LEXX

Stan is addressing a large phallic-looking spout that is the Lexx's food delivery system. Lexx synthesises food according to the crew's desires, (except that it all comes out green and sticky looking), even down to the flavour. The problem that Stan is having currently, however, is that Lexx is hungry. Very hungry. And without food, Lexx cannot produce food for the crew. Having to satisfy himself with the small amount of yellow gunk that Lexx is able to produce, Stan heads back to the bridge, where 790 has found a signal coming from an old probe hanging in space. It is a recorded advertising slogan for Klagyaa, a nearby planet. All the other planets in the system appear to have been destroyed apart from this one, and Klagyaa wants to invite people - new, fresh people - to visit, as the nervous looking man on the screen says, swatting the circling flies away from his sweaty face. The scarf around his neck bulges briefly and he puts his hand to it. "Excuse me a moment", he requests. Stan and Zev turn to look at each other as the man disappears from the screen briefly. Scrambling back, and looking decidedly less tense, the man continues his invitation to anyone who will listen. Stan and Zev wisely decide against it.

Days have passed, and the Lexx still hasn't eaten, which means Stan and Zev still haven't eaten, which means Stan is getting rather desperate. "I'm going to wake Kai!" he exclaims and stomps off towards the cryoroom, with Zev protesting that this isn't an emergency and he has to preserve his protoblood. Stan, however, insists. As he opens the cryopod, and the freezing gas dissipates, Zev realises that something is wrong. Kai is not awake, and doesn't look like he's about to be soon. Stan shines a torch in his eyes, but there is no reaction. Panicking, Zev charges cortical stimulators and proceeds to zap Kai's brain with rather a large amount of electrical current. His body shakes and his hands quiver, but there is no sign of life, artificial or otherwise. Kai has freeze-dried. His pod, damaged by Gigerotta when they found Brunnis, must have malfunctioned. Kai is dead-dead.

Stan pulls Zev off, who is still trying to shock Kai's brain into life. "It's no good" he tells her. They must carry on without him. They head sadly towards the bridge, where a planet looms on the viewscreen. Lexx reminds Stan that he really needs to eat soon, so Zev suggests that they land on the planet to allow him to eat. Stan would rather blow it up to be on the safe side, but Zev points out that apart from the fact that if Lexx eats, they eat, there's something else they must do...

Lexx lands on the soft surface and immediately starts eating. The entire top soil appears to be organic - made from hundreds of years of rubbish that covers the whole planet. Stan and Zev take a moth, with Kai's body, out onto the planet leaving Lexx to continue his meal

"Thanks Kai, for not killing us" recites Stan, standing over the makeshift grave. Zev shoots Stan a look and continues herself. "Last of the Brunnen-G" she starts, then starts again..."Last of the Brunnen-G" Choking on the words, Zev tells Kai how she didn't want to live until she met him, and how she wanted him to be her first... "Goodbye Kai" she says, and they turn and head back to the moth.

Flying back over the literal wasteland that is the surface of the planet, 790 pipes up that he has noticed a structure in the distance. Stan is not keen on the idea, but Zev insists on investigating. Stan just wants to get back to the Lexx, and although they land on the structure and Zev gets out, taking 790 for company, Stan stays behind and threatens that if she's not back in 10 minutes, he'll leave without her. Zev turns one of her great cluster lizard stares on him: "Don't even think about leaving me behind Stan" she warns, and disappears amongst the rusty pipes and girders that make up the structure.

Inside, the place seems deserted. There are long corridors filled with boxes and junk or varying age, and Zev decides to investigate. She opens one, and inside are lots of little bags of the green food that the Lexx usually produces when he's not hungry. "It's food!" cries Zev "It's really good food!" she continues, stuffing it in her mouth. Her meal is cut short however, when something grabs her legs and drags her down the corridor, leaving 790 screaming on the floor.

Stan is getting a little concerned and wants to get back to the Lexx, but doesn't want to leave without her. After fretting for a few more minutes, he decides to go looking for her and follows her path into the structure. Meanwhile, Zev is lying on the floor, as a strange green light plays over her body. Her legs are released, and as she moves to get up, a replica of herself is left on the floor in her previous position which fades a few seconds later. Zev shakes herself and goes back to pick up 790. As she finds him, she hears a noise and they take refuge in a nearby rubbish chute. Something passes along the passage with a slow, shuffling gait. Once the noise has passed, Zev starts to crawl out of the mouth of the chute, until someone large brings something heavy down on the back of her head. 790 screams.

"Zev?" Stan is calling as he makes his way gingerly through the corridors. He follows them deeper and deeper inside the structure until, turning a corner, he sees movement further down the passage. Thinking it could be her, he makes towards it, hiding behind a pile of boxes when he finally sees what it is. A one-legged man, filthy and dressed in rags, is chopping at something on the floor. The something looks like the carcass of another man. Stan jumps, and the man turns around. He seems very pleased to see Stanley, sniffing him and saying "You're clean!" He is so impressed with Stan's ablutionary habits in fact, that he attacks him with his big knife! Stan runs, but escapes only because he is pulled into an alcove just in time for the one-legged man to hop past without seeing him. Stan turns to look at his surprise saviour. It is a young girl dressed in a rather filigree leather outfit. Stan is obviously impressed with the fashion sense on this world and thanks her for saving him. He tells her about his search for Zev, and then asks about her. She doesn't seem to understand when he asks about her mother or father, and says she has lived there all her life. Stan asks what the planet was like before the rubbish. The girl, Wist (she tells him), says it was "delicious, and plentiful". Stan looks a little confused, but then Wist changes the subject. "Do you like me?" she asks. "Well..." he replies, briefly, before she seals her lips on his for a serious bout of tonsil hockey with Stan the Man. This is not an ordinary kiss however, and it's obvious after her lips part from his, that Stan is not quite the same. He has the grin of a happy idiot, and asks "Who's Zev?", when Wist asks him if he wants to resume his search. Wist looks pleased.

Meanwhile, worms have eaten little holes in the top of Kai's cold and lonely coffin, allowing a little weak sunlight to play on his skin. The worms drop down through the holes, and squirt some kind of liquid onto him. A few seconds later, Kai's eyes snap open.

Zev awakens in room. She is strung up by her arms, her head falling forward. As she raises her head, someone hits her again, and she once more joins the land of the fairies.

The huge iron door is obviously used more to keep people out than in, and from the game in progress it's easy to see why. King Bog has been sung in on his litter - "Bog is the King of Patern!" - and has commanded that the game begin. The two men strapped to either end of the large wheel look extremely happy to be there, and as Bog spins the wheel, the crowd all cheer. At the front door, while the cheering continues, there is a knock. The guard opens the peephole to reveal Zev's captor outside. "Fresh body!" he splutters "need pattern..." "We don't want anymore of your three day old rats!" replies the guard. "Don't you think if there was a fresh body, Wist would have been round? And has she?" The man shakes his head sadly, but insists that he "needs pattern!" "Do you want to play the game?" asks the guard. "No!" he replies, and tries again "fresh body!" "If there's a body, why don't you bring us some, and we'll talk pattern" the guard relents. "Which part?" asks the man. "Which do you think?" replies the guard "the head-head!"

The game is almost over. The wheel spins slowly to a halt, lining up the men with the pictures that provide the prizes on this primitive wheel-of-fortune. One man lines up with a picture of a flask filled with green liquid, which means the second man lines up with a picture of an arm. "No!" he screams, as he sees his fate. The first man is ecstatic. "I won a whole!" he cries, then looks at the flask "this is a quarter, a quarter at best!" "New rules!" Bog shouts, "from now on, a whole is a quarter!" The second man calls "that means I only get a quarter cut!" he cries in hope. "No" replies Bog, "you get a double cut!" The man screams as the crowd fall upon him, and hold him down.

There is another knock at the iron door, and the guard slides the panel back to reveal Wist with a happy Stan in tow. Letting them in, Bog kisses Wist happily. "We haven't seen you for a while" he says with a big smile. "He needs pattern" Wist says, introducing Stan. "Hiya Bog-Bog-diggely-dog!" grins idiot-Stan. "Stanley Tweedle-de-dee!" replies Bog "How much does he need?". "All of it" replies Wist. Bog prides himself on the fact that he grinds the pattern himself. The man who lost the game stands up. He has had an arms and a leg chopped off and they are put into the pattern grinder to make new pattern. "Again!" he cries. The crowd cheer and the man is strapped down for a second time. As the wheel stops, however, it lines him up with the picture of the head. "Nooooooo!" he screams. "He's not screaming because he's afraid to die", Bog explains, grinding the handle on the pattern grinder, "but because he's afraid he won't get any more pattern"...

Zev's captor returns to where he's keeping her tied up, only to discover that other limbless idiots are in the process of taking her for themselves. Snik, for this is his name, is understandably upset by this, but the other limbless idiots shut him in and continue to carry Zev off. Snik starts to scream that he needs pattern but the others ignore him, until his screams grow as a worm appears out of the back of his neck and begins to flail around. The worm, obviously in need of pattern, realises that it's not going to get any around here, and decides to make it's own by eating Snik's brain. His body falls to the ground as his eyes sink into his skull, and the little worm slithers off in search of a new host. The limbless idiots see no point in wasting meat, and, chopping off the empty head, take the rest of Snik's body towards Bog's lair.

Stanley receives his first dose of pattern, and everyone seems very happy about it including him. Bog bemoans the fact that it's not like it was in the old days though - when there were fresh bodies around and you could make really good sparkling pattern - now they have to make do with the limbs the pattern addicts donate. Stan pipes up at this point that he knows where there's a fresh body, much to the pleasure of his new friends. They head out into the wilds towards Kai's grave, but when they arrive, they find it empty. "I don't understand!" wails Stan, "He was just here!" Resorting to plan B, they head for the Lexx, and collect, much to their disgust, the brains to take back and make into pattern.

Kai is traipsing over the wastelands, no doubt wondering what the hell happened. Abandoned by his friends, he stumbles on a habitation dug out of the rubbish. The hovel has obviously been abandoned for a while, and Kai noses about inside, finding an old piece of recording equipment. Repositioning a few wires, he manages to get it working again. Wist appears on the screen, dressed in a dirty grey dress. "I don't know if anyone will see this" she starts. Wist explains how the other planets in their system destroyed themselves in a trade war, but Klagyaa survived because it was a garbage disposal planet with a few hundred workers. Gradually though, they realised that they had been infected with a predator by one of the other planets. This predator is in the form of Satellite worms which attach to the brains of their hosts to control them. More and more of her colleagues are getting infected, and Bog is building a probe to try and send a message to get help. Her only hope is to kill the queen. "I'm probably dead now, but that's OK" the recording ends "everything dies". "I presume you found the Queen", says Kai, turning to see Wist in her grey dress, who has appeared behind him. "Do you like me?" she asks. "The dead do not have likes" he replies. "Do you want to kiss me?" she tries again. "As much as I want to kiss anything" replies Kai. Wist seals her lips on his, but quickly backs away. "You are dead!" she exclaims. "It's OK," says Kai, pulling her towards him, "everything dies", and he pushes his wrist brace through her stomach. As he pulls away, she looks down at the hole, which is spewing green blood, and worms. She looks up at Kai as Wist arrives, this time dressed in the black leather outfit. Two Wists. Kai fires.

Back in Bog's Lair, the grinning junkie unidexters are busy feeding things into the pattern machine. First the body of the unfortunate Snik, then Zev, then 790, who they have picked up along the way. Zev is not pleased obviously, and finds herself even less so when they start turning the handle on the machine. Luckily, 790 is close enough to the whirring blades for Zev to push him into the mechanism, bringing the machine to a halt.

Bog, Stan and Wist arrive back at the Lair, just in time to see the limbless idiots turning the machine. Bog is not pleased. "The first time in ages we have a perfectly fresh body, and you - without my permission - were going to mix her with Snik?" Bog releases Zev and 790 from the machine, and instead starts feeding the brains into it, leaving some on a rack for later.

Kai has found Bog's lair. As Bog is feeding brains into the pattern grinder, Kai knocks at the door. The guard opens the hatch, smiles, and looks at Bog. "When it rains, it pours!" exclaims Bog, and the guard flicks a switch, which causes a door to close behind Kai, and a big knife to swing down and lop off his head!

The brains scream, briefly, and Bog shouts "p..p..p..pattern!" The idiots crowd around, helping themselves to what Bog says is "excellent pattern". Bog has put Kai's head on the rack along with the surplus brains, and turns his attention back to Zev. Zev tries to distract Bog by coming on to him rather strongly. "I can take you anywhere you want to go..." she promises. BOg thinks - "can you take me home?" he asks. Wist looks at Bog, who turns his attention back to the pattern in hand. Deciding that he will put Zev and Kai in next, he picks up Kai's head, which promptly opens it's eyes and suggests exactly how he might like to cook it. Bog drops the head, understandably, and turns to Wist, asking in a slightly cracked voice..."can I go to the hole?" Wist gives him her permission, and Bog and the others all clutter off towards a large hole in the ground. Wist picks up Kai's head and prepares to put it in the grinder, when Kai's body rights itself, shoots his grabber and retrieves his head, which he firnly reattaches. Wist looks at him. "You are irrelevant" she spits, as she turns to leave. Kai shoots her in the back of the neck, decapitating her easily. "Kai!" calls Zev, as he goes to release her, "we thought you were dead!". "Almost" he replies, and explains how the worms that burrowed into his coffin used an enzyme to determine whether he was a suitable host, which brought him back to 'life'. With Zev released,and happy clappy Stan in tow, Kai leads them to the hole. The limbless wonders are all laying on their backs with their heads over the deep chasm, as their worms come out of their necks and spew pattern into the hole to feed the Queen. "Best part of the day" whispers one of them to Bog, but suddenly the groans of pleasure turn to shrieks. Bog watches as one by one, all his little helpers' worms wriggle out of their hosts necks, killing them. Bog turns to Kai and asks "is it over?". "Yes" replies Kai, "I believe you have entered the final stage - your worm will eat you brain". Bog looks down and places a hand to his neck "Yes! I can feel the worms turning!" he announces. Bog lays back, knowing it's his turn next. "Bye Stanley Tweedle de dee" he says, as the worm eats his eyes. "Bye big Bog Dog!" says Stan, gleefully. "Take Stan back to the Lexx" Kai commands Zev, "but you cannot leave. I fear if you separate him from the queen, his worm will kill him" And with that, Kai jumps down the hole to kill the queen. "Byyyyyeeeeee Kaaaaaaaaiiiiiii!" calls Stan after him, as Zev drags him off towards the moth.

