getting Stanley up to the command center of the Lexx in a moth, then it's her idea to steer toward the Frontier, which gave them a head start. While we are speaking of prisoners, remember that Thodin was detained inside his own special unit during transport, so he isn't wearing the slab bands like the other heretics or like Zev is still wearing even after her transformation. He and Zev probably never saw each other before they met near the Lexx, even though they came in on the same transport, since she was already in processing by the time the bug bomb detonated and Thodin was brought back to the slabs. He and the other heretics never blinked at her slab bands (I doubt any of them recognized her as being from the same transport), and were so caught up in running into Stanley and stealing the Lexx that Zev wasn't much more than a wild card thrown into the mix. Thodin is responsible for shoving her onto the Lexx before she could be killed by a Divine Assassin. Zev is responsible for both bringing 790 on board and knocking out Stanley's tooth, a combination that proved extremely useful as another code was discovered for a flight path to the Dark Zone. She also told Stanley to stand up and die with dignity, which Stanley later exaggerated into mocking Divine Predecessors like no human in the Light Universe had ever done in all the millennia that humans had been savagely enslaved and abused.

I know I go off on tangents, but because of Thodin, these other things happened. Under all that brusque, Thodin apparently had a heart of gold for the ladies, and it made all the difference in the Two Universes.

--there may be a part 2 down the road--

This pic clicks to original source.

You can see some of the original pictures of the reconstruction that Marc did after he won the ebay bid on the 790 stunt double and cart on Helen's page. It's in Russian so use a translator. Much of it is her summarization but you can still pick up the work Marc put into it. I used to have copies of his videos where he used remote control to make it zoom around the sidewalk and street, apologies, my copies are gone now. He also rigged it with a recorder/player so it would sound like 790 was really talking. He shows up at comiccons around his area with it, so if you see it, yes, it's REAL!

Many thanx to @ThaddeusNowak on twitter for sharing his picture of Marc and 790, and please to check out his author page at http://thaddeusnowak.com/

Hi, guys, sorry for stalling out here, super busy growing the League of 20,000! (and other non-Lexx-related things). I've started backing up the posts in this fan blog to Lexxperience on blogger, mostly for mobile viewing while this blog is still in transition on new servers which I talk about in Save Lexx, but also because blogger directly posts over to my Google+ Lexx page.

Some of you might remember back in the old days when I had some awesome menu graphics and the Lexx flying right across the page. A few of you might remember how excited I got after I opened this site back up and got mobile viewing. Then last year on September 1st Xanga temporarily (several weeks) shut down to migrate to new servers, obliterating all the codework I'd manually crafted and setting up shop with an all new wordpress editor. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled they didn't dump all the blogs and walk away.

Pros- This fan blog now resides with an elite host that no longer takes new members, and existing users now pay to keep using. This means no ads (which I have paid for since 2005, actually), and access to wordpress help and perks.

Cons- No guaranteed mobile viewing for an indeterminate amount of time, the loss of certain script allowances, and the possibility that this blog might still disappear, depending on what happens with the Xanga Team.

As long as Xanga continues hosting, I will keep this original blog in place. In the meantime, if want mobile viewing, check out Lexxperience! Here is the mobile scan for the other site.

I created a real time feed source for Lexx on twubs, which collects designated hashtags and sifts them into a channel. If you have a twitter account, you can imagine what a chore it is doing real time hashtag searches looking for other fans. Twubs does the work 24/7 and also provides other services, including chat mode. Even if you don't have a twitter account, you can sub to Lexx on twubs through my MerLexxian channel. The MerLexxian feed can also be embedded, if you'd like to keep an eye on it from a distance.

Below is my current hashtag source list. Please note that Lexx is not on this list. So many users on twitter hashtag Lexx as a popular dance club or as a personal name that the TV show Lexx would get lost in the extra chatter. I also don't list Prince, Xev, or Zev for the same reasons. 790 won't hashtag by itself as a number, and other affiliations like 'robot head' are used too much for other things for it to be useful. Same with 'divine assassin', which has common gamer usage.

