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

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.