SciWhy? F.U! - LEXX

We’re continuing our Sci-Fi Channel origin series by digging into LEXX: a cult space opera about a cowardly non-hero, an undead assassin, a love-obsessed robot head, and a former love slave flying a living ship built to destroy planets. It’s silly, dark, occasionally bad, sometimes brilliant, and almost never safe.

Transcript

Cold Open And Introductions

0:59

Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds. Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Charge the lightning field. Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. Yo way young re whom Brunin Jake. That's me. Every week. We have to deal with this every week. We'll just kinda sit back and let him have it. Please let me have it. I need it. Well, these are tales from a parallel universe. Indeed, they are. It's a pod from the dark universe, is what it is.

Why Lex Stood Out On Sci Fi

2:06

The saddest part is this is the dark universe. We are most certainly in the dark universe, which, when we get into season four, actually gets into that. But again, this is Dispatch Ajax, and today we are continuing our Sci-Y F U series about the Sci-Fi Channel and its programming. The Sci-Fi Channel had a slew of iconic and quality space shows. But one lived on in the ever-adolescent gray matter of myself due to its dark satire, its silly oddities, its themes of life, death, rebirth, prophecy, and lao of sex. Or at least sexual charge. Yeah, let's say that. Yeah. It's it's oddly we'll we'll get into it's we'll say lack of penetrative depth in that particular aspect, but the titillation was certainly there. Now, similar to its generally accepted superior, Farscape, the show Lex, that predated Farscape by a couple years, about a crew of misfits aboard a living ship getting into wild adventures week after week. But the tone of Lex was dissimilar to its predecessors and contemporaries, often shunning conventions while embalming itself in tropes. Like Red Dwarf from a Brievous and Butthead Brain, a Skinnamax Doctor Who, a Barbarella's Fury Road, or Star Wars, where Luke is a failed imperial non-hero, Leia is an escaped sex slave, well, she kind of is in return, but kind of uh kind of uh Han is an uncaring dead man, and C3PO is an obsessed with boning. It's singular, silly, sometimes bad, but always subversive and interesting. This is the story of Lex. When the sci-fi channel had first come out, I remember there was this period in the era in which they brought Farscape and Lex at the same time. They bundled them together in all their promos because they had just bought both IPs to show. Yeah, they're both in the Friday night block at that time. I was so turned off by Lex in general. It just seemed like the gross trashy stepsister of uh Farscape. And boy, I don't know that my opinion has changed much. Uh it's funny we picked this. Well, I picked this because it was one of the shows in my mind that stuck out during that late 90s, early 2000s sci-fi run, which is kind of their pre-Battlestar peak. They're really putting out some interesting things, a lot of bad things, but some stuff that really stuck around in my fandom and in the scope of sci-fi in general. But Lex was one of those that it wasn't that sci-fi Friday block, but also it was particularly put often later as well, kind of shown in that late night time slot, which I guess I caught more often than not. You know, it was the sci-fi brisquet show for dirty teenager boys. That's kind of how I remembered it, but I remembered some other things on the periphery. And when I sat back and re-watched a lot of Lex before this particular episode, my opinion kind of changed in a way. I saw more of the interesting things it was doing. It was less about the GUIs and the gushes than I remembered, but they're definitely there. We can get into some of those like long-term ramifications of how it displayed itself and how sci-fi treated

How Lex Got Funded And Made

5:43

it. Lex was the product of Paul Donovan and his brothers, Psalter Street Films, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Now, Paul had endeavored to create a World War I film with new CGI tech. He wanted like a lot of it to be CGI. He thought that would really work, but that's kind of expensive. And he could not get the funding for that. I think he was to make it, he was gonna need $35 million, and there's no way he or his company were gonna be able to do that. So, as something to do, he created a demo tape. It was called The Dark Zone, and it was a five-minute scene of Stanley Tweedle, just kind of a low-level government grunt, and he's refusing ship docking clearance to somebody. And that was that was it. This is five-minute sci-fi oddity about a ship trying to dock and this dock worker saying, No, do you need proper clearance? Blah blah blah. When broadcasters were shown this, they actually liked it. They thought this had something, and with some of the ideas that Paul had, they displayed interest, and he was given three months and $13 million to make four 90-minute films. To do that, he brought on he brought on Lex Gigarov, which we assume Lex got the name from. Lex was an off and on actor in Halifax. He was interested in doing something a little different and getting some money to do with uh a new sci-fi show. And he also brought on Jeffrey Hirschfield. And Jeffrey was a theater actor who was like in the process of considering giving up the field. The work wasn't coming in and he wasn't really satisfied. But he brought these guys on, no-name guys who didn't really have much history in writing shows, let alone sci-fi shows. But they dove in and went on to make these four films. Now, Salter Street Films was a small company with mild success, Lex being its most profitable and acclaimed product, at least until they helped make Bowling for Columbine years later with Michael Moore. It was co-produced by Time Film und TV Productions, GmbH in Germany. Production began on Lex in 1996, then known as Tales from a Parallel Universe. It was filmed at Salter's Electropolis Studios in Halifax, which I believe was a converted Volvo factory, and also at Babelsburg Studio in Babelsburg, Germany. While later seasons they went on location to different places like Iceland, Thailand, Namibia, New Zealand, parts of the UK, and all over the United States. In 1997, in Canada, it premiered on City TV as four feature-length movies and marketed as event television. It also showed in Germany and other parts of Europe, but in America, it was subsidized and debuted on Showtime, which for the US audience allowed the nudity and adult themes that were present in the first four episodes to be expressed. Now reviews were mixed but generally positive, and a cult following was developed. Due to this, a second season was ordered. The next season and the subsequent two after that were brought to Space Channel in Canada and the Sy-Fi Channel in the US. They converted it from 90-minute film format to 48-minute episodes, the second season running 20 episodes long. Season three was made up of 13 episodes, which was one ongoing long story, less the serialized stuff that happened both in the first, the second, and the fourth season. While the fourth season was with the final season and contained 24 episodes, with the final airing on April 26, 2002. In Germany, it was supposedly embraced as sophisticated entertainment. But when Sy-Fi got its hands on it, it was put in that Friday death slot and pushed to late night as it progressed on. This was harmful for really getting a big audience, but it was also beneficial. A smaller audience, especially one that was up later, was much more willing and was ready to accept its dark themes, its sensual nature, and its merger of high art and low comedy.