In the 'about' I describe this feed as "A mashtag of the TV shows Lexx and Merlin because no one else is doing it", but I have no Merlin hashtags sourcing into this feed. Hashtag creation is becoming a big deal, and since my twitter account has been synonymous with the MerLexxian hashtag for over a year, it made sense to use that as my twubs title. I don't claim to represent all of Lexx fandom, but I do have a unique feed name that is easily identifiable. Anyone can create a twubs account and set up a feed aggregate. Ok... that was a surprise. I decided to check out the Lexx feed on twubs and discovered that even though it was active, no one had registered it yet. So, what the heck, it's registered now. So there are TWO feeds for Lexx- Lexx picks up everything hashtagged Lexx, and MerLexxian which picks up all the rest in that list up there. That way it's not too overwhelming, I guess.

So HA, I registered the Lexx hashtag before the dance club did, yay! I just assumed it would be gone already. Maybe I'll play around with it later, but for now I'm pretty swamped. IF anyone ever picks up the Lexx TV show property and creates more entertainment for us, I'll be happy to surrender the Lexx hashtag on twubs. Till then, at least it's been rescued.

:edit: I have added creator and some of the cast names into the hashtag source feed on the Lexx twubs in case they get hashtagged on twitter, twubs will catch it.

So this happened. Click this pic to follow Echo Bridge Entertainment on twitter.

Echo Bridge Entertainment has licensed distribution over Lexx. Online screening is available through a logged in account.

Lexx is also available for purchase through itunes, amazon, Inet Video, Google shopping search, Target, Yidio, tv.com, Play.com, Best Buy, and probably much more, now that it's widely available again at lower prices than it used to be.

Get Lexxperienced.

This is part 10.
Go back to part 9.
Go on to part 11. (coming soon)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.

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

Pretend a year didn't just go by since we left a crowd of bloodthirsty fans screaming for Thodin's death, and before that we left Xev trapped in a lusticon, and before that we left Stanley Tweedle freaking out about a termination order. We're right on the cusp now of what else can happen???

Stanley Tweedle is writhing in agony over a horrible conundrum- one to three organs when he reports to the corrections center versus termination if he doesn't turn himself in. General guess, he probably had about 20 minutes left on the clock and has been wandering around since then trying to make up his mind what to do. Escape is out of the question, being in the heart of His Divine Shadow's League of 20,000 Planets on the Cluster itself, trapped in a judiciary structure to make all your worst nightmares look like rainbow colored kittens. I wonder what that screen with a face on it is for.

If you think about it, this 20 minutes is probably the very last of any kind of freedom Stanley Tweedle will ever know again. While he's walking around in between places, still fully corporeally intact, no one is bothering him or bossing him around, and when he pauses to think to himself, no one questions him or gives him trouble. That big robot looks pretty innocuous. Remember that when we see it again.

In this moment with the distant chime marking the quiet passing of time in this in between place, we get an almost beautiful view of the Cluster far below while Stanley wrestles with the hardest choice he's ever made in his life. "One to three organs?"

"Better than termination!" Quiet thoughtful time is suddenly over, now it's panic time, and Stanley realizes he's got seconds left to report in before he gets stuck with termination. He turns immediately and starts running.

That's the correction center he needs to get to down that hallway. Look very closely. We hear the bug bomb report in, "Bug bomb searching..." as it zips through that gateway. Watch the green dot, like a teeny tiny remote controlled helicopter buzzing around. Remember, you can click on thumbnails to see them better.

Stan is running really fast, jumping over and dodging zippy little robot servos on their little carts. I can't help thinking how the shadow patterns on the floor look like he's in prison wherever he goes. It even looks like his own shadow is trying to get away.

With all that jumping and dodging and utter panic rising up, the last thing Stanley needs is a teensy airborne mechanoid buzzing around crashing into his face and slowing him down.

Uh oh...

UH OH. Yeah, Thodin is hearing all this on his relay.

"Bug bomb... malfunction..." Definitely one of those 'Oh crap' moments. He's still bolted to that little bug carrier in the middle of Cobalt Stadium with a hundred thousand bloodthirsty fans screaming for his brain to be fed to cluster lizards.

Here's the holo-judge talking again. "Thodin of the Ostral-B Pair is accused of heresy in the first degree.."

"...of 26 counts of piracy..." Despite the danger and the bug bomb malfunction, Thodin seems to be enjoying his sentencing.

"...of influencing the minds of the People..." The cluster lizards are getting crankier.

"...of questioning His Shadow's truth and wisdom..."

"...of destroying 231 military vessels loyal to His Shadow..."