Down the hole, Kai comes to a lake of sticky goo. "When I was little, I had to do all sorts of things to stay alive" Wist's disembodied voice floats over the ether. "You killed Wist" Kai remarks, face to face with Wist's carcass. "She would have killed me" replies the voice. "I will kill you" repies Kai. "I am irrelevant" replies Wist, "everything dies - that is why we have daughters who will live on after us". The goo starts shifting and growing, a skin is forming, and underneath is an enormous human form. It begins to break through the skin, revealing itself to be a giant copy of Zev. Kai reaches his arm out to fire. "You would kill me?" asks the huge replica Zev. Kai fires, and fires again hitting her in the stomach and head. The giant Zev sinks back into the goo, only to be replaced by Wist, but twice the size of the replica Zev. She looks at Kai, turns, and walks off into the darkness.

Zev and Stan have made it back to the Lexx, and Zev is returning the surviving brains to their cubby holes. When she turns back to Stan, however, he has taken the moth and headed back to the bridge. "Stan!" she yells, but he is already telling the Lexx to take off, even though Lexx has not finished feeding yet. Zev grabs another moth from the bay and rushes to the bridge. "Stan! we're not leaving without Kai!" she yells at him. Stan turns with an empty grin on his face, and knees her in the face. Zev falls, surprised more than anything, but the Lexx has already taken off. "There are so many tasty planets out there" smiles Stan

The Big Wist breaks out from under the surface of the planet in time to see the Lexx skimming the surface. She reaches up and grabs on to it, pulling herself onto the underside. As she grabs on, her fingers become like tentacles, and her mouth opens wide. She pierces Lexx's hull with her tongue, which grows into a snake-like proboscis, travelling down through the passageways into the Lexx's body. "Distress! Distress!" cries Lexx "I have been penetrated!" Stan whoops for joy..."Wiiiiist! mommy's home!"

Outside the Lexx, Kai has also attached himself, hauling himself up by his brace. He closes in on Wist as Lexx heads for orbit. Wists tongue is reaching inside the Lexx, searching for Zev's clean body. "Do you like me?" asks the face on the end of the snake-like tongue, as it nears Zev and Stan. Lexx is fed up with being probed, and decides that if Stan isn't going to blow up the planet, he might as well do it himself. Lexx's eyes glow red, and the energy beam rips Klagyaa to pieces. The rock is thrown for miles, one piece conveniently hitting Wists head, and removing it in a loud squish. The tongue inside the Lexx retracts, and bits of Wist fly off the hull. Kai claws his way back inside the Lexx, and lands on the bridge, pulling up 790 to sit on (at this point, I really really wanted to be 790). Grabbing the vacant Stan, Kai pulls the worm out of the back of his neck. Stan surfaces. "What is that?!" he recoils in disgust. "This end was attached to your brain" says Kai, waving it in Stan's face. "Can I be sick now?" asks Stan.

Stan orders the largest amount of desert possible at one sitting. Lexx is glad to oblige, especailly when Stan asks him to "gimme all you've got!". The phallic looking tube aims at Stan and sends him flying with a stream of sticky green goo. Zev laughs as he collapses on the floor, still asking "can I get chocolate with that....?"

A great episode, even if the first half was Kai-less. Plenty of gratuitous blood and gore and quite scary if you stop to think about it for too long. Addicted to your own flesh? Eeeurgh! Some nice moments from all the characters, apart from poor old Zev who was tied up most of the time...gotta sort that out, give the girl something to do. Stan played the idiot a little too convincingly and it was nice to see Kai actually get mean and moody instead of the usual "I'm only killing you coz they told me" routine.