Lexx 2.3
featuring the episodes 791, Wake The Dead, Nook and Norb
This third slice of Lexx’s second season presents us with a couple of the show’s most hilariously demented episodes ever in the form of 791 and Wake The Dead. 791 concerns the fulfillment of robot head 790’s wish to acquire a body with which to woo Xev, though things go just a little bit wrong and 790 winds up being taken over the personality of the body’s previous owner - a twisted soul who lusts not for Xev, but for Stanley Tweedle! Though I’m tempted to call it a one-note homoerotic joke, this plot twist manages to stay funny for the whole hour, especially with the neat touch of 790’s real personality emerging from time to time to say things like “I won’t tell if you won’t!” Wake The Dead is an homage to the classic slasher flicks of the 70s and 80s, only with an improperly-reanimated Kai doing the hacking and slashing. Future series semi-regular Patricia Zentilli (later to make her mark as Bunny in the third and fourth seasons) makes her debut here as well. The real joy of Wake The Dead is Michael McManus’ absolutely insane take on a more evil version of Kai.
Nook is a somewhat more sedate episode at first, though it’s gained notoriety for being the installment in which Xev finally lives up to her love slave credo and loses her virginity. (At the risk of an awful pun, that part of the story is fairly anticlimactic.) Where I give Nook big points is for being the kind of examination of homosexuality that the guys making modern-day Star Trek have always told us we’d get from them, but never delivered. And here, it’s not seen as a gross-out, abnormal thing - in fact, for the all-male society of Nook, it’s the norm, and the introduction of Xev’s overt heterosexuality sets their society on self-destruct. I really applaud that angle of the story - it’s actually fairly interesting. And remember, Lexx went where Star Trek apparently just can’t go, before or after.
Norb is a somewhat typical action show, but vital to the second season story arc, as Mantrid and his drone arms attack and even force the crew to abandon the Lexx temporarily. As a horror flick homage, it’s very effective, and perhaps its biggest shocker is in dispensing with the Norb character (introduced in White Trash) in a way that would be horrifying for any character, but is made even more macabre by the fact that Norb’s a little kid. I gotta hand it to Donovan, Hirschfield, Giggeroff and company: when they set out to break the rules, the break ‘em in style, even squirming, uncomfortable style by the audience’s sensibilities.