That's turning into quite a list. Starting to wonder just what all Thodin has really done, who he really is, and what in the world kind of outfit that is and do all the heretics wear them?

Meanwhile, the clock is counting down and Stanley Tweedle is running for dear life.

Automated voice- "This correction center is now closed." The gate was automated, as well.

Alas, Stan is too late.

"It's me!"

"I'm here!"

But of course, it's truly too late.

There is no one around to hear him.

The bug bomb malfunctioned and Stanley is too late, looks like this story is almost over...

Thodin was played by Barry Bostwick, Stanley Tweedle was played by Brian Downey. You can find Lexx at Amazon, and check Lexx on Yidio to see where it's still currently being broadcast.

I made this last year, you can use it if you want.

This is part 10.
Go back to part 9.
Go on to part 11. (coming soon)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.

Apologies for the long wait in between new stuffs. Been a little busy juggling chainsaws, but I think that part might be getting easier soon.

Quick laud to the Xanga team for the insanely intense update work they've done on this relaunch. I've been having spam problems with one post in particular, and now I've got some awesome tools to use. I regret locking comments down, but they'll no longer be open after 10 days, no longer allow pingbacks, and will be heavily moderated. After deleting several thousands of illegal medication link comments coming straight from an uncontrolled plague swarming around Wormhole Riders (NOT going to link that), I can safely say I will never promote that site again in any shape or fashion. I'm far from being a professional site, but I apparently have more stringent standards with my site maintenance.

Still waiting patiently for internal stats to come back up. Experimenting with a new stat counter in the meantime, already finding flaws with it. My truest real time stats used to be from Xanga. That being said, hello to those of you I can see stopping by.

I keep running into people on twitter and tumblr and other media who are not aware that Lexx is now available at very reasonable prices through retail stores like Target (currently on back order). Most big retail chains have dotcoms that allow you to have them ordered to the store and held for you if they don't have Lexx on the shelf when you visit. Or even better, stream or order them from Amazon. Up until Echo Bridge Entertainment collected Lexx into a marketing package in the U.S., used Lexx was very expensive and hard to find. I know this because I had local gaming stores scour their computer inventories over several states. I was fortunate, jumped on ordering the original Salter Street version just before they sold the company, and I paid a pretty price. I have run into a few fans in other countries who tell me their original edits are a little different than the U.S. version, and now the re-edited package is a little more different still. If you want Lexx at all, now is the time to grab it.

I hope everyone is ok out there and Lexxy things are happening for you. Let's have a good year.

Permission granted to translate and reprint this article. Please link back to this original source, thanks. Screen grabs used in this article have been adapted from The Pic Bug and link back to their sources. This article contains spoilers. The Lexx series is now distributed internationally through U.S. based Echo Bridge Entertainment, which you can also follow on their distributor twitter and VOD twitter.

He's been discombobulated, desanguinated, decapitated, and disenfranchised like no other and remains the most feared divine assassin in the two universes. Nothing has ever stopped him until Prince intervened with the gift of life in the very last episode of the four seasons of Lexx. Kai is the most prolific and oldest recorded zombie in science fiction history.

It almost seems disrespectful to refer to Kai as a zombie. True he is animated after death, true he has no motivational will of his own after he regains his memories and even some of his conscience, true he even feels absolutely no remorse or regret for all the bad things he did in the name of His Shadow (here we can debate the conundrum of intellectually finding one's actions reprehensible without feeling any of the disgust or sadness), but it's also true that regaining his memories gave him back some of his dignity in a very sad, surreal kind of way that mocks the awareness of his continuing existence. Zombies generally don't get their memories back, much less have a self awareness of an individual identity.

Two crucial components come together in Kai to create his unique zombie experience, the most vital being protoblood, and the other is his having been exposed to the memories that the Insect essence kept alive in one of the Divine Predecessors. Protoblood, produced by Insects, animates all dead flesh that it touches. Protoblood is simply a mechanism without a program, most likely an evolutionary Insect survival tool for long dormant spells, especially in between planets. The essence or life force that the Insects also produce provide the motivational programming and previous memories that can be passed from Insect to Insect, probably their greatest talent for success in their millennia of wars with and control over humans, especially as this most likely retains group cohesion in a sort of hive mentality over the great expanses of time and space. This is not explained in the Lexx series as the Insects have all been wiped out (so we think) before the story begins. Later we find out how damaging even just one Insect can still be.