Broadcast History And Format Changes

9:58

Now the basic plot of Lex is the misadventures of a cowardly non-hero who is racked with guilt, who's unwilling to engage in adventure and constantly lustful, accompanied by an undead assassin who's completely indifferent, not only to the plot, but to everything. A love-obsessed robot head who hates most things that aren't his beloved, and a converted uh sex slave who is also part lizard and is exploring her new personality and being. And they travel on a living planet-destroying ship. The main characters, again, were Stanley Tweedle, portrayed by Brian Downey, portrayed Stanley in the original demo reel, so it was just a continuation of that. But obviously, when you're jumping from five minutes to 90 minutes and then to four seasons, you kind of gotta expand that and really do something with it. He's cast as a selfish, incompetent, but he had the task of making the cowardly standard uh Stanley sympathetic. He was human weakness personified. He would display that through almost every episode. Zev Bellringer was played originally by Ava Hauberman, who began the role, and then Zenia Seaberg took over the role in season two and onward. We'll get a little more into where her character comes from, but as a character, she needed to be both the object and the subject of desire. And kind of worked. There are times when it worked better than others, but she was both boundary pushing and empowering as an untethered love slave, owning her sexuality and designing to explore it for her own ends, but also often a somewhat untapped and was put in that damsel in distress box in most episodes. But there was at least a kernel of subversive, empowering sexuality. I think the idea of the character was that, whether it was always executed to perfection is definitely up for debate. Michael McNan McManus played Kai, the last of the Brune and G, this defunct and dead race. He is a 2,000-year-old dead assassin with his key tagline saying, I am dead, I do not care, which he often utters throughout the entire series. You kind of needed someone who would be able to bring a depth and resonance to the stillness and lack of affect that that character needed. And honestly, Michael did a fantastic job. He's probably the driver of a lot of people's enjoyment of that show. And his rare moments of emotions felt all the more poignant coming from this uh completely listless and unaffected, dead walking guy. And then one of the writers, Hirschfeld, played 790, who uh was a just a robot head. Think of a robot head with a TV mouth and two TV eyes that did all

The Crew And The Big Bad

12:58

of the emoting and brought any dynamism to that, but it was his voice, his expressive qualities, and really the nature of the character, which was kind of really both repellent but fun. He's extremely acerbic, really doesn't give a shit about anybody or anything except for the person he loves, which for most of the series is Zev. He is infatuated with her and devotes his entire essence. Later on the series, due to circumstances, it switches to Kai. And again, he's willing to sacrifice anyone, everyone, and everything, universe included, for that one person. Now the series sets out the first episode, which is essentially a movie, in the presence of his divine shadow. This is the dark foreboding big baddie of at least the first season, and he is an undying entity in dark robes, and he transfers his consciousness from vessel to vessel. He's the Dark Lord ruler of the League of 20,000 planets. He and his followers dwell on his capital planetoid, the cluster, where people live a monstrous and horrific Brazil-like existence full of bureaucracy and varied body horrors. Stanley Tweedle works as a lowly subject for the government, but is damned when he is a stickler for the rules during routine ship landing and is persecuted by the ship's captain. Some folly ensues, and he ends up getting sentenced to death. Due to that, he escapes, but in this wackiness of escape, he encounters a dying rebel against the Dark Shadow, who transfers his sole pilot abilities of the Lex. And the Lex was the most destructive force in the two universes. Essentially a giant living bug ship that is just designed to destroy planets. Also wrapped up in this escape is Zev. Now she was a prisoner, a bride who, quote, failed to perform her wifely duty, and was sentenced to conversion into a love slave. But in the kerfuffle during the process, meant that she was not fully brainwashed, though her body was transformed into a perfect love specimen, along with some cluster lizard that happened to get caught up in the process. The brainwashing was done not to Zef, but instead to 709, the head of a cyborg robot that was cut off and falls in love with the first being he observes, being Zev. The final member that winds up on the Lex is Kai, like I said, the last of the Brun G, and the prophesied downfall of his divine shadow. Though his divine shadow actually killed him some 2,000 years before, and in a sick twist had turned him into an undead assassin under the influence of his divine shadow. He regains his memories by killing the divine predecessor and touching his brain, transferring some of who he was previously, so now he has agency, and they are set on the path of escape. Throughout the season, they encounter many strange peoples, planets, and informative guest stars. In each of those first four, they have kind of they got a big or big-ish actor at the time to guest star. You have Tim Curry, Rucker Hauer, and Malcolm McDowell. Eventually, his Divine Shadow is killed. That leads to the coming of the Giga Shadow, which then chases them, and in a last ditch effort, they cross over into the dark universe from the light one, where they spend uh a chunk of the second season. In the second season, they kind of run into his Dark Shadow's top bio vizier called Mantrid, which is a floating head on a robotic ruffled neckpiece that you would see, geez, like in 1500s France or Spain. Think of like conquistador or something, you know, wearing that big neck piece. He's a floating head on that, and then his organs are in a uh floating jar with two mechanical arms that are disembodied and do all of his bidding. In that season, the Gigo Shadow is looking for this, and Kai was possessed for a bit, and then all of that is taken to Mantred. Mantrid is given power, he ends up spawning more and more arms into enough arms that throughout the whole second season, Mantred is secretly following Lex and its crew on its adventures, and whenever it goes to a planet after it leaves, Mantred and his arms come and destroy the planet and absorb all of the materials, creating more robot arms. To where at the very end of the season, it is just a bunch of robot arms formed into huge space pyramids and tesseract

