Lexx is available on DVD. That’s right, people, it’s official, the end is nigh. Lexx is on DVD and the world is clearly in major trouble. You know what else? Lexx had four seasons. Four! How is that for a chilling statistic? Firefly got less than one season, Sarah Connor got two, the original Star Trek was lucky to get three and fricking Lexx got four fricking seasons!

There is just something so very wrong about that. Is there truly no justice to be had in the universe?

But allow me to back up. Perhaps you are as yet unaware of the horror, the terror, the unbearable suckitude of what is surely the nadir of not only genre television, but all television everywhere. Maybe you – lucky, lucky you – have never even heard of this execrable piece of nonsensical sci-fi fantasy afflicted upon us by a joint coalition of Canadians, Germans and Britons who clearly hated humanity and wanted us all to suffer. If so, I can only beg you to take heed of the following warning against ever saying to yourself, when stumbling across Lexx at your local Blockbuster or encountering it as a suggestion on Netflix: “Huh, a sci-fi show I haven’t seen… I really should give that a try.”

‘Cause, ah, no. No. You. Should. Not.

The “action”, for want of a better word, takes place aboard the living ship Lexx, which plays host to a group of assorted aliens who spend their days either being nasty, being stupid, or indulging their various perversions. Lexx, incidentally, is shaped like nothing so much as a giant, space-going phallus, and frequent puns regarding this abound.

So cheap. So lame.

Speaking of cheap (and lame), the sets on Lexx make old school Doctor Who look like Pandora, the CGI is about on a par with that of Plan 9 From Outer Space and the actors – for want of a better word – are, to a one, a group of hacks and scenery-chewing disasters who were probably deemed too egregiously untalented to make it in porn.

The worst of them, without question – though believe me, the competition is fierce – would have to be Louise Wischermann as Lyekka, a man-eating plant woman who clearly attended the Rita Repulsa school of villainous acting and who is attractive but not even attractive enough to be Stand There and Look Pretty. She’s just kind of Stand There and Look Vacuous. And For God’s Sake, Shut Up.

The plots were similarly repellent, relying on shock – and schlock – value and blithely ripping off every established science fiction trope ever used anywhere in the field. I mean, there is paying homage, there is being inspired by, there is being derivative, there is plagiarism, and then there is Lexx.

Why, then, did I continue to watch this show? I wish I could tell you. Certainly, it wasn’t appointment television; at least, not after the first two of the television movies that make up half of the first season. Indeed, rarely did I know when it was going to be shown, or even which network carried it, and I definitely never deliberately sat down and thought to myself: “oh, I know! I’ll watch me some Lexx today!” I have never been that close to the edge. But every now and then, flicking channels or waiting for something else to come on (this was back in the days before DVRs; yes, kids, there was a time when sometimes there was simply NOTHING available that you actually wanted to watch), I’d catch a snippet of an episode, or even a full one, and when I would come to the end of it I would feel sullied and saddened and more than a little weirded out.

I understand that the version shown on the US Sci-Fi Channel was severely edited from it's Canadian/European original, but watching in Australia I got the full, psychosexually-charged, PG-defying content. That is not, I hasten to assure you, a good thing, and not because I am, in any way, a prude. But, good God! Any creepier and it would have been hentai.

So, yeah. Worst. Show. Ever. And it’s not even bad in a good, fun way: it’s just completely, utterly horrid. I still can’t believe there are 61 episodes of Lexx. Still can’t believe they are available on DVD. Still can’t believe I  watched this garbage more than once.

Life really can be very depressing, can’t it?
 
   -- Rachel Hyland