Kai is a different sort of zombie, though, created on purpose by bioviziers on the Cluster into the ultimate killing machine. Some parts of him are missing entirely and replaced with hardware apparently run by integrated software that isn't necessarily all dependent on a central hard drive location, such as his brain. Before Kai gets his memories back, he is a complex automaton programmed to assess pertinent events and execute immediate judgement. After he gets his memories back he seems able to block or override this internal programming, but when his personal memories become once again blocked by outside mechanism (as per Brizon, Mantrid, or essence) or cryopod sequence fail or even just breaking down, programming once again takes over and he becomes lethal to all around him.

One could argue that this makes Kai a synthetic, a bio-robot like the other hybrid robots on the Cluster, but the key to Divine Assassins is that they are already dead. Their flesh is in no way living by normal standards, even with protoblood activating them. Kai does not need sleep or food. He doesn't need time off to regenerate like the Borg. He doesn't even run on a battery like 790. He horrifically exists in a state of corporeal nonbeing, aware because of the memories he regained, but unable to care. Even knowing right from wrong, even remembering that he once had strong opinions and desires, he can no longer act on those of his own volition. He is a spiritual and intellectual zombie, numbed and estranged from the world going on around him. Kai was created to be a useful tool accomplishing actions that he once found reprehensible and died fighting against. He never articulates how he feels about this, often stating that he cannot feel at all in a way that comes across as though he would like to feel disgust if he could, but the dead do not have likes, preferences, desires, and quite a long list often quoted by fans.

With other zombie shows, the deepest fans can feel for the poor zombies is shocked sadness at former loved ones having to be gruesomely stopped from killing people. We are able to journey with Kai into the black abyss of corrupted flesh, from which there is no return. The Lexx series aggressively demonstrates a world of human genocide and perversion, and the dark depths society will descend into just to survive. According to the Lexx series, zombies, vampires, and much more in the way of genetic experimentation (possibly including Gigerotta the Wicked) all originated in the League of 20,000 Planets under the reign of His Divine Shadow. After His Shadow had Kai's body repurposed into an assassin, Kai became legendary among the Ostral-B heretics. Even though they had never known who the Brunnen-G people were, two thousand years after the last Brunnen-G was killed Thodin recognized Kai. Thodin and his army had likely seen other Divine Assassins in action and knew very well what they were capable of- this one was different. This one fit the description of the lost Brunnen-G race.

Zev (and Xev, and many Lexx fans) want to see Kai brought back to life. We learn as the story progresses that even if he could be brought back to life somehow, his poor body has been so scraped out to make room for hardware that becoming alive again would necessarily be a miserable prospect. I like to venture further into the exploration that perhaps an alive body would feel even more like a trap than a zombie body, if it brought with it pain from everything Kai has been through. Just because protoblood automatically takes over at the molecular or cellular level and forces the tissues to bind back together once severed doesn't mean living cells wouldn't go through quite a shock if they could start operating again. Kai's body no longer heals or mends after it is broken or torn, but binds back into a cohesive machine. Without being able to study Insect physiology from our very narrow point of view, we must guess that protoblood basically made the Insects somewhat immortal until the Brunnen-G ancestors found a way to defeat them. Given that Kai can withstand very high power disruptions, perhaps protoblood has something to do with creating an electromagnetic barrier around conductive tissues. At any rate, if Kai could be drained of protoblood and reintegrate his former senses, he would probably feel very weak.

As Lexx begins with Kai being the one to fulfill the prophecy, so it ends with Kai once again crashing his craft into the heart of danger in order to stop it. Kai's very end is poignant and ironic; after winning a game of chess against the Prince of death himself, he is granted life only to lose it again. After being a zombie assassin for six millennia, after having killed tens of thousands and more, after outlasting his people, both his ancestral planets, and even a universe, he finally finds rest.

Kai is played by Michael McManus. If you would like to know more, the most complete site I know of for information is at michael-mcmanus.com. Here are quick links to interviews from 2006 (apologies, that podcast link is inaccessible without premium subscrition to scifitalk.com) 2007 and 2009, and there is an updated (2010) Kai biography at sadgeezer. Links within my article above go to articles at Lexx Wiki.

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, Genevive), 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.