STANLEY H. TWEEDLE

Originally an "assistant deputy backup courier" for the Austral B Heretics against His Divine Shadow, an evil galactic papacy, Stanley Tweedle (played by Brian Downey) was given a responsibility that he really didn't merit: smuggling the DNA of His Shadow's ultimate weapon to Heretic forces. Instead, Stanley allowed the Divine Order to get their hands on the codes to the Shield and destroy the Reform Planets; as such he was branded Arch-Traitor. His compatriots were slaughtered, and Stanley was captured. The smuggled DNA was extracted from him and used to grow The Lexx, a living, sentient ship able to destroy entire planets with a single devastating shot. His Shadow intended to use the Lexx to annihilate any planet in the universe where even a whisper of rebellion surfaced.  Luckily for Stanley, he was deemed so harmless and unimportant that he soon faded into the bureaucracy of The Cluster, His Shadow's central planet, eventually becoming a low-ranked security guard for the same government he'd once fought against.  After years of toiling in anonymity, one catastrophic day (and an incredible series of blunders) saw Stanley receive the "key" to the Lexx. With the Lexx now answering only to him, Stanley fled from His Shadow's influence with a motley crew in tow; Zev, an escaped love slave; 790, a disembodied robot head; and Kai, an undead assassin once in servitude to His Shadow. Together, they encounter a wide range of deviant people and creatures, most of a homicidal bent, as they look for a safe place to call home.  Unfortunately, Stanley is petulant, cowardly, short-sighted, quick-tempered, weak-willed, perverted and a perpetual under-achiever... exactly the absolutely wrong person to be in charge of the most powerful weapon in the two universes. His advances are rebuffed by Xev, and he must endure a constant stream of verbal abuse from 790. Not all of it is undeserved; hunger, survival, and an overactive libido are Stanley's primary motivations in any given situation.  He does try, though. Stanley occasionally shows a surprising amount of nobility and backbone, particularly when there's nowhere else left to run. For all his capriciousness, Stanley has spared the lives of his enemies and gone on the attack against suicidal odds because it was the right thing to do. Stanley has been instrumental in destroying various galactic threats, including the ultimate defeat of His Divine Shadow.  Stanley's opinion of himself, however, might ultimately be his downfall. Though he outwardly denies any actual culpability, Stanley feels a great deal of guilt over his failure to keep Lexx's DNA out of His Shadow's hands, and the billions of deaths that resulted. This guilt has been used against him several times, including in a trial that convicted him of high treason and in a spiritual test that briefly consigned him to Hell.  From time to time, Stanley has lost the key to the Lexx - best described as a symbiotic, living energy wave that can only exist inside a living person. On these occasions, he has been desperate in his efforts to get the key back. Even if he doesn't always live up to the responsibility, Stanley Tweedle knows that commanding the Lexx is probably the most important thing he will ever do.

ZEV/XEV

Zev was born on the planet B3K, one of the worlds ruled by His Divine Shadow. While still an infant, she was sold by her parents to the "wife banks", where she was raised in a box with no human contact. Her only companion was an interactive video tutor which schooled her on how to be a submissive but sexually aggressive wife. When she finally learned her lessons well enough to receive a passing grade, she was sold to be a wife, due to meet her husband for the first time at their wedding. However, Zev was obese and covered in acne, and her husband turned out to be a spoiled adolescent whose parents had bought him a wife as a present. Her assigned husband's first words were to complain that Zev was hideous and refuse to marry her. Zev, much larger than her childish fiancee, was furious and punched him so hard that he was knocked unconscious.  For "failing to perform her wifely duties," Zev was sentenced to become a love slave, a process performed by a machine called the Lusticon. The love-slave transformation process went fine through the first few steps: altering Zev's body to be physically perfect, heightening her libido, and lowering her sexual standards. But before the final step could occur — re-adjusting her mind to make her madly in love with her intended owner — a loose cluster lizard interfered with the process. Zev was fused with the cluster lizard, absorbing some of its DNA, and was freed from her restraints. She escaped from the Lusticon and placed the head of a decapitated 790 robot in its path. The robot head (790) received the adjustment instead and immediately fell in love with Zev.  Zev died early on in the second season, in the episode "Terminal". In the next episode, "Lyekka", she was reanimated by Lyekka as a present for Stan. The new Zev (called Xev) was more aggressive and has saved Stan on many occasions and once held the key to The Lexx.  Throughout the series, Zev's heightened libido is constantly frustrated. She is madly in love with Kai, but he can't return her feelings because he's dead. 790 worships her, but doesn't have a body or even a hand with which to pleasure her (except for a few episodes). Stan also frequently comes on to her, but even with her artificially lowered sexual standards Zev still finds Stan repulsive. Zev propositions many of the men she meets throughout the series, but circumstances usually lead to their violent deaths before she can get anywhere with them.  Zev was portrayed by Eva Habermann and Xev is portrayed by Xenia Seeberg; Fat Zev/Xev was portrayed by Lisa Hines, in the original mini-series, and the un-lustacon Xev in the episode "Woz".

KAI

Technically, Kai died 2008 years prior to the events of "I Worship His Shadow" defending his home planet Brunnis 2 against attack by His Divine Shadow's flagship, the Foreshadow. This desperate attack failed and His Divine Shadow destroyed the Brunnen G homeworld. Knowing all was lost, Kai rammed his small fightercraft into the control pod of the Foreshadow, was catapulted out of his cockpit and personally killed by His Divine Shadow. Instead of having the carcass incinerated, His Shadow had Kai "de-carbonized" and turned into a Divine Assassin.  For 2008 years, Kai served His Shadow, killing heretics and revolutionaries, until he was called to secure the Lexx from heretics. After a confrontation with rebel leader Thodin, Kai found Zev Bellringer and Stanley Tweedle on the bridge. However, he was called away to help the Divine Predecessors when a cluster lizard attacked them. When Kai picked up a piece of the brain of the Divine Predescessor that killed him, he regained his memories and joined Stan and Zev.  Kai is animated by proto-blood, a substance secreted by the Gigashadow (the vast insect body of His Divine Shadow). This liquid can only reanimate Kai for a limited amount of time, so he must remain in cryogenic suspension between bouts of activity to prolong his existence.  Because he is dead, Kai lacks the ability to perform most bodily functions - a major let-down for Zev, who loves the dead man. He also lacks motivation and most emotions, and is unable to love, care or truly feel for others. When questioned about his motivations (or lack thereof), he often begins his answers: "The dead do not..."  At the end of the final season, Isambard Prince, the former ruler of Planet Fire, granted Kai life after promising it as a prize in a chess game - but only moments before Kai would sacrifice himself again to destroy the Lyekka monster's ship that had destroyed the Earth.

790

790 is a robotic head with three screens to display its eyes and mouth. It is a fictional character on the Sci-Fi series Lexx.  790 originally had a body, but it was lost during Zev's loveslave transformation. It received part of Zev's love slave transformation, and in result, falls in love with Zev, who was the first person it saw after the transformation. In a later episode, 790 obtains a body and becomes 769 but eventually loses his body again.  In the first and second seasons, 790 faithfully devoted to Zev/Xev and will do anything she asks it to. 790 has a strong hatred for Stanley Tweedle.  In the first episode of the 3rd season, 790 is dropped by Prince, the ruler of Fire, and breaks. His mind is reset when Kai repairs him, and falls in love with Kai, the first person he saw. After this change, 790 is much less helpful to the crew of The Lexx, and because of its jealousy towards anyone who is near Kai, becomes homicidal, and develops a hatred of Xev and Stanley Tweedle. In 769 (season 4), 790 was, for a short time 769. A 769 model robot was a robot head that was attached to a human body that retained it own head.

THE LEXX

The Lexx is a bioengineered, Manhattan-sized, planet-destroying, living starship in the shape of a giant wingless dragonfly. It was grown from organ collections used on the Cluster, the seat of the Divine Order. Its original intent was for use by His Divine Shadow as a terror weapon to force the surrender of a group of "Heretic" worlds that had rebelled. This plan was foiled when the crew commandeered it to escape from the Cluster.  The mechanics of the Lexx are quite simple. The Key is an intangible living thing that allows whomever is hosting it to captain the Lexx. Commands are carried out by voice of the captain, however on the bridge there is a hand beacon that appears to confirm important orders, like destroying a planet. The Lexx acknowledges commands and often comments with a droning, simple male voice; for example, "As you command, Stan."  The Lexx needs to eat constantly to stay alive and useful, and can land on a planet's surface to scoop up suitable organic foodstuffs. The moral dilemma of destroying inhabited worlds for Lexx's functioning and survival is a recurring plot theme. The Lexx also uses this matter and reprocesses it into usable items for the crew, like edible food.  The Lexx also hosts a contingent of smaller bioengineered ornithopter-like craft called "moths", which the crew periodically use – in air or space – for short-range travel or to go where the Lexx may prove unwieldy.

