History Series / Lexx

The show takes UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud's axiom that the sex drive and the death drive are the two main forces controlling human nature: Stanley Tweedle, security guard (Level 4, the lowest), Zev Bellringer of 3BK, a woman who was forcibly converted into a love slave for failing to perform her wifely duties (she's got the looks and the libido, but none of the mental imprinting), Kai, an undead assassin, and 790, a robot head (that got the mental conditioning intended for Zev) zoom around the galaxy looking to get laid. They never learn lessons and blow up every planet they visit. Rinse and repeat. Take the fatalism of Wagnerian opera, the budget of a Sega CD game, and the logic (and sometimes acting) of softcore porn, and that's ''Lexx''.

* ShesGotLegs: Most of the female characters, and some of the male, wear very short and/or tight costumes.

** "Apocalexx Now" is a parody of
''Film/ApocalypseNow''

** Theatre/{{Brigadoo|n}}

* AlienLunch: Inverted. The Lexx's food ''looks'' disgusting to visitors ("Lyekka"; "Wake the Dead"), but apparently it tastes okay.

** In fact [[spoiler: Every character in the show dies at least once.]].

* TheHeart: Zev|Xev.

* MusicalEpisode: "Brigadoom".

* {{Psychopomp}}: [[spoiler: Prince]] turns out to be one of these all along in addition to being the Lexxverse's version of [[spoiler: Satan]].

* ReversePolarity: In "Norb," the Lexx becomes infested with Mantrid drones, and the only way the crew can think of to get rid of them is by reversing the its polarity; because the drones' electronics are more delicate than the ship's, the reversal will destroy them, but only sting the Lexx.

* {{Rewrite}}: In the end of the first season [[spoiler: the entire League of 20,000 Planets is stripped of life as part of the Gigashadow's long-panned resurrection, and the heroes happened to return there as a complete coincidence and only arrive after it's been delayed by rebel clerics. The Gigashadow shrugs off the Lexx's attacks and is only defeated because Kai's pet cluster lizard found and ate it's brain. As of season two it's been changed to the crew awakening it prematurely and the Lexx killing it and they visit several former League worlds during the season.]]

* SlasherSmile: Kai sports one when he temporarily goes crazy in "Wake the Dead," and again while under orders from [[spoiler: Brizon]] to smile.

* StrawFeminist: The Wozzard of Woz is a rare male example of this

* SynchronousEpisodes: ''The Web'' & ''The Net''.

* TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat: The Time Prophet relays a message to Stanley Tweedle through a dead miner who had his memory preserved. The tape goes so far as to know that he will forget one of the digits and when he goes back, she yells it at him

* TheVirus: Mantrid's drones.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Stan and Xev, eventually.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: The primary form of locomotion for a Cluster Lizard is curling into a circle ouroboros-style and rolling around. As part-Cluster Lizard, Xev also does this on occasion. The baby Cluster Lizard, Squish, also did it once.

-->'''Kai''': I've killed mothers with their babies. I've killed great philosophers, proud young warriors, and revolutionaries. I've killed the evil, the good, the intelligent, the weak, and the beautiful. I have done this in the service of His Divine Shadow and his predecessors, and I have never ''once'' shown any ''mercy''.

-->'''Kai''': The dead do not poo.

* BigBadWannabe: Brizon.

--> "I remember, I used to like fishing."

** In "Mort," the mortician has been doing Frankenstein-esque experiments attempting to bring back his sweetheart. Thanks to Kai's protoblood he succeeds, but judging by her [[The{{Soulless}}]] attitude the process was glitchy. As she strangles him to death, she gasps "I kill you on the name of His Divine Shadow!"

* ChessWithDeath: Prince & Kai.

* CityPlanet: The Cluster.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Field Commander Moss.

* CoolStarship: The Lexx.

* CounterEarth: Fire and Water.

--> '''Kai:''' If a Divine Assassin is Death Incarnate, the Divine Executioner is the Apocalypse Made Flesh.

* DeadpanSnarker: 790. Kai also has his moments.

* DirtyCoward: Stanley, [[CowardlyLion for the most part]].

** President Priest tends to inflict this with nukes. He demolishes all of Newfoundland because one man who lives there played a [[BedTrick Bed Trick]] on Bunny.

* EarthShatteringKaboom: Literally.
** Multiple times for other planets.

* EverythingsDeaderWithZombies: "Twilight".

* GeniusCripple: Dr. Longbore.

* GrandFinale: The episode "Yo Way Yo".

* HotConsort: First Lady Bunny.

* IWantSong: Kai's first song in "Brigadoom".

* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: Earth.

* {{Jerkass}}: 790.