Season By Season Story Escalation

17:56

balls. Because of all of the mass of the universe that has been absorbed and turned into robot arms, forms too much mass concentrated and it forms like a singularity which ends up swallowing the entire light universe. And so at the end of the second season, the Lex jumps into the dark universe again because they had come to the light universe, yeah blah blah. There are 20 episodes, so plenty of stuff that happens. But at the end of the second season, they enter into the dark universe again and are searching for food for one because the Lex ship is starving. Now, in the second season, due to I believe it was a scheduling conflict, the original actress Ava Haubermann, who is cast, as was Mantred, due to their connections with the German companies. And she left the show, replaced by Zenia Seaberg, who portrays Zev in a different way. I think there was a finding her way, but like strength and a presence that Ava had that Xenia doesn't, but I think they also develop Zev's character a bit more in the second, third, and fourth seasons, obviously. She owns what that character is about. I don't think her acting is as strong, but a lot of people are on different sides of that particular argument. The Lex fandom, you know, they're Ava fans or Xenia fans. I'm probably more of an Ava fan. I would have liked to see what she could have done with that character longer, but I think Xenia also brings a lot of fun, a little more levity, maybe more things that could have propelled and kept a series going for the time that it needed. In the third season, all 13 episodes of that are one continuous story where they run into this planet called Water and Fire. Now the Lex and its crew have been in priostasis and sleeping for like 4,000 years. So a lot of stuff has changed, but they encounter this planet water and fire. You find out that essentially water and fire are kind of heaven and hell for disembodied spirits that have died, and they wake up on these planets to then live out their afterlife in either a positive or negative environment. Eventually, they are fighting the prince, this devilish character. Later on, you can find that he's death personified. And in the search for another planet to find something to consume on, they see that on the opposite side of this sun that they were closest to is a little blue planet that seems to be mostly water, and that turns out to be Earth, and that all of these souls were coming from both Earth and across the galaxy to these planets. In fact, in season three, you get a lot of the same actors from previous seasons playing similar characters but slightly different. It's kind of a fun way to like reuse some of both those actors and the traits from the characters that they had played. In season four, again, they travel to Earth. They are uh Prince, Death, Devil, whatever you'd like to think of him as. He has also traveled to Earth and he runs the ATF, which is running the American government at the time. They get into lots of zany adventures from challenging this prince character to a game of chess for like the stakes of you know their eternal souls to being uh a fluffer on a porn set. Okay, all kinds of weirdness happened, which often happened on Lex. But there's also these aliens that are invading Earth using carrots, these carrot drones that are consuming the people to taste them. Yada yada yada. At the end, they end up destroying Earth and Lex being an old ship who's gone senile and dies and gives birth to a new ship, the remaining members. Travel off to find a new home to settle down on. Okay. Okay. Oh Kai. Why do you have to die? Ho whoa. Oh whoa, ho. Ten thousand years to go.

Why The Show Ended At Season Four

22:30

And that's how the show ends. So in 2002, at the end of the fourth season, the show came to a conclusion. The reasons for this were creatively that producers decided to end the show at season four to avoid running out of creative steam. They didn't feel like they had much more to say with these characters or the story, and they wanted to end the show on their own terms. I'm sure that was aided by the financing, which was a dwindling to nothingness and was difficult to get more money as they had already expended their budget on location shoots and production. It also didn't help that sci fi channel reportedly showed little interest in bringing it back for fifth season, and that some viewers and critics had felt that the quality of the series had declined. Um, with some even saying that the later seasons became a chore to watch compared to the earlier ones. How about that? On top of all that, the chair on top was the series had seen cast changers early, and there were beginning to be scheduling conflicts going forward. Lex's wider appeal never really materialized, and it never quite caught on. There are a few reasons for this. One uh was the CGI. The CGI on a lot of Lex wasn't very good. No. Most sci-fi today, um Get out of here. You know, at the time was produced with uh a few minutes of special effects. So when they shot Apollo

