LEXX: the 1990s sci-fi TV fever dream

Picture this: it's a Friday night in 1997, and in the UK, there's a new terrestrial TV channel: Channel 5. Having a new TV channel was still a big deal in 1997.

One fateful Friday evening, dropping into the novelty of a new network's schedules, I stumbled upon something extraordinary.

It was the feature-length pilot episode of Lexx.

I will always give anything science-fiction a chance. Within minutes, I was completely transfixed.

Here was a strange new world indeed.

Step forward Stanley Tweedle, the cowardly technician; Zev, the love slave; and Kai, the undead assassin. Together they journey the galaxy in the Lexx - "the most powerful destructuve force in the two universes", as we would be told in a pre-credits voiceover for four long, glorious seasons.

This wasn't your typical sci-fi fare. No shiny Federation starships or noble heroes here.

Instead, Lexx presented a universe that was dark, twisted, comic, and utterly unpredictable. A show that seemed to emerge from some fever dream where Germanic expressionism met Canadian absurdism.

Yes, it was a German-Canadian co-production. Fertile creative ground or what?

You had to be there.

Prime Casting in a Galaxy of Misfits

Barry Bostwick, then a moderately famous Hollywood actor, appeared in the very first episode as Thodin, leader of the Ostral-B heretics (don't ask). Here's where LEXX pulled its first masterstroke: Bostwick's character seemed set up as the typical sci-fi hero, but he was killed off early, leaving us with the most unlikely crew imaginable.

The only other big name I remember ever appearing was Malcolm McDowell, who was in everything back then. He played a defecting priest in the Divine Order who helped destroy the Giga Shadow (again, don't ask).

More Gulliver Than Star Trek

Michael McManus, who brilliantly played the undead assassin Kai, once compared Lexx to Gulliver's Travels rather than Star Trek.

The comparison perfectly captures the show's essence. Where Star Trek offered moral certainties and technological optimism and plenty of conventional sci-fi plots and themes, Lexx thrust its characters (and viewers) into a satirical journey through stories that reflected our own society's absurdities and failings.

Like the hapless Lemuel Gulliver, the crew of the Lexx encountered characters and civilizations that served as funhouse mirrors for human nature.

Each episode was an unpredictable voyage into the grotesque and the mysterious. You never knew whether you'd encounter cosmic horror, bawdy comedy, or philosophical meditation. Often it'd be all three at once.

Late Night Scheduling Wars

Channel 5's erratic scheduling in the UK became part of the Lexx experience for its devoted fans. I never met another fan in real life, and still haven't to this day. But they existed.

The show's journey through four distinct seasons took viewers on an increasingly surreal ride.

Season 3 found the crew trapped in orbit around the warring planets Fire and Water. There they encountered the enigmatic and evil being known as Prince, brilliantly played by one of the many British character actors who had second and third lives as villains in North American TV and film of the era.

And then came Season 4, which brought the chaos to Earth in the early 2000s. This one tested even the most devoted Lexx fans.

The German President and Other Earthly Delights

Rolf Kanies, a distinguished German actor, played Reginald J. Priest, who becomes President of the United States while maintaining his German accent throughout.

It was exactly the kind of audacious casting choice that made Lexx so memorable. A whimsical, eccentric leader who embodied the show's gleeful disregard for conventional realism.

This character - previously a servant to Prince on the planet Fire - found himself reincarnated on Earth as the most powerful man in the world, with no real explanation given. The performance was both absurd and oddly prescient, presenting a head of state more interested in personal pleasure than governing.

The End of All Things

[Spoiler ahead!]

How did Lexx end?

The series concluded with its characteristic creative flair. Large chunks of Earth were destroyed, with President Priest nuking Cuba, Newfoundland, and Vietnam.

Lexx (the ship) first consumed Holland... then ultimately destroyed Earth entirely.

Even in its finale, the show refused to offer conventional closure, instead delivering the same gleeful nihilism that had defined it from the beginning.

The Show That Couldn't Be Categorized

Critics often dismissed Lexx as "soft porn sci-fi", much to its fans' dismay. The soft-porn label completely missed the point. Yes, the show sometimes featured sexuality as a driving force, but it was far more interested in exploring human nature's fundamental drives (desire, power, death) than in titillation.

Lexx was never trying to be respectable science fiction.

It was something far more ambitious and dangerous: a carnival mirror held up to genre conventions and human nature itself.

It was gross, beautiful, stupid, brilliant, and utterly singular.

Time for a Rewatch?

Perhaps it is time to revisit the dark universe of Lexx.

In our current era of prestige television and carefully managed franchises, there's something almost heroic about a show that refused to play by any rules except its own twisted logic.

Lexx was uncompromising in its weirdness, unashamed of its low-budget origins, and unafraid to shock, confuse, and occasionally enlighten its audience.

For those few other UK viewers who discovered it on that new Channel 5 one Friday evening almost three decades ago, Lexx remains a reminder of television's power to genuinely surprise.

It was a show that proved science fiction didn't need to be respectable or sensible.

It doesn't need to confront the big issues of our world today.

Sometimes it just needs to be fearlessly, uncompromisingly, otherworldlystrange.