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ire & Water, the premiere of Lexx's second season (also called the third season, for reasons given in the review of the show's SCI FI premiere), begins at a slow and stately pace, with the living spaceship Lexx floating in space. Her crew, the incompetent everycoward Stanley Tweedle (Downey), lonely loveslave Xev (Seeberg), deceased assassin Kai (McManus) and lovestruck robot-head 790 (Jeffrey Hirschfield), are in deep hibernation.
Eventually 790 awakens and notices that Lexx is drifting toward a strange binary planet system consisting of a water planet and a desert planet. He decides to wake his beloved Xev and immediately fails, finding himself stuck without the means to extricate himself. This feeble attempt sets the stage for the entire episode. The freewheeling gang that gallivanted the wide universe for good or ill is reduced to complete helplessness. The movers and shakers of the plot are not to be the Lexx crew, but the locals.
An indeterminate time later, the Lexx, now floating above the desert planet, is approached by a grim character named Prince (Bennett). He leads a band of balloonists who look like refugees from the Mad Max movies, and is himself a cross between Tina Turner's character in Beyond Thunderdome and Malcom McDowell's character in Tank Girl. This motley gang soon boards Lexx and starts tinkering around, providing viewers with an outsider's view of Lexx and her crew. When Stanley Tweedle tries to explain how Lexx got there, involving a quest for a rumored planet of "naked naughty nymphomaniacs," Prince's stony silence makes it jarringly clear that fun is no longer on the menu.
Prince is obviously up to something and before long has started to bend Lexx toward his own mysterious ends. Along the way, the audience is given constant notice that how things were is not necessarily how they shall be: the Lexx's condition, the crew's attitude, even 790's previously unshakeable devotion to Xev. Everything is up for grabs.
Good? Bad? Definitely different
The differences are not just at the plot level. The sexual innuendo and lowbrow humor that caused some people to love the first season and others to hate it are nowhere to be seen in this episode. Nor is the general jauntiness and fun-loving curiosity that propelled many of the first season's stories. Nor is the universe-saving determination that occasionally replaced it. Xev is quiet and vulnerable, Kai is unsure of himself, and 790--well, he changes. Stanley, beaten into submission, even learns the value of occasionally keeping his mouth shut.
With the regulars thusly muted, the focus of the story falls on the enigmatic Prince. Here the epsiode runs into trouble. Prince is enigmatic largely because he almost never talks. Although this creates a sense of anticipation, it's also wearying when there's nothing going on except for his silently standing there. Dialogue scenes are made up largely of other characters waiting for him to say something. Action scenes consist of his staring sternly into the distance. As a result, the viewer gets a sense that the episode is being needlessly stretched out so as to leave room for a second part.
Meanwhile, the technical qualities, while solid, are limited by the low-tech nature of the episode. There are nice little touches, such as ice lingering on those coming out of cold sleep and glimpses into the workings of a desert city, but there isn't enough to provide distraction from the incredibly slow pace.
All in all, "Fire & Water" is a episode that won't appeal to everyone: people who like Lexx for the racy humor will find it dry, while those who hate Lexx may have trouble caring about what happens. But anyone interested in the Lexx characters, and who wants to see them adapt to sharply changed circumstances, should find "Fire & Water" to be an interesting new direction. And those who are just interested in space-faring science fiction may want to give it a look in the hope that future episodes show better pacing to match the increased depth.
It's hard to judge "Fire & Water" because the whole thing is so obviously just a setup for what comes next. I now sympathize with anyone who had to review The Phantom Menace. -- Bob
Also in this issue: Bless the Child and The Darkling
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