Escaping from Boomtown in a moth, a fight against pursuers results in a crash. Continuing their journey by balloon, the LEXX crew and assorted others find themselves above the Red Hot Sea but slowly descending and need to lose weight...
Five episodes in and you start to think you might be able to work out what's going on. And then a new twist gets thrown in that isn't expected. Yes, it's traditional LEXX and certainly a thought-provoking episode as Bunny, Fifi, Duke, Stan, Xev and a living version of Kai are cast adrift and several must die if they are to reach their destination. It was a bit disappointing that after the traditional debating set-up of people having to justify why they should stay in a balloon that it becomes a voting and shouting session as people start getting pitched over the side. Better would have been to stick to tradition, but the viewer knows that the LEXX crew aren't going to be the ones to die. Or are they?
As a Paul Donovan solo episode, Gondola is more talk-orientated than usual, and still retains a degree of the slowness that has characterized this season. However, although it doesn't feel like it, plenty happens here as clues start to get dropped about what Fire and Water are and the lives of their inhabitants, which seem to be continuous loops of dying then being reborn in a new body.
This is where the clever twists come in, as Xev attempts to gain access to a tower and Stan is menaced by the remaining residents of the balloon. It's a real surprise to find out where the living Kai came from, setting up new questions such as what would happen if Stan or Xev died, and what will happen to those who died in this episode? Will they be back? And who will they be?
It's also well worth mentioning the fantastic special effects in evidence here: the moth flight/fight looks really impressive, and the surface of Fire is beautiful yet quite scary. It's well-known that Sci-Fi is relatively easy to do effects for as the blackness of space can hide errors. With this series set planetside, it's a more impressive piece of effects work to put ships flying through blue skies, and it works wonderfully.
A good episode that provides some thought-provoking ideas and some hints of what's to come.
****
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