LYEKKA

Lyekka is played gorgeously by the lovely Louise Wischermann.  She is one of the more weird characters from the series, but you instantly take a liking to her. Whether you are male or female, Lyekka's bimboesque, slightly vulnerable sweetness takes LEXX and the podsyou by surprise.  Us geezers possibly find the fact that she hardly wears any clothes, and has a lovely bum, quite endearing too!  Lyekka needs to feed on flesh to survive and when she has eaten her fill she returns back to her pod to rest. The POD is her home, but she cannot survive without it, if the pod is destroyed, her life-span is measured in hours.  To say that Lyekka cares for Stanley is probably true, she made him a present of Xev, the reconstituted remains of parts of three Potatahoen astronauts that has the great misfortune of visiting the LEXX.  Lyekka popped in and out of Season Two, there was a particularly memorable sequence in Twilight when the lovely Lyekka ate the lovely Lomia, but aside from that all she did was look pretty and eat people.

HIS SHADOW

His Divine Shadow is the absolute ruler of the Divine Order and the League of 20,000 Planets. He ruled with extreme authority, from The Cluster, acting as a religious figurehead, as well as the supreme military commander. He was not strictly human, but rather the last surviving member of the Insect Civilization, parasitically passing his essence to a new human host when the former host could no longer serve. The former host's brain would then be removed, and it became a Divine Predecessor, a much revered advisor. His Shadow (correctly) assumed that he would be more successful in wiping out humanity by getting it to destroy itself. His ultimate creation, the Gigashadow, would allow him to personally wipe out all opposition.  His Shadow's Order was destroyed by Kai, Last of the Brunnen-G, as foretold by the Time Prophet, but not before a part of his essence was transferred to Kai, who later passed it on to Mantrid.  Walter Borden played the dying His Shadow in the first LEXX movie, I Worship His Shadow, and provided the voice of His Divine Shadow throughout the rest of the movies/Season 1, and in the Season 2 episode "Brigadoom."

PRINCE

Prince (played by Nigel Bennett) is the cruel ruler of the Planet Fire in the third season of the science fiction television show LEXX. In the fourth season of the same show, he reappears as Isambard Prince, head of the United States' Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and secret master of the president.  Prince first appears in the season premier of the third series, when he and some of his cohorts board the Lexx as it passes through the atmosphere of Fire. Soon, the crew of the Lexx is split up and Prince takes a certain fancy to Xev, asking her to be his "Queen." She refuses, but he continues to pursue Xev and to attempt to gain control of the Lexx.  Prince can die physically and come back in any form and location he wishes to. He uses this tactic to reincarnate into a living version of Kai, only to be exposed when he tries to kill Stan. He also successfully replaces Xev and temporarily steals the key to the Lexx by bringing Stan to the extreme height of sexual ecstasy.  Stan drowns near the end of season 3, and Prince appears at the judgement of Stanley's soul. While the ultimate fate of Stan's soul is decided by a copy of Stan in a white uniform, Prince acts as a prosecuting attorney, arguing for why Stanley deserves eternal torment on Fire rather than eternal happiness on Water. When Stan's doppelganger deems Stanley material for Planet Fire, Prince is able to control where and when Stanley reincarnates on the surface of Fire, showing more evidence that Prince is a spiritual entity.  Prince takes pride in "being very good with pain." He often cheerfully orders his followers to their deaths, bidding them "cheery-bye" as they go. He has waged an endless war on the planet Water, partly in order to harvest its water for the dry planet Fire, but mostly for the sake of killing and torturing the helpless good souls on Water. He also enjoys tempting good people on Water to commit evil acts, thus condemning them to reincarnation on Fire.  Prince does not himself know of his origins, his age, or why he exists and has the powers he does. At one point he tells Kai that he has existed since the dawn of time. Although Prince has been warring for countless ages against Water, and has defeated it innumerable times, the people of Water just reincarnate and so the war never ends. He also constantly fights against lesser rulers named Duke and Queen on Fire. Prince has grown tired of this unchanging state of equilibrium, so he welcomes the coming of the Lexx as a means to destroy Water and end his war.  At the end of season 3, Xev (having the key to the Lexx after Stan's death) orders the Lexx to destroy Fire. This frees all the damned souls from Fire, but also frees Prince's spirit from the planet. Prince's spirit takes control of the Lexx and blows up Water. This frees the souls of Water, and after they swarm off Prince's essence is seen descending on the west coast of North America (Fire and Water turn out to have been in the same solar system as Earth).  Prince reappears in the Fourth Series, reincarnated as Isambard Prince, the director of the ATF and de facto ruler of the United States. While the other people of Earth don't remember their past lives on Fire and Water, Prince retains his personality and memories from Fire. (He still reincarnates, but no longer can choose the form and place of his reincarnation; for several episodes he reincarnates as a being only capable of appearing in television screens.) Early on in season 4 the president of the United States is voted out of office and replaced under curious circumstances by Reginald J. Priest (the reincarnation of Prince's lackey named Priest on the Planet Fire) thus cementing Prince's control over the United States. From there, he doggedly pursues the crew of the Lexx in order to sieze control of the Lexx as a powerful weapon and, later, as a means of escaping the alien infestation of Earth.

