Fire and Water, Heaven and Hell
Cause it’s hot and it’s cold
It’s “Yes” or it’s “No”
It’s in if it’s out
It’s up but it’s down
It’s wrong or it’s right
It’s black and it’s white
Apologies to Katy Perry
SERIES THREE OF LEXX, when everything radically. Gone were the Sci Fi adventures from planet to planet, the dark, funny, furious adventures. In it’s place was a thirteen part serial in which the LEXX was trapped in orbit around two warring planets, Fire and Water, and the crew journeyed between them, solving the mystery of Heaven and Hell. Behind the scenes, the genesis of series three was just as topsy turvy, with story roots going back before the first series was even released, driven by the crises and struggles of the second season, and wrestling with financial cutbacks. Volume three covers everything and anything to do with the third series.
WHAT IS LEXX: A ground breaking Canadian sci fi television series, created by Paul Donovan, Lex Gigeroff and Jeff Hirschfield, shot and produced in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by Salter Street Films, that ran four seasons between 1996 and 2002.
WHAT IS LEXX: The stories of a giant dragonfly, ten miles long, created to destroy planets for the Divine Order, now stolen by renegades. And of its crew – Stanley Tweedle, former security guard fourth class, former traitor, full time coward and Captain; Kai, a two thousand year old, unstoppable, indestructible, divine assassin; Zev, a runaway love slave with cluster lizard in her DNA; and 790, a lovestruck, increasingly psychotic, decapitated robot head.
WHAT IS LEXX: The most surreal, subversive, and imaginative space opera every created, an anarchic blend of Bunuel, Jodorowsky, Monty Python, Hard Science, Low Comedy, Catholic guilt, Lovecraftian horror, teen lust, deep cynicism and high ideals. It’s Charlie Chaplin in space, if Chaplin blew up planets and was directed by Kurosawa. It’s Star Trek, if Star Trek was evil, amoral and funny. And that description, as bizarre as it sounds, doesn’t come close to doing the show justice.
WHAT IS LEXX UNAUTHORIZED? They are the unauthorized, behind the scenes, books about the evolution and creation of the most wildly surreal show ever made, based on unique access and hundreds of hours of interviews with the stars, creators, writers, directors and production crew. Volume One is out. Volume Two is out. Volume Three has been released today. Volume Four is scheduled to March 31, 2021..
Back around 1998, Paul Donovan, the creator of LEXX, invited me to do a book about his show. Over the next few years, I visited Halifax several times, attended the sets and production offices, watched episodes being shot, and interviewed almost everyone connected with the show and its history, some of them several times. The proposed book went through several publishers, but was eventually dropped.
But for me, the project was a labour of love. Eventually, I wrote the book I wanted to write, exactly the way I wanted to write it. I printed off a single unedited copy, had it bound, and gave it to the star, Brian Downey. And that, I thought, was the end of it.
Years later, after a flood, a marital failure, three major moves, and two hard drive collapses, I found the manuscript, and it was good. Needed editing. But it was good. Real good.
I figured there had to be a reason it survived all this time, against all these odds. So I want to get it out there and share it with our fans.
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 1: Backstage in the Dark Zone, covered the first series…
* Explores the origins of Salter Street Films and Paul Donovan and Brian Downey’s career in early regional films.
* Covers the freakish left turns that resulted in LEXX’s development and approval, from an abandoned Great War spectacle, to a couple of University professors scheming to get a supercomputer, to giant corporations devouring each other.
* Discovers unproduced or lost versions that fell by the wayside, in the form of Love Grows (the very extended edition), Sigl’s original Gigashadow, and Back to The Cluster.
* Reveals the production secrets of LEXX, and each of the movies.
* Explains the long hiatus between the movies and the subsequent series.
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 2: The Light at the end of a Universe, will cover the second series of twenty episodes, including:
* Revealing lost episodes and stories, abandoned in process, or mutating into current forms, showing the evolution of the ideas, characters and concepts.
* Hidden details of the production of the most memorable stories, including Brigadoom, Mantrid, Twilight, Lafftrack and others.
* The stories of how and why Zev became Xev, Wist became Lyekka, His Divine Shadow became Mantrid, Web became Net, the return of Giggerotta, the lost story arc of Pa Golene, the pursuit of a musical episode, and the quest for an ending.
* How ideas and production challenges through the second series would create the look and concepts of the third series.
* The rise and fall of the German Co-Production Partnership.
* The creation of Electropolis studios.
* The key impact of CGI on the show’s development and imagery.
* The challenges and achievements, the forays into exotic surrealism and explanation of the hard science concepts.
LEXX Unauthorized, Series 3: It’s Hot and It’s Cold, covers the third series of thirteen episodes,
* Revealing the original versions of Heaven and Hell developed years before;
* How ideas and production challenges through the second series would create the look and concepts of the third series.
* Production of the third series, including the lost version of Girltown.
* The Saga of RATED: LEXX, both versions, and both lost versions.
* How fans saved the show and got the fourth series commissioned by the USA Sci Fi Channel.
* People of the LEXX – profiles of Brian Downey, Michael McManus, Eva Haberman, Xenia Seeberg, Jeff Hirschfield, Lex Gigeroff and Paul Donovan.
If you’re a LEXX fan, then you can’t miss this. And if you’ve never heard of LEXX, allow me to introduce you to one of the strangest, greatest, sweetest hidden gems in the Sci Fi world, a series unlike anything you’ve ever seen.