The Strangest Ship In Sci-Fi Is From The Most Insane Series Of The 90s

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 7 seconds ago

You can tell a lot about someone by asking them their favorite spaceship. Ask 100 sci-fi fans, and you’ll get dozens of different answers ranging from Star Trek’s Enterprise-D and Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon to the more offbeat, including Farscape’s Moya and that one Whovian who insists the TARDIS counts. If you’re lucky, at least one person will choose the truly bizarre Lexx from the offbeat late 90’s series Lexx.

A biomechanical ship that resembles a wingless dragonfly, Lexx is the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes. It can talk, achieve ludicrous speeds, and has a tail, all of which put together make it the weirdest ship to ever appear on a sci-fi series. 

The Power To Destroy Planets Used to Find A Date

Lexx (voiced by Tom Gallant) was designed by His Divine Shadow as the tool he would use to wipe out humanity and bring all of existence under the insects’ control. That doesn’t quite work out after hapless security guard Stanley (Brian Downey) accidentally kickstarts the spaceship during an escape and becomes Lexx’s captain. Instead of bringing doom and destruction to the universe, Lexx is tasked to use his incredible powers to find planets of open-minded women. Lexx, the series, is very strange with deep lore stretching back thousands of years, but it’s also very horny. 

The biomechanical design of Lexx gives it a unique look on both the outside and the inside, similar to Farscape’s Moya, except it’s considerably more squishy on the inside. Passages are smaller, the crew’s quarters resemble organs, and even the ship controls look like fleshy, bulbous nodules. That’s the controls for everything from the shower to the steering, and the toilets. Instead of a bidet or toilet paper, Lexx’s toilets come complete with a tongue. Yes, it’s a strange show. 

Lexx Is The Strangest Sci-Fi Show In History

Lexx isn’t a great series, but it at least dared to do something different within the sci-fi genre by acknowledging sex exists. That part is obvious within a few minutes of watching an episode. Lexx, the ship, though, you’d think would be super-advanced, maybe thanks to an “organic computer” or accumulated hivemind memories from other insectoid ships, but no, Lexx makes Stanley look smart. The courier/security guard turned captain often has to explain simple concepts to the ship, but once he finally understands, he’s willing to do basically anything Stanley wants. 

The exception is when it comes time for food. Throughout the run of Lexx, Stanley keeps asking for fancy, exotic foods, and each time, the ship provides goop. There’s no fancy technology creating limitless amounts of food here. Only what the carnivorous ship is capable of producing for the rest of the crew, including Zev (Eba Habermann)/Xev (Xenia Seenburg), the rescued love-slave and later her clone, and Kai (Michael McManus), the thousands-year-old undead assassin. Fast, powerful, capable of feeding and taking care of the crew on the inside, Lexx is, thankfully, a one-of-a-kind ship. 

During the four seasons that Lexx was on the air, the quarters and bridge took on different appearances, explained by Lexx himself that he was growing, but in reality, the result of different budget levels for each season, letting the production crew go absolutely wild or, for Season 4, forced to restrain themselves. Throughout it all, Lexx is destroying planets both for noble reasons and Stanley’s selfish impulses, eating other ships and people, and remaining the weirdest ship in sci-fi that could only ever be a part of the strangest sci-fi series.