This first volume of Lexx's second season kicks off with Mantrid, an episode that resolves a complication hinted at in the last of the Lexx TV movies. Terminal makes things slightly less murky with a scenario devised especially to see off series regular Eva Habermann, who really only reprised her role in the season's first two hours as a favor to the producers before returning to her career in Germany; it's an interesting analysis and exit for her character, as well as a set-up for Xenia Seeburg taking over the role.

But that doesn't happen immediately; Xev only returns at the tail end of Lyekka, a bit of a red-herring show which goes right off the weird scale and introduces the delectable Louise Wischermann as the ravenous, omnivorous title character. I don't know exactly what it is about Ms. Wischermann that always trips my trigger whenever she appears in this series - though to be honest, I think it's less her appearance than that voice. Yikes. I'd probably wind up being one course of Lyekka's meal in no time. In fact, maybe she could've gotten the role of Xev - I think the transition from innocent-but-tough Eva Habermann to Louise Wischermann might've stripped the gears a little bit less than the transformation into overly sex-kittenish Seeburg, but hey, that's just my take on things. Lyekka also offers us a glimpse into season 4 with its farcical "astronaut" guest stars, riffing on the slightly outdated "NASA cowboy" image.

The first volume closes with Luvliner, another bizarre installment in which the crew quite literally looks for love in all the wrong places, and while Xev and Stan don't get quite the action they were hoping for, 790 gets far too much. (I don't know if I've ever gone on record as saying this, but I can't stand 790. The character grates on my nerves so much that any episode where the severed robot head takes some kind of abuse automatically wins a slot on my "guilty pleasures" list.) That said, I'm not sure even 790 is deserving of his fate in this episode...

The special features rounding out this disc include an interview with Michael McManus, the first slice of a behind-the-scenes documentary originally produced for Space (the Canadian equivalent of the Sci-Fi Channel), and the first segment of the "Rated LEXX" special produced for Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. to fill in the show's elaborate backstory, since Showtime wouldn't allows Sci-Fi to air the four movies comprising the first season. The Rated LEXX segments are more coherent in later volumes, but this first one, trying to set up the still-latent menace of His Divine Shadow, is just a mess. There's also a feature on the transformation of Zev into Xev, but disappointingly it's only a text screen explaining where Eva Habermann went. A trivia quiz and character/actor bios, again text features only, finish off the package.

I don't often count points off for menus, but here's a case where I have to make an exception: the early Lexx season 2 DVDs have the lamest menu I've seen in a long time. An appropriate "as you command, Stan" clip was found to go along with every instruction you punch in with the remote, but overall the menus are tracked with the most somnolent, sleepy portions of the show's soundtrack you can imagine. Maybe the effect wouldn't have been as bad with (a) different music, or (b) if they'd dropped the video clips after you make a menu selection.

This disc also appears, without any changes, in the Lexx Season 2 Box Set.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief