LEXX

Stan and Xev, you may remember, are stranded hundreds of feet in the air above the scorching desert. Fifi and Prince are dead (again), and Xev realises the only way to prevent the same fate happening to them is to climb the tower to get out of the blazing sun. Her cluster lizard DNA stands her in good stead, but Stan is suffering until Xev luckily finds a loose brick in the wall and they manage to scramble inside.

The inside of the tower is cool, dark, and empty. The brick walled rooms are derelict and full of dirt and debris. Stan is not impressed when Xev wants to go and explore, but then when she's out of sight he realises he's not happy to be left behind on his own either. And given past experience I'm not surprised. He decides to bite the bullet and follow her. Unfortunately Xev moves fast and he is soon calling her name vainly trying to locate the swift lizard woman.

Kai, meanwhile, is still walking towards the tower from which he saw the balloon fall. If he wasn't already dead he'd be bored to death by now...

Stan's cries are intercepted by an inhabitant of the tower - a young woman who introduces herself as Tish. She's a bit grubby and boiler-suited up but she seems nice enough and offers to help Stan find his friend. "In the past when someone said they wanted to help, they usually wanted to feed off my brains or something like that." Stan points out, but she doesn't seem like the brain eating kind so he follows her into a large room where a small collection of inhabitants are gathered. Xev has already found the room and as Stan enters she takes him aside to explain that the inhabitants are a little strange. They seem incapable of communicating properly and whenever Xev tries to get an answer out of anyone they just end up yelling and arguing and hurling abuse. The crowd becomes more and more intimidating and Tish bursts into tears, but when Stan tries to comfort her she lashes out, accusing him of "touching" her. The wierdo's need no more excuse for a fight and gang up on Stan and Xev, chasing them into a side room.

Searching for a way out, their rescue comes suddenly in a way that no-one was expecting. A dark figure appears on the balcony above them...a dark figure they recognise as Mantrid! Mantrid, however, is confused by their recognition of him, and after helping them escape the angry mob is intrigued by their insistence that he was Mantrid, part insect Bio-Vizier, nemesis of Universes and general mad bloke. Xev explains how she killed him but he has absolutely no memory of who he was. He also has more arms and legs than his previous incarnation, being to all intents and purposes a fairly healthy looking and above all complete human being.

So far on these strange binary planets the crew have encountered three people they knew all those years ago. First, Fifi looked incredibly like Schlemmi from the Luvliner, then Bunny who was a dead (excuse the pun) ringer for Layleen, and now our favourite galaxy mangler has reappeared. Now you can say this is just because there's a shortage of actors in the frozen wastelands of Canada, or perhaps, just perhaps, there's a reason for all this...?

In the meantime Kai finally makes it to the tower and rescues Tish, who is about to be stoned by her fellow inmates for bringing Stanley into the city. Tish's gratitude involves telling Kai that he only rescues people to make himself feel better, and perhaps she's getting to him because as he's about to rattle off his "the dead do not feel better" or some such, he appears to develop a nervous tic. His head twitches and he turns on his heel to search for Xev and Stan. Then he falls over. Kai is not a well bunny...

Mantrid is meanwhile still interrogating Stan and Xev as to their origins to work out how they seem to know him. Stan asks how Mantrid turned up here, on the Fire planet, 4,000 years after his "death". But Mantrid doesn't know.

They are forced to take shelter under an outcrop of wall when Tish and the angry mob appear on the balcony and decide that the most fun can be had by throwing stones at the new arrivals. Stan is not pleased - this isn't the world he had hoped to end up on by a long shot - all he wants to do is get off the planet. Xev lets down the guard that she seems to have been hiding behind ever since she first met Prince, and comforts him.

Suddenly the torrent of rocks stops as their assailants are startled by the arrival of Kai. As the crowd run off to play with something else, Kai attempts to greet his friends but his co-ordination is rapidly deteriorating and he plummets into the room from the balcony above. In a crumpled heap he explains to a worried Xev that he was damaged when he first jumped to Water from the Lexx. His systems are gradually degrading and unless someone fixes him soon he's going to become as useful as a chocolate wrist-brace. It turns out that to fix him, they are going to first have to remove his clothes. (Funny, I don't remember Geordie ever having to strip Data when he used to break down, but hey - that's another show ;P)

Delicately, Xev gets to do what she's been fantasising about for a little over 4,000 years. Her prize is, I think it's fair to say, perhaps less than she was expecting. The pale white skin on his torso is peppered with dark bruises and his chest is punctured by valves which perhaps allow protoblood to flow, or perhaps don't. But his chest is nothing compared to the rest of him. If you ever dreamt about Kai (I know I did...) this was surely never part of your wild fantasy. For Kai's parts are more sword than pork - his entire groinal region is made up of a metal "codpiece" affair, with gratings and pipes and rods galore (no, not that kind of rod, unfortunately). Xev is understandably shocked, and probably a little disappointed by all all this.

"I always wondered if..." She admits.
"What?" Asks Kai almost daring her to continue.
"If you still had...your..." she replies, slightly embarassed
"What?" repeats Kai
"Equipment." Stanley butts in, saving Xev from her squirming.
Kai replies with candour:
"I have a lot of equipment as you can see, but it is not all...functional."

As Xev examines the apparatus, Kai explains that he has little nanite thingies that can diagnose what's wrong with him, but for them to be activated his power and control rods must be repositioned. They need to be put in the holes in his chest but they are currently residing in his groin. Note how Stanley does not immediately jump to the task of touching Kai's rods - he leaves it to the astounded Xev, who asks how she should perform such a task.
"Turn and pull" Kai explains, without ever a hint of embarassment clouding his blank features.
Proceeding carefully, as if the whole thing's likely to go off in her hand, Xev gently takes hold of the first rod and pulls. One thing we can be grateful for, Kai's rod is about 10 inches long (wahey!) but only about ? inch round (booo!). Dodging the barrage that is still raining down from above, Xev removes all 7 rods from his codpiece and places them where Kai indicates - 7 round valve like holes in his chest. As she does so, however, Kai starts smoking - and I don't mean he lights up a Marlboro - smoke starts coming out of his codpiece! In other circumstances this would be the stuff of fantasy, but he's jiggling and shaking and looking altogether unwell. Xev is concerned; "Was that right?" she asks. Kai is incapable of speech however, and merely grunts at her.

Suddenly the barrage from above stops and Mantrid joins in the Kai-resurrection party. He is sure he will be able to fix Kai; he likes the idea that he used to be a Bio-Vizier (even if he doesn't really know what one is). He seems to take great delight in fiddling with Kai's rods, but to Xev's dismay he's having more fun putting them in the wrong places to see what happens than actually mending Kai. He gets his come-uppance however when a particular combination of rods causes Kai to revert to his assassin programming and polish off Mantrid with a handy "you must be cleansed" and a brace in the stomach.

Before he can turn on Stan and Xev she quickly re-shuffles the rods and finds the correct order, allowing his nanite-things to run their diagnostic. His eyes scroll with computer code, much as 790's do when he's thinking, and once finished he relates that there is a fault to do with his primary micro-systems being out of alignment (aargh! It so nearly all went Star Trek - I was about to stick in a quantum singularity and an anomaly in the space time continuum, but I held back ;)) Now that he knows the problem, Xev can return the rods to their original position, i.e. the codpiece, and they all set about getting the hell out of there.

Kai says he can be fixed by basically chucking him off the tower so that he can re-align the problem systems (the technical equivalent of whacking the telly when the picture's gone all stripey). He thinks he can manage to land the right way and fix himself. Xev and Stan drag him up to a ledge (Tish and friends having buggered off to throw stones at some other poor sod, no doubt) and balance him precariously on the edge. Then they push him over and wait. If he's fixed, he'll climb back up the wall.

And they wait

And they wait

But Kai has other problems. He landed OK, but not well enough to fix himself completely and cannot walk. He is therefore a lovely sitting target for the two men who swoop down in a gondola and pluck him from the desert, chucking him in the basket and flying him off to a nearby tower

Xev and Stan are distracted from Kai's fate however by a new and more pressing problem. The dead bloke formerly known as Prince is back. And this time he's grinning..