CGI Ambition And Cheap Execution

24:06

13, you know, a similar time range, about 20% of that space film was CGI. Deep Space Nine only had about five to ten percent of the show's total runtime that was CGI. Yeah, it makes sense. On the first series of Lex, up to 75% of each episode was manipulated, altered, or entirely computer animation. Woof. It's impressive. They wanted to do that much. The computer graphs were created by three organizations: C-O-R-E Core, digital pictures in Toronto, Core in Berlin, and Pixel Motion in Halifax. And Oddity, the chief executive officer of CORE was William Shatner. And that company that company was responsible for creating special effects in films like Johnny Mnemonic and the series Tech War. Whoa, what do you know? So obviously, it relied too much on CG, and it just was not very convincing. It was an over-ambitious show. They were trying to do things that George Lucas was doing around that time in the prequels, but their company wasn't ILM, and this was before Weta. And unlike their similar shows of the Star Trek shows of DS9 and Voyager or Battlestar Galactica, there was less characters on green screen, but more space battles. And so, like the time and effort you can put in each of those shots and how you shoot them, it will make the CGI look different and look a lot better. But whenever you put live action people on a green screen, especially at that time with a limited budget, and let's be honest, not top line companies, it's gonna look a little cheap. And I think a lot of people saw that and did not go for it. I sure didn't. When I was watching it even earlier today, I was like, wow, okay. Even from scene one, I'm like, okay, so the lead singer of Dead or Alive is in a giant bug. I don't know why this didn't catch on. Uh boy, it's uh it's rough, man. Not as rough as some. They're way worse, trust me. I mean, I think especially what sci-fi would do later on in this decade and the decade after this of their low budget made-for-TV movies, those are excruciating. Boy. This wasn't always that bad, but the sheer amount that they were always using and the way that they put it into the filming and the direction that they often did was not highlighting the CGI in a in a good way. It also didn't help that the direction in general was pretty lifeless a lot of times and just not quite right. Many of the episodes, especially some of those early episodes, the pacing was off, and a lot of the episodes felt just overly long. When they truncated into the second seasons and beyond, when they weren't 90 minutes, just 48 minutes, that helped. Even some of those later episodes, there's a lot of padding and just the writing and the drama that's going on. Doesn't have the legs to sustain it, especially through 24 episodes, whatnot. I think some of the production design was interesting. They didn't have a ton of money, but Donovan wanted something that wasn't sleek and futuristic looking. He wanted to be gross and and fleshy and organic, you know, very like like you're driving a Cronenberg ship. Yeah, I was thinking that okay. Cronenberg did come up in my mind for sure. It felt like a cheap, low budget Peter Jackson type production. Yeah. Early Peter Jackson. You're You're Dead Alive or Meet the Feebles, which I think probably both maybe come off a bit better than a lot of what Lex has. I mean, there are plenty of cool Lex things. I think there's a lot of cool designs. They're moth ships. I think a lot of when they come to different planets, you're finding a lot of the ideas and designs of what Lex was doing really fascinating and avant garde compared to Voyager at the time. Yeah, which was kind of the most bland of all Star Trek at that point. Right. They were going for things, they were taking swings. When you take swings, I think as we talked about in our episode on cult films, a certain audience will appreciate you taking swings that don't quite connect. They will give you credit for trying to step outside of a box, trying not to be bland or normal. And there's a lot of things you can say about Lex, but there sure are. Being like everything else is certainly not one. I think one thing that definitely

Sex Sleaze And Missed Subversion

28:42

kept you away, and probably a lot of audiences, is that Lex was a bit exploitative and sleazy in a lot of ways. It often used those things for pandering desire, but I think it also embraced its adult takes on sexuality. It gave sex in the show often a naturalness and a prevalence for driving characters and themes, not just for hokey titillation for angsty teens and reclusive nerds, but when that is shown to a larger audience and they maybe don't get the totality or multiple episodes or seeing how sex is weaved into the arcs of all these characters, not just for showing some bare breast or you know, gratuitous innuendo or oddly gross fleshy extremities without the ship or the characters. It just doesn't play as well and it feels a bit adolescent and unrefined. I think the idea for what they want to do with Lex, and especially with Zeb's character, taking this love slave and breaking out of that mold. She's not tied to that. She's hyper sexual, but she wants it for herself, not just to please. They could have really explored that better and really made her kind of a an icon for like the sci-fi genre and for sci-fi fans, especially female fans, utilizing it to like turn the male gaze around and do something with that. There are episodes and times when I think that works, but most of the time it feels much more like titillation for titillation's sake. Yeah, I agree. I remember I was genuinely trying to give it a shot while I was watching it. Yes, I was turned off initially just by even the promos when they would put it out. And I think part of that is because at that time it was paired with their other the sci-fi channel's other recent acquisition, Farscape. And so they'd have promos would be like back to back, here's Farscape and here's Lex. Like they were comparing the two? Like they were supposed to be sort of like two P's in a pod. In a lot of ways they are. Yes, but also not quite. No. One is definitely comes across as the sleazy, kind of grosser version, which it is. I've now completely solidified having watched it. Not to say they're dissimilar, but it's a little uh I know it is sort of a comedy, but it came across more as a parody than it did anything else, I think, a lot of the time. Which is why just based on the promos it didn't appeal to me. I totally want to give it a chance, but even giving it a chance, it just felt sleazy and I don't know. It felt like a directive video poor man's George Miller project. If you had told me this was an Australian production or a New Zealand production in the 90s, I would have totally believed it. It would have made sense to me. But shockingly was Canadian. I guess that is why it stands alone. It is its own thing, for sure. Yeah, it did it did grab a certain audience. And again, there's like still a Lex fandom today. People are still finding it and loving it. When I watched it originally, you know, I was kind of like, oh, you know, sexy late night uh sci-fi, which I think is kind of what a lot of people saw it as. I didn't see enough episodes, I think. Also, it it's it's odd. I watched the stuff that was on Showtime and some later episodes, and there's plenty of nudity, way more than I remembered throughout the series. It's a lot of innuendo and like skimpy outfits, and the characters are constantly talking about sex. Stanley is obsessed with sex. The robot head only wants to have sex with Zev, and Zev is a love slave, so she's like designed to be hypersexual, but she's also a virgin, and so there's like this push-pool there. But I it takes for me, I didn't quite get the show as much when it originally was on. It was this right re-watching and watching more and more of it to get prepared for this episode. Probably overkilled what I normally do for a lot of these episodes. We do plenty of research, do lots of reading, listen to stuff, watch videos of things, but rarely do I have enough time to see as many episodes of a show, especially when a show's like 50, 60, 70, 80 episodes. You just don't have time to watch that. Yeah. But I I watched a good,

Character Depth Stanley’s Guilt Arc

33:06

not quite half of all of Lex, but you know, approaching that, approaching 40% of the totality of Lex. And it was through that the more time I spent with, the more appreciation I had for it. Some of the recurring characters, some of the themes. Zev was this woman raised in an her parents give her away to this orphanage, is run by AI overlords that keep her in a box, and the whole sole purpose is to like turn her into a good wife, but she's not given any human contact. She is overweight, she's a larger woman, and when she is given to this teenage boy who finds her repulsive at the altar, you know, she punches him for being a piece of shit. And that's when she is arrested and taken to be remanufactured as this horrific life as just a sexual plaything for the the wealthy and powerful. All of these elements that take many episodes and lots of watching to kind of get deeper into the backstory of things really give it these instances more depth. It would have been a little more helpful if they gave a little more up front, I think. You know, especially someone like Stanley, who is really a fairly annoying character. He bumbles into being the captain of the ship, he doesn't care about helping anybody, he's only out for himself, he's a coward all the time, he makes the wrong decision, a fairly unlikable character. It's unique that you get a coward who's one of your main protagonists, which is a nice play on things, but him being like a snivelly, wantonly sexual, he just wants to have sex with Zev for most of the series to the point where she says no and just like give up, stop beating this dead horse because it makes you gross and it's hard to cheer for you. But again, later in the series, you find out he's put on trial in one of the better episodes of the series for the deaths of a hundred planets. He was this rebel pilot. He was a low level, but he was like a courier, and he had information on where these planets were. He gets betrayed when he goes to this space whorehouse planet, and the divine shadow and his forces follow him back. He leads the divine shadow to wiping out, genociding billions of people. And he's the most wanted and hated man in the universe. And he carries all this guilt around with him. Being that snivelly, cowardly character, he never wants to inwardly look and say, you know, I was responsible for this, I should be dead. How do I continue on? And he has this moment where he has to decide whether he's going to allow the Divine Shadow to do that or to die, to kill himself. And he chooses to live, but in doing so, damns all these other people to death. And he has all of that weighing on him as a character. And when you see that and you see him rebelling against being a hero, trying to do the right thing, and kind of only looking out for himself, and he wants to run away from any other decisions that might put him at risk of such pain and anguish again. Kind of gives him more depth. Uh, it also makes him a little more interesting of a character because he's distinctly anti-heroic, and when he does have those heroic moments, they kind of flare up like sunspots. But you also need to stick with the show for much longer to get those moments, and your general audience isn't gonna see that. He's just gonna see him constantly wanting to bang his co-worker who doesn't want to sleep with him, which is that's a turn off to someone flipping the channels, you know. Yeah. Boy. There is one thing that Lex did that was ahead of its time, other than using a lot of CGI, which was not good, or having a living ship and there's the misfits, and having a coward, a rebellious sex slave, a love-obsessed robot head, and a powerful assassin who's undead and doesn't give a shit about anybody or anything, which are all kind of like misfits,