PRIEST

Priest's first appearance was in season 3, as chief underling to Prince, the ruler of the planet Fire. Like all people on the planet Fire, Priest was the reincarnation of someone who lived once before, and he wasn't born, but rather "woke up" as an adult. Priest served Prince faithfully until the arrival of the Lexx crew, when he seized an opportunity to kill Prince and gain control of the planet Fire. This idea backfired when Prince, while falling to his death, shot and killed Priest with a crossbow.  In season 4, Priest "wakes up" for a second time on the planet Earth with the name Reginald J. Priest. He is a Vietnam veteran who was held captive for 30 years by the Viet Cong, and is swiftly elected President of the United States with some help from Prince (in his new incarnation as head of the ATF). Priest's first wife is murdered by Prince, so he marries the more attractive Bunny.  In the final episode ("Yo Way Yo"), Priest admits that he has no memory of being imprisoned in Vietnam, and is aware of the fact that he came from the planet Fire, which would make him unique on Earth as the only person to retain his memories from a previous life (with the exception of Prince). He escapes the destruction of Earth with Prince and Bunny on a spacecraft built by Dr. Ernst Longbore.

BUNNY

Bunny first appeared in season 3 as a resident of Gametown on the planet Water. Like all people on the planet Water, she wasn't born, but rather "woke up" one day as an adult. After waking up, Bunny played games every day (as did all residents of Gametown) until the arrival of the Lexx crew. Gametown was destroyed by invaders from the planet Fire and Bunny fleed in a moth with the Lexx crew. She was killed later in season 3, by being thrown into a sea of lava by Fifi as the balloon they were in was losing height.  In season 4, Bunny "wakes up" for a second time on the planet Earth, this time with a more ditsy personality. She becomes the first lady to President Reginald J. Priest after his first wife is killed by Isambard Prince. When Earth is eventually destroyed, Bunny escapes with Priest and Prince on a spacecraft built by Dr. Ernst Longbore.  Patricia Zentilli also appeared in the season 2 episode "Wake the Dead" as Laleen, who was killed by Kai in the same episode. Since the inhabitants of the planets Water, Fire and Earth are all reincarnations of people who previously died, it is likely that Bunny and Laleen are the same person.

