While the stars were filming secretly in England for Season Four, TV Zone gained exclusive access to Michael McManus, Xenia Seeberg & Brian Downey. So what about the new season, and the Future of one of the quirkiest Science Fiction programmes ever?

LEXX is More

Taking time out from shooting Season Four, the stars of LEXX recently met up with TV Zone to talk about the Past, Present and Future of SF's quirkiest series.

With the worlds of Fire and Water behind them, the crew of the LEXX is now headed for Earth. Between the arrival of a loser-turned-ship's captain, a cluster lizard/love slave hybrid, a centuries-old dead assassin and a lovesick disembodied robot head, the Human race won't know what's hit it!

And that's basically the premise behind LEXX's fourth season, now in production. During a recent visit to London, cast members Brian (Stanley Tweedle) Downey and Michael (Kai) McManus plus Xenia Seeberg (Xev, right) sat down with TV Zone to talk about the series...

TV Zone: Are you both happy with the way the current season is going?

ММ: It's very satisfying, getting this season in, because it means that our journey has gone almost 65 hours, and it's really going to support what we've done before. I think people will watch the series backwards, so (there's) the cleverness of making Heaven and Hell [the Season Three finale] a turgid soap opera, and making the entire expanse of the Light Universe into this character display in an operatic, slightly lyrical way... And in the intro to the whole series, of doing dense historically interesting SF, where the Light Universe was laid out, the insect civilization, the Brunnen-G and rebel culture. All of the events are played to their climax, so we have all these different textures."

"The show does have a bit of that Swiftian spirit; it will never be middle class. It's always going to be LEXX, and people are going to know what LEXX means as a word. It might show up in the OED in 10 years, that 'LEXXic' means a situation or person who is negatively disposed to any do-gooding, and has no idea about contributing to the greater good, who thinks that the greater good is bullshit, and is basically reductionist and negative, following his appetite, prick, stomach, head, ego; whatever; it's a world of appetites."

TV Zone: So your characters are basically 'LEXXic' then?

ММ: Our characters are the dysfunctional centre that the world of LEXX can be bounced off of. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't survive a minute in the LEXX universe, because at some level, they're almost good, but only because 'good' in the LEXX world is 'harmless'. When they're powerful, intelligent or passionate, they're a terrible disaster to people around them, and because of certain accidents, we end up on the most powerful spaceship in the two universes.

"Again, I think the satirical aspects are going to very clear this year, and very satisfying to people who have watched the show from the beginning. And then some other people will have to eat their hats about what they've said about LEXX, and their response to the first eight hours, or the 20 or the 13.

Brian: It's all part of a continuum, so I don't feel any different about this season than I have about the previous seasons. In a sense, it's satisfying to know that we're coming to a conclusion to this aspect of the show. Aspects of the show may appear in another guise, but essentially, it's satisfying on any number of levels.

"One of the really satisfying things is that we have practical input into what appears on the screen in terms of the way we display our characters, and the level of control we have over the scripts and the voice we can have, so nothing has really changed significantly. It's satisfying to work on it, and that satisfaction hasn't diminished, nor has the level of energy that's required to accomplish what we're doing. I think the three of us have strong levels of energy as actors, and I don't think any one of us would be able to sit around with our thumbs up our asses..."

What happens when a sexy alien love slave ends up in a Texas women's prison?

That's just one of the bizarre events that viewers will see in the new season of LEXX, which recently began airing in the US. In the first episode, Little Blue Planet (reviewed in this issue), the most powerful weapon of destruction in two universes comes to Earth, along with its whacked-out crew, and the results are unpredictable to say the least.

With the series just about to start its summer hiatus, German actress Xenia (Xev) Seeberg, took some time out to drop a few hints about the current season...

TV Zone: The big news this season is that the LEXX and its crew come to Earth.

Xenia: I think it's the best season we've ever done. That's the good thing about knowing this will be the last season. On so many other series, they do one, two, three seasons, and when they get to the last one, it's like, okay we have to finish it off somehow, and everyone is already in the mood of 'This is going downhill'. With this show, it's quite the opposite.

Everything feels so much tighter, like we're back to the very sharp sense of humour, much more ironic, whereas Season Three was more drama, and we had an ongoing storyline, so it was a very different animal. Some people thought it was not quite so 'LEXX-ish,' while others who didn't like LEXX before thought it was more appealing to them, but right now, I think we've got everything pretty well tied together...

TV Zone: Looking back over the history of the show, what has LEXX done for you as an actress?

Xenia: At first, I wasn't so sure if I really wanted to take that character. I thought, what is the point of playing the sex kitten on a show? That may be nice for maybe an episode, but not for an ongoing series. But I soon discovered that I pretty much had the freedom to help develop the character and take her wherever I wanted to...

All text by Joe Nazzaro