791 |
As usual, Xev is bored. The only interesting thing to have happened lately is that
Lyekka has woken up and proclaimed that she is hungry, which of course makes
the rest of the crew a little nervous. Then Lexx picks up an automated distress
signal from a crashed ship on a nearby planet. Being a coward, Stanley is less
than enamoured at the idea of going rooting around in what could most likely
be a ghost ship on some uninhabitable planet. But as Xev points out, it does give
them the opportunity to find some food for Lyekka, and maybe leave her down
there for good. Taking a moth, Xev, Lyekka, 790 and Kai (after all, you never know what’s going to be down there) go down to the planet and find the ship, which appears to have been there for a while. The planet’s surface is stormy and turbulent, and cannot support human life, so the crew don’t hold out much hope of finding anyone alive, but they try to get inside anyway through a partially open air lock. The inner door is locked and the controls are behind a glass screen with a ladder leading to the upper levels. Kai smashes the glass and operates the inner door. Xev takes 790 to check out the upper levels while Kai investigates downstairs. Lyekka, in the meantime, disappears off looking for food. Upstairs in the cockpit, the android pilot has suffered pretty badly in the crash. He is of the same model as 790, a human body with a robot head. Or rather, without one, as it got knocked off in the crash. 790 (unsurprisingly) insists on being left in the cockpit with the Android body (who is rather well developed in a semi-naked and muscular kind of way), so he can 'check the ship's systems' by interfacing with the computer. Xev leaves him to it and goes to join Kai downstairs. Past the air-lock inner door, there is a long passageway into the bowels of the ship. A blue force field in the middle of the passageway threatens to halt their progress, but for some reason, they can step right through it. Xev and Kai continue deeper into the cargo levels, where they come across some large containers with strong bolted lids. Kai breaks into one, and it appears to be a tube leading down to some sort of storage area. Being all brave and manly, he lowers himself through the opening and drops down to the level below... On the bridge, 790 is not busy communicating with the ship. 790 is busy trying to connect himself to the robot pilot's still functional body. Managing to persuade the body to pick him up and put him in place on it's severed neck, the tricky part is trying to get it to connect his circuits to it's own... In the storage area, Kai has found several large organic looking pods. If this scene doesn't make you shout "No! Haven't you seen Alien??!", I don't know what will. Anyway, Kai starts to unpeel the layers of one of the the pods to reveal lots of goo, and, curled up tight in the bottom, a human. A girl, in fact, who wakes and explains that this is a prison ship, and all these pods contain other prisoners. She was imprisoned for a minor crime, and she is scared she will die. Xev and Kai, having been prisoners themselves once, offer to help her escape. The girl explains that to prevent the prisoners escaping, the guards took out their hearts and put them in these pods to keep them alive in transit. Their hearts are in the cockpit in jars. Xev offers to go an find her heart, while in the background they hear a sickening scream. Lyekka is on the loose, snacking off the contents of the other pods. They have to hurry. Xev heads for the cockpit... ...where 790 is still having trouble connecting his circuitry to the new body. Although he is connected, he can't work the body properly, and if her can't work the body, he can't make love to Xev! Xev arrives to collect the heart, and is quite impressed with 790's new manly physique. 790 asks her to plug in a wire he can't reach, which she does, and then leaves with the heart. 790 is finally connected to a new body. But the body is not so keen on it's new head. In fact, it's corrupting 790's programming. In fact, it's turning him rather mad... Back on the Lexx, Stanley receives a voice message from Xev along the lines of "Come on down Stan, it's perfectly fine! There are even women here!" Stan, never being one to turn down a woman, jumps in a moth. Arriving at the crashed ship, he finds the same airlock the others used. As he gets inside, he hears Xev calling from the cockpit. Climbing the ladder, he finds 790 fighting his new programming. One minute he's 790, the next he's a Sado Masochistic Sex-Mad Robot with designs on Stanley's butt. And it was him who called Stan down from the Lexx, using Xev's voice. Stanley is afraid. Very afraid... Back on the cargo deck, Kai replaces the girl in the pod's heart. It works, and she gets out of the pod, revealing a fetching black leather outfit that does not ring true with the innocent story she told Kai & Xev. In fact, she reveals herself to be a mass-murderer, and makes good her escape. As she runs through the blue force field in the corridor, it turns red and locks Kai and Xev in the hold. It is a prisoner-sensitive field, and they are now trapped behind it. Unfortunately, it also sets off the ship's self destruct system. They have about 10 minutes before the whole ship blows. The prisoner escapes the ship and steals the moth, clearing the planet's surface until Lyekka, who has been sleeping off a heavy meal in the back of the moth, decides it's time for dessert... Stanley is trying to get away from the sex-crazed 790 down the cockpit ladder when when Xev and Kai finally break through the field and the inner airlock door. 790 has now finally lost it, and Stan's attempt at quick thinking: opening the outer airlock to suck 790's new body out, would have worked had he not then tried to fire on the body with a harpoon type gun, missed it competely, and provided 791 with a handy rope line to climb back in with. Luckily, Kai comes to the rescue and 790 is permanently separated from his body. Lyekka turns up with the stolen moth, and all are transported off the ship with seconds to spare before the whole thing blows. |