Brigadoom The Musical Episode Surprise

37:10

you could say, of science. Misfits of space science. In the second season, they had an episode called Brigadoom. Oh, interesting. It's kind of a key episode and a musical episode. Uh, here we go. This is kind of unique because this was a I mean, when you think of musical episodes, obviously you think of the cop show that was just musical. Cop rock. I mean, we all think about that, obviously. I used to have a cop rock poster. Well, you are sick. You're truly sick and mental. It was given to me. I have to say, though, the song Bigger is Better Underneath the Sweater, when talking about uh inherent sexism in police culture uh was poignant. I'll give that. Uh don't act like I didn't go back and revisit Cop Rock. And I guess at some point we'll have to do a cop episode. It's such a unique Actually, that's totally up our alley. It really is. But generally when people think of sci-fi fantasy musical things, you probably think of that Buffy episode. Yep, of course. Lex did it years before that, and uh pretty good episode, honestly. They visit this strange planetoid where there are theater actors on this little stage, and they appear as the Brun and G, which is Kai's lost race that was wiped out thousands of years ago, and they tell his story. They sing, they ended up using Teutonic folk songs as the basis for a lot of the music in that episode. And they told the story of the Brun and G and of Kai, which was an interesting way to like get that backstory because the character Kai he doesn't talk about. I mean, he has no feelings, but he doesn't talk about his past much. You don't get to see any flashbacks, so this is kind of an interesting way to explain the character, who he was, and why he was doing what he did, but in a musical format with song and dance, and you also find out that these theater actors are like beings outside of time and space that just travel to interesting parts of space to put on productions with interesting people in the universe and the totality of history. So, because of what Kai was for his interaction with the Divine Shadow, and at this point, they are trying to escape the end of the universe and then travel to the center to kind of get away from Mantred. It's just like a weird, interesting concept. Beings are outside of time and space that just go to express key moments of history. It's kind of like if Doctor Who just traveled to big parts of universe's history to interact with those interesting people, but in a musical format where those people that are part of it interact and get wrapped up in the performance. Kind of like the uh musical Assassins, if you've ever heard of that. The musical Assassins? Oh yeah, you do not know about this? No. It's a musical that profiles famous assassins throughout history. That's interesting. It is bizarre. It's actually pretty modern. I mean, John Hinckley Jr. is one of the main characters. It is sort of in that vein. It's that is interesting. So you're saying they traveled to a strange new world and had a musical episode that wasn't that bad. Weird. Just as they say in the show, the great prophet. You know, they said this is part of the future past, this has happened before, it will happen again. Oh boy. In Battlestar, that was a little more being self-aware of being a remake. Well, I I think in that, and it was also kind of the cyclical nature of things. Of course, yes. And that's kind of like personified throughout this show. The show is it's all about the fights between good and evil and often how futile they are. That is always this ever-repeating cycle of life and death and rebirth, which is part of the philosophical complexity that this show brought. Complexity with two X's. Nice. Someone's getting lexi over there. Not from this show. It had those dark elements, and it wasn't a safe show. I will give it that. Yeah. It wasn't sleek, it was trying to do very much