* LastEpisodeThemeReprise: The biggest and baddest rendition yet of "Yo Way Yo," it comes complete with an [[EtherealChoir Ethereal Choir]] joining in, as [[spoiler: the Lexx disintegrates, Prince restores Kai's life, and the remaining crew makes its [[LastStand Last Stand]]]]. The episode's even named for the song.

* LimitedWardrobe: All the main characters.

* MileLongShip: Lexx.

* NoBiologicalSex: Lyekka's race.

** The [[OnlySaneMan only sane woman]] among the [[SpaceTrucker Space Truckers]] transporting "class-13" hazmat in "Love Grows" ''tries'' to enforce compliance by threatening to report her coworkers, but it turns out that the regulators are in on their cost-cutting shenanigans. The crew winds up infected with a virus that swaps everyone's sex.

* OrificeInvasion: By ''bad carrots.''

* PhysicalHeaven[=/=]PhysicalHell: Water and Fire, respectively.

* PlatonicProstitution: In the episode "Luvliner," the crew travel to a brothel [[RecycledInSPACE IN SPACE]], where Xev meets a male prostitute who falls in LoveAtFirstSight with her, and refuses to have sex with her because "[her] first time should be special."
* PleasurePlanet: Stan is constantly looking for, and failing to find, these.

* PsychoLesbian: Lomea.

* ReducedToRatburgers: Mantrid chows down on a [[CreepyCockroach Creepy Cockroach]] while on the planet Fire. Zev also tries to eat a roach in season 1, but it's likely that she does so more to unnerve Stan than out of hunger.

* {{Retool}}: Two. The first two seasons are a picaresque WagonTrainToTheStars travelogue about wandering through a weird, wild universe of lust and death. Then, season three retools the show into a largely stationary PlanetaryRomance about a binary system [[spoiler: that's the show's equivalent of heaven and hell]] and emphasizes the morality play melodrama over the sci-fi oddity. Then, season four retools the show '''again''' to become a skewed, satirical take on modern day Earth and its foibles. While it certainly keeps the show fresh, the three "phases" are vastly different to one another and oftentimes don't even feel like the same series. Not to mention the titular spaceship is [[spoiler: basically [[{{Nerf}} nerfed]] at the beginning of season three and remains largely immobile and irrelevant until just before the GrandFinale.]]

** In "K-Town," a diagnostic reveals that Kai's decreased mobility results from polarity problems caused by falling from outer space onto the surface of Water. To get better, he needs to make another long fall and land on his other side. Possibly a case of [[ContinuityDrift Continuity Drift]], given that he appeared to be in no danger from the Lexx's repolarization back in "Norb."

* SexualEuphemism: About once a season, Stan will utterly confuse someone with his metaphors for sex, usually while trying to either seduce them or get directions to a [[PleasurePlanet Pleasure Planet]].

* ShinyNewAustralia: Newfoundland.

* ShowWithinAShow: "Lafftrack", "Xevivor".
* SingleBiomePlanet: Fire and Water.

* SlutShaming: Occasionally happens to Zev, although the characters who do it tend to be [[JerkAss Jerk Asses]] and/or villains. Most cultures, excepting those of Fire and Water, demonstrate this when the topic of sex is brought up: The landlord from one of "Lafftrack"'s shows within a show calls his female tenants "sluts," 790 (programmed for the Divine Order) insults Xev and Bunny this way, and Pa Gollean proves downright abusive when he finds Sissy in bed with Stan.
* SmugSnake: Brizon.

* SongOfCourage: According to Kai, the Brunnen-G always sang "Yo Way Yo" when they went into battle expecting to die. Xev and Stan [[MusicForCourage join Kai in singing it]] during [[spoiler:his [[HeroicSacrifice Heroic Sacrifice]] in the finale]].

* StarfishAliens: The Insects (including the [[spoiler: Gigashadow]]), the Satellite Worms, the Web that captures Lexx in Season 2, Lyekka's plant species... basically, if it wasn't a [[HumanAliens Human Alien]], it was one of these. The only possible exception might be a blue-skinned humanoid visible behind Xev in "I Worship His Shadow."

** More upright variants, but the doctors from "Terminal" lock Kai in a tank to study him, Poet Man locks Stan into something resembling a dentist's chair for purposes of insemination, and a ''very'' {{MadDoctor}} straps Stan to a board to cut off his "dirty parts" in "Tunnels."

* WholePlotReference: ''Woz'' is ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' InSpace and [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs on drugs.]] ''A Midsummer's Nightmare'' is Shakespeare not in space, but on ''more'' drugs.

* MainliningTheMonster: Kai was animated by "protoblood", a secretion from the last of the Insects. Re-animated assassins like him were part of how His Divine Shadow maintained his tyrannical grip on power.