MANTRID

When he was alive, he was the mightiest of His Divine Shadow's Bio-Viziers (though remaining in rivalry with his teacher, Brizon), until His Shadow exiled him to a barren snow-covered world. His physical appearance was that of a head situated on top of a large hovering jar (for lack of a better word) that contained all of his organs. For limbs he had several robot arms, each mounted on a basketball-sized antigravity drive that could fly around independantly. These were based on standard League industrial drones. Mantrid was also accompanied in exile by a deeply submissive human slave, his only living companion.After the destruction of the Gigashadow, Kai (secretly possessed by His Divine Shadow's essence at the time) revealed that he was nearly out of protoblood. Since a living Insect is the only known source of protoblood, they recovered a dormant infant Insect from the Gigashadow's remains and brought it to Mantrid for him to revive and extract a fresh supply from. Mantrid agreed, but had his own designs on the infant Insect. Insects possessed the ability to transfer their minds, soul, and/or essence, into other life forms as a means of immortality and Mantrid wanted to extract the organ responsible for his own use to transfer his mind from his own ruined body into a computer on board a small spacecraft he had specially prepared for this purpose.  Once the Insect began to revive under Mantrid's ministrations, however, His Divine Shadow caused Kai to kill Mantrid by smashing his organ-jar and then abandoned Kai's body to move into the Insect. Mantrid's head remained alive, though rapidly dying, and in desperation Mantrid's slave ordered the drones to immediately remove the infant Insect's essence-transfer organ so that he could perform the procedure on Mantrid himself. The slave was ultimately successful, but since the organ had been removed after His Divine Shadow had already moved into the Insect's body it was "contaminated" with some of his Insect mentality. The result was to leave Mantrid as a mixture of human, machine, and Insect essences. He inherited from his new Insect side their deep hatred of humanity, and his first act on waking up in the machine was to have his remaining drone arms kill the slave that had saved him.  Lexx destroyed the planet shortly thereafter to ensure that the Insect would not escape, but Mantrid survived and departed from the rubble of his planet in his bizarre little ship along with his remaining drone arms. The drones had the ability to manufacture more of themselves entirely from local raw material, so soon his ship was accompanied by a substantial number of these drones. He sent some of his drones to follow the Lexx over the course of many episodes to toy with them, destroying any place they visited shortly after they departed and using the raw materials to manufacture exponentially increasing numbers of drones. Soon with countless billions of drones at his disposal, Mantrid begins tearing apart planets and eventually even stars for raw material. By the end of season two Mantrid's drones composed 64% of the mass of the entire Light Zone and were poised to rapidly finish consuming the rest of it. This was an example of an extreme grey goo catastrophe, though the technology involved (antigravity and some form of highly efficient elemental transmutation process) was not particularly plausible in terms of real physics.  The crew of the Lexx tried several gambits to defeat Mantrid once they became aware of his activities (revealed by "patches in the sky", regions where his drones had consumed all of the stars). They located Brizon, his old teacher, who attempted to "hack" the distributed control network of the Mantrid drones to shut them down. Mantrid tricked Brizon into thinking he had succeeded, then when Brizon attempted to transfer his own mind into Mantrid's machine to take his place Mantrid killed him. The crew of the Lexx subsequently attempted to construct their own more efficient version of a Mantrid drone with the intent of setting it loose to feed exclusively on the "bad" drones, but by that point the numerical superiority of Mantrid's drones meant that no matter how efficient the new drones were they would still be completely overwhelmed and destroyed in battle. Finally they attempted to locate and destroy Mantrid himself, using a telepathic predator who could locate Mantrid's mind with relative ease now that most other life in the universe was gone. This too failed when the Lexx found that Mantrid's strange little ship was hidden somewhere in a swarm of millions of identical decoys, preventing it from destroying it before Mantrid was able to summon drones to defend him.  This last gambit turned out to be Mantrid's ultimate downfall, however. Kai contacted Mantrid during the battle and taunted him to the point where Mantrid summoned all of his drones to deal with the Lexx, sending most of the universe's mass streaming inward from all directions towards that single point in space. An unstoppable Big Crunch is set in motion as a result, the drones' gravity drawing the remaining unconsumed matter of the universe in along with them. The Lexx manages to escape moments before the end of the universe through a natural portal to the Dark Zone that always existed at the center of mass of each universe, which thanks to Mantrid's overkill was moved to their location.  Mantrid and a few of his drones also managed to slip through the portal as the Light Zone ended, his own ship destroyed so that only a small computer core carried by a single drone arm was left of him. Rather than immediately begin rebuilding his swarms, though, he first slipped aboard the Lexx and attempted to kill the crew. Kai destroyed the remaining drones, leaving Mantrid's computer brain lying helplessly on the floor screaming "I destroyed a universe!" until Xev crushed it under her heel.  Mantrid makes a short appearance in the third season as well, resurrected on the desolate planet Fire to suffer punishment for his choices.