Cult Fandom Kink And Where It Landed

41:16

its own thing. Compared to, you know, the Star Trek's and the Babylon 5s and uh some of the other space shows, especially about that time. It was singular and different. It definitely had those elements that made it an interesting view. And it was an interesting thing to go back and experience. You know, I would say I generally enjoyed myself. Sometimes it got a little monotonous. Not every episode was good, and some of them were overly long. But I think the more time you devoted to it, the more it paid off, at least for me. But you said on this rewatch it didn't rekindle anything for you. Uh it's kind of essentially exactly what I remember. It's it's kind of dirty, a little scummy, which I think is partially a product of its time and place, the way that all productions work. I literally watched that and then I watched Tech War, and I'm like, wow, these are basically lit the same way, shot the same way, like same lighting, horrible Canadian production, you know, the like mantis. It also reminded me of things that were that we had a one-off pilot and then failed, that kind of thing. It felt grimy in a weird way. It felt grotesque and grimy in a way. Didn't grab me, but I'm I'm definitely willing to give it a chance, and definitely was all the impressions that I got just from the promos of it, that it was a little skeezy. It was a little gross. As for the tech war thing, so uh tech war was produced by Atlantis Entertainment, which I believe also ended up buying Psalter production company that made Lex, so they ended up being owned by the same production companies. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I don't think you're wrong, and I think that's a lot of the reason that it didn't find a larger audience. I don't think the ratings were ever great for Lex, and I think that also helped Sci-Fi to install it in a later time slot and give it some of that after hours feel, which I mean you know, it kind of deserves in a lot of ways. Oh yeah, I don't know where you can watch it where you could actually see the nude scenes. Uh when I watched it earlier, they were all cut out. So on Prime, they still show all the nude stuff. All right. I thought it was mostly just in the first season, one of the first episodes, Zev is naked, the Ava Hoberman actress. It ended up she didn't feel comfortable with that, so they didn't really have anybody. Yeah, they asked one of the people working on the set if they would be comfortable uh doing the shower scenes and stuff, and she was. Yeah. And then later on, I guess she ended up feeling more comfortable and showed more of her body throughout the series. And I guess some production guy came up to her and was like, Oh, you look better than your body double. You know, you look really good for showing off. And she said that nowadays that probably. Would get somebody canceled and fired off of the set. 100% and should. That's that is gross. Don't do that to somebody. She said all. She said at the time she she felt good about that and it gave her more confidence to later be naked in later productions that she did. Just a kind of a nod thing. But they there's much more nudity later on in the show. In the third season, they go to a in fact, they often go to places that are just sex. In the second season, they go to a planet that is just a space whorehouse. They spent a couple episodes there. Good stuff. In the third season, they go to a planet that is on part of the water planet, they have all of these different cities. Like there's Game Town where they play basketball. And Boomtown, that is where everybody just has sex constantly. It's just constant sex. And I think there's five or six women who are topless in that episode. I was kind of surprised to see that because you're gonna have to cut that out when it's on sci-fi channel. So I don't know if they even like which they do. Yeah. So it's like, well, there's a lot of parts to cut out or block over for some like integral scenes. But that was the nature of the show, you know. It wanted to do its own thing for better or for worse. I also think it is indicative the time for the sci-fi channel. They're moving from doing reruns of things, they were exploring, picking up shows that had a small audience or were just kind of starting and giving them money and really highlighting them as something new and different for science fiction and for the sci-fi channel. I think Farscape is an example of that, but also was Lex and some are the cream of the crop and rise to the top. I think Farscape is considered one of those pillars of alternative 90s, 2000s, 2010s science fiction. Well, Lex did similar things. Definitely that. There are Lex conventions, there are podcasts just devoted to Lex. And I think there's a lot of fake fun and and interesting stuff that happens in Lex. I think there's a lot that I would say check out. You know, at least take a look at a trailer or you know, an intro to a season, and you get an idea for what like what the ship looks like, what Kai, which we didn't even like describe, you know, he's in this black Leotard outfit. He has a wrist weapon that also serves as a grappling hook. It has like this ridiculous hawk noise whenever it shoots. When the first time I saw it was like this is stupid, but by the seventh time I saw it, it's like it was really endearing, and I really liked it. And he has this white face paint, this little tattoo of like a line and a dot, and this like pompadour with a single string of hair that hangs down. I mean, it's it's a very unique design. Yes, the pad one braid. Yes. I but you know, it's kind of dumb, but it it is unique and kind of fascinating. Yeah. Well, a few notes on the just on the cursory rewatch I did. Uh the first episode does feature Brian Bostwick, who of course is from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He probably Brad in the in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Yes. He has one of those braids. And I remember watching it and being like, oh, I didn't know he was in this. Like he's been in a ton of stuff. He's in like the Michael J. Fox vehicle, Spin City. Today he looks like Scott Bessant, the uh current treasury secretary, and much to his detriment, unfortunately. And I'm thinking, like, oh, okay, I I sure, yeah, let's go with it. Only in one episode. Yeah. And I was sorely disappointed by that. At least I recognized him, you know. But everybody else has this weird grotesqueness to them. Nobody's conventionally even normal looking. It's almost like a Cohen Brothers type thing, even though there is this sexual energy that goes throughout it, but there are there are no regular looking people. Like even the sex symbols are kind of strange and grotesque. Really? I mean like what the the Zev actresses? Is that yeah, yes. I uh find her very odd. Uh yes. You're talking about the both of them? Well, at the at least the first one. Yeah, the first one, she's kind of small and German and has like this blue hair. But um more to the point, you were correct in the idea that this has a very niche following and fandom. And inevitably, those fandoms, I think, either come from or lean into a sexual undertone. There's always some sort of kink involved, I think, with it. I don't want to say fetish, but there's definitely a kink that I think people gravitate toward, the extent to which there is a porn star. Yes. Named Zev Bellringer. Uh yeah. I didn't know if you were aware of this. Uh very niche, often what they call taboo genre. You know, it's got a slant to it. A different actor that she often uses in her videos goes by Princess Leia, which I think is funny.