** 790 has been obsessive and callous since the first episode, but several brain injuries, a few thousand years powered down, a couple of reassemblies, and an unknown amount of time spent alone on the Lexx start catching up with him big time in season 3. By season 4, he's moved from mocking and inconveniencing semi-plausible romantic/sexual rivals to aiding assassins' efforts to kill them. [[spoiler: Taken [[UpToEleven Up to Eleven]] in the series finale, when he has the Lexx blow up an ''entire planet'' because people there are "actually or potentially" interested in Kai]].

* ToServeMan: Lyekka comes from a carnivorous plant species, and will eat humans if no less-sapient animals are available. Taken [[UpToEleven Up to Eleven]] by the "sister-Lyekkas," whose ''favorite'' food is humans, and who want to eat everyone on Earth.

** "Apocalexx Now" is a parody of '

** Xevivior is a parody of
** "Prime Ridge" is a parody of ''Series/{{Survivor}}''
''Film/AmericanBeauty''

** Theatre/{{Brigadoo|n}}m

** [[spoiler: At one point did Kai fulfill the prophecy and the last of the Brunnen-G destroy the Divine Order? Was is the death of the Giga Shadow after the Cleansing? Or Kai using his brace weapon to kill the current host of the Divine Shadow, before he can stop the Lexx from destroying the Divine Order's flagship?]]

* PantyShot: Zev/Xev has a fair few.
--> '''790''': (whilst being held between Zev's knees) This is the happiest moment of my existence.
** Bunny gets a couple in "769."

* EnfanteTerrible: Stan's cellmate from P4X seems like a sweet, nerdy, idealistic kid and a pure victim, but is in fact evil enough to impress Prince. While he's pushing the upper age limit of this trope, the other characters certainly treat him as this.

* STDImmunity: Played with. The crew of the Lexx never seems to worry about STDs, whether because Stan and Xev are used to the League's sophisticated medical treatments (as Stan says, "People don't die of infections"), because they don't know about them (Xev was raised in a box, after all) or because they're too horny and shortsighted to care. OTOH, Schlemmi the pimp's complaint about seeing too many "open sores" suggests that STDs ''are'' a problem in the less-advanced regions of the Light Universe.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lexx_tv.jpg]]

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: After her love slave transformation, Zev sports blue-ish/purple-ish white hair.
** In-universe: Lyekka's human doppelgänger, Lulu, wears a bright blue wig for her role in a scifi-themed porn flick.

* WhoWearsShortShorts: The entire population of Gametown.

* NoWomansLand: The League of 20,000 Planets, under the rule of the Divine Order. Parents give unwanted girls over to the "holo-matrons" at the Wife Bank, failing to perform one's wifely duties is a serious crime, and female criminals can be punished by having their brains reprogrammed to make them into perfect sex slaves for seminarians.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: ''Brigadoom'', the musical episode in Season 2. Incidentally also a minor use of the VanishingVillage trope, surprisingly.
** The third and fourth seasons depart from the episodic SpaceOpera format and are centered around one location each.

* MulticoloredHair: In season 3, Xev sports a base of natural-range blonde hair unnaturally-bright yellow and pinkish-red stripes.

The show originated as a series of four TV movies, each one featuring a noticeable guest star: Creator/BarryBostwick, Creator/TimCurry, Creator/RutgerHauer, and Creator/MalcolmMcDowell. The second season was spent wandering the two universes.

* SongOfCourage: According to Kai, the Brunnen-G always sang "Yo Way Yo" when they went into battle expecting to die. Xev and Stan [[MusicForCourage join Kai in singing it]] during [[spoiler; his [[HeroicSacrifice Heroic Sacrifice]] in the finale]].

* DullSurprise: Michael McManus's performance is a purposeful example. The show gets a lot of mileage from Kai's non-reactions to Stan and Xev's shenanigans.

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: The back half of season two involves "patches in the sky" where Mantrid drones are converting the universe into more Mantrid drones. This conveniently ignores relativity, since anything we see happening in a distant galaxy actually happened millions or even billions of years ago according to our local time.

As a cost-saving measure and an opportunity for long-form storytelling, the Lexx spent the last two seasons parked mostly in orbit. Season Three revolved around a new binary system: Fire, a barren wasteland, and Water, a lush paradise. It also introduced Prince, a primeval force of chaos in the shape of Nigel Bennett (of ''Series/ForeverKnight'' fame). The Fourth and final season planted Lexx in {{present day}} Earth--as seen through the lens of Creator/PaulVerhoeven and Creator/DavidCronenberg while tripping on LSD. It satirically skewered modern culture, with targets including militia fanatics, pretentious actors, politicians, internet porn, RealityTelevision, and {{Kaiju}} films.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: The Divine Order averts this trope. It executes people by conveyor belt, bans most literature, blows up whole planets, and forcibly converts rebellious young women into sex slaves... and it still has supporters who willingly accept their fates as human sacrifices.