Legacy Of Sci Fi Channel And Farewell

49:41

She found a very specific audience. I have definitely seen a lot of Zev and Miss Miss Leia, as it were. Many of us have. It is funny to think about that she just straight up took the name. I mean, it is homage, but it she's not being subtle about it. That audience, when they search online, they're gonna find her. And then like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know who I know who's looking for this. They're into like kinky sci-fi geeky stuff. Yeah. Right. It's kind of brilliant, and actually probably gives Lex a little more life than it may not have had. I don't know. Granted, I haven't really dug down into Lex as much. So I I won't pretend to give any sort of final conclusion about it. They have a rapid fandom, so who am I to judge? I mean, you know, you shouldn't have to watch it's like when people said, like, oh, watch Buffy. Just get past the first two or three seasons and then it gets good. And it's like, I shouldn't have to watch that much of something. I shouldn't have to do that. No, it's either I like it, it's for me, or I don't think it works, or I don't like it. And granted, if somebody wants to show me a good episode or something, fine, I've been there. I've had to explain people don't like, oh, I love Star Trek and I love TNG, but I I couldn't get into DS9. I'm like, oh hold on a second, you know, and then I'll show them like, you know, the visitor, and then they're like, oh shit, I didn't know it was like this. And I'm like, yeah, I know exactly, right? I I get that. If somebody would show me a lex an episode of Lex that's good, I'll watch it. Yeah, I'll be down and I'll give it a second chance. Just even in my brief rewatch. I I was open-minded and was like willing to see it aesthetically, it's exactly what I thought it was gonna be. And I don't know if I want to watch a whole lot of it, but maybe it'll pull me in with the narrative. I I don't know. I'll I'm willing to try. You and I are both picky, but also extremely open-minded at the same time. And so I'm reminded of a quote that you said to me about 20 years ago when we were talking about something. I mean, it was either a TV show or a movie or something. I was trying to explain it to you why like it might have merit based on its premise and everything. Uh you said, yes, I am picky. I don't like things that suck. Wow, I'm an asshole. There's a space for that. We can watch these things and understand that there are fandoms for these things. They're not always good. Now, sometimes we underestimate them, or we overlook them, or we really never give it a shot. But also at the same time, sometimes things just do suck. And sometimes, you know, people's taste level is not quite what we would hope. But I don't think Lex necessarily fits into that category. I think Lex actually does have a legitimate audience and it appeals to a very specific audience that I think has purchased. I would rather watch Farscape, even still. Yeah. I like Farscape better. Farscape is a superior show. Yeah. And unfortunately, we only the only reason we compare it to Farscape is because they pretty much in America premiered at the same time on the sci-fi channel. They were paired together, sort of back to back. So you're automatically setting one up to be compared to the other, and that's not fair. They're not even close to the same kind of show. Well, I mean, they're doing some similar things and some uh visual elements, I think the scruffiness of some of the production, you know. They're both kind of underdogs, you know similar plot devices, you know, there's a lot of similar elements, but I think one is distinctly better, and I think time and and fandom and has bore that out. You know, one is much more of a cult hit, and it's gonna be uh more on the fringes, and nothing's wrong with that. I think there's a lot of reasons that Doctor Who isn't for everybody, Red Dwarf isn't for everybody. They just kind of have the same kind of cult following. Well, no, not the same kind, but a similar volume of cult following. A similar energy and more the the humor. Lex is uh dirtier, sexier, more into fun vibes than maybe overall quality. Oh yeah. I like Lex. I think there's some good stuff there, but I also see that it rarely quite does what it intends to do. It's kind of like absurdist, a little grotesque, sexually charged, subversive, yet it's just this slowly Canadian thing. It's an oddity out of Canada that somehow found some purchase and now has established a fan base. You know, God love him. Good on you. I'm not gonna yuck your yum. Yeah. In fact, I don't hate it. It's just I'm probably gonna re-watch DS9 or something instead. Or Farscape, that's fine. Not to say that it isn't valid, and I think it is valid. Um and I'm I'm glad that it still has life with its uh rabid fan base. And uh unfortunately, sci-fi channel doesn't show this kind of stuff anymore. You can only basically find it on niche things and on YouTube. You know, um sci-fi channel uh as part of our premise of this series, uh not living up to its potential. Uh not doing what it intended to do from the beginning. Yeah. Which is a shame. But at this time, you know, it it it was giving a vehicle and a voice to people searching for for new sci-fi properties and new sci-fi stories, and Lex was definitely one of those. You know, it it lives on in the heart of its dedicated fan base, and it's it's a unique show that uh I think is worth checking out. Again, it's not going to be for everybody, but I'm glad that sci-fi uh you know was available to to put it there. And you know, it it it stands uh at a place in its time and was doing certain things. Some of them worked, some of them definitely didn't. We didn't even talk about the fact that it had a huge life on the British Sci-Fi channel, which is a whole different bag of badgers. I mean that's like yeah, that's that I don't I just don't I don't have the knowledge uh you know for that. So I'm kind of taking it from uh an American perspective in a lot of ways. I have that point of reference. Well, I know I know for a fact that what happened in Germany or Canada or or England, it's it's harder to for me to specifically the third season of Lex premiered on the British Sci-Fi Channel on February 6, 2000. So that was like that was like its main audience because it really didn't work here in the US or really in Canada, but for some reason the British sci-fi channel was like, let's do it. So in in many ways, the British Sci-Fi Channel was doing what the American Sci-Fi Channel didn't around that time. It showed here as well. It showed here, but it premiered, it was like a big like tent pole for the British sci-fi channel, and here it was kind of an also ran. It's weird that it at different times it was thought of differently in different countries. True, you know, with Canada like seven o'clock time slot, big event TV, similar in Germany, then it gets a different audience, different growth at different places, and that that's always a fascinating journey for any show or movie. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's uh and like a fascinating property. Sure is. It's interesting sci-fi had it, sci-fi showed it, and it giving a different sci-fi voice, and that's what we're trying to highlight here: the evolution, the growth, and the unique properties that sci-fi gave a voice to. We will provide more of those in the continuing series. What's that line from Superman Returns? Wow, Lex, that's really something. That's kind of how I feel about Lex. It's like, wow, Lex, that's really something. It is what it is. You're not wrong. You like shows that don't suck. So that's and we hope that you think this show doesn't suck, because we're happy to do it for you. And if you are happy to listen to it, please come back to previous episodes. Uh, check out the next episode in our ongoing sci-w series, um, where we are covering different properties and the history of the sci-fi channel, along with what we'll do after that and what we've done in the past. If you wouldn't mind like, sharing, subscribing, please recommend it to any friends, family, veterans, dogs, aliens, anthropomorphic bugs, uh whoever might enjoy the show, we wouldn't mind them checking it out. If you wouldn't mind giving this episode and this podcast, Five Love Slaves, on the podcast app of your choice, finally. We would greatly appreciate it. Again, we're happy to do it. We love you all. Anybody who is stuck around and listened to us, it really means a lot. But until you die by the hands of a great dark overlord and become an undead assassin doing his willing bidding for the next two thousand years, a skip, what should they do? It's an inevitable conclusion. Well, until that point, they should probably pay their taps, pay their bartenders, their DJs, their KJs, make sure that they have cleaned up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree, and make sure they have supported their local comic shops and retailers. That having been said, Jake and I would both like to say, on behalf of Dispatch Ajax remember, no matter where you go, there you are. Please go away.