Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990)

Cyber City Oedo 808 is a 1990 Japanese anime OVA (original video animation). These were a bit like mini-series but intended for direct-to-video or later direct-to-DVD release. Cyber City Oedo 808 comprised three 45-minute episodes.

It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, one of the great anime directors who was responsible for such crucial anime movies as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Cyber City Oedo 808 deals with three cyber cops in the year 2808. At the start of the first episode they are criminals, serving 300-year sentences in an orbital prison. A very unpleasant place to be. They are offered a way out, of a sort. If they change sides and join the Cyber Police they can gradually get their sentences reduced. There are a few catches. The big one is that they will be fitted with explosive collars. If they disobey orders their heads will be blown off.

It’s not an overly enticing prospect but it’s better than rotting in an orbital prison. Sengoku, Goggles, and Benten agree to the terms.

This is very much in the cyberpunk mould. As you would accept for an anime made in 1990 there are obvious influences from William Gibson’s Sprawl novels and the movie Blade Runner.

The setting is a vast city controlled entirely by computers. The nerve centre of the city is the Space Scraper. It’s like a skyscraper but it’s so tall the upper stories are almost outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

There’s a healthy dose of cyberpunk paranoia. The Cyber Police might be the good guys but their chief Hasegawa is a somewhat nasty piece of work who relies on manipulation and fear. He isn’t interested in winning the loyalty of the trio. They do what they’re told or he’ll kill them. But he’s still one of the good guys - good guys don’t have to be nice guys. I think that’s a nice touch.

The military is not to be trusted. Government is to be regarded with a degree of cynicism.

Some of the themes hinted at here, such as the absolute dependence on technology and the effects of technology on our humanity, would surface in later cyberpunk animes like Ghost in the Shell (1995) and the excellent 2002 TV series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.

Cyber City Oedo 808 was made at a time when anime dealing with dark grown-up subjects was still a fairly new thing and Yoshiaki Kawajiri was one of the pioneers of this more ambitious approach. It was also a time when anime was just starting to gain a major following in English-speaking markets.

There’s plenty of action and with only 45 minutes to tell each story the pacing is pleasingly brisk. There are almost none of the erotic elements that you find in Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s later films. There is however some moderately graphic violence.

The visuals are very impressive (as they are in all of Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s work).

Interestingly there are hints of the paranormal and even perhaps the supernatural.

Each story focuses on one of the three main characters. They’re all criminals and outsiders and misfits but they are rather different. Sengoku is more of a classic rebel. Goggles is the tough guy but he has emotional depths. Benten is more of a dreamy mystical romantic although he can be pretty dangerous as well. He does cute things with piano wire.

Since the three characters are quite different each of the three segments has a different flavour. The three segments were originally released separately on video in Japan. English-speaking audiences got to see them with crude English dubs that had almost no connection with the original dialogue and which removed all the essential atmosphere of mystery and tragedy. If you’ve only seen Cyber City Oedo 808 in the English-dubbed version then you haven’t seen it at all.

Memories of the Past

The first episode is Memories of the Past (AKA Virtual Death AKA Time Bomb). In this story the focus is on Sengoku. A hacker has taken control of all the Space Scraper’s security systems and he has fifteen hostages trapped in an external elevator. The hacker’s identity is unknown but he is clearly after revenge. The three reluctant cyber cops have to stop him before he kills the hostages and destroys the Space Scraper, and without the Space Scraper the city cannot survive.

Sengoku manages to find a way into the Space Scraper but he soon finds himself unsure of the identity of the real villain. There may be more than one.

This episode has a decent plot with the sorts of twists that you want to see in a cyberpunk story. 

This is a straight-out action story.

The Decoy Program

The Decoy Program (AKA Psychic Trooper AKA The Decoy) begins with separate cases being investigated by the individual members of the team but there seems to be a common link and it points to the involvement of Special Forces.

Goggles becomes the central character in this segment. He finds himself pitted against a secret weapon intended to be the ultimate killing machine. Lots of mayhem and spectacular fight scenes in this instalment but there’s paranoia and betrayal as well, and possibly forgiveness. Maybe even a hint of love. There’s certainly a theme of lost love and being haunted by the past.

This is by far the most violent segment. It’s a real grudge fight to the death. And when Goggles gets mad he gets real mad.

Crimson Media

Crimson Media (AKA Blood Lust AKA The Vampire) centres on Benten. He’s had an encounter with an entrancing and mysterious woman.

A series of murders has been blamed by the media on vampires. The corpses were drained of blood. Perhaps there are vampires, of a sort. And perhaps the worst vampires do more than feast on blood.

The murder victims were carrying out illegal research.

Again the past figures in the story. This story actually began three hundred years earlier.

Science fictional treatments of vampirism have been attempted a number of times although in 1990 it was still a fairly fresh idea. This is a story about vampires but it also becomes a kind of love story. This segment has much more of an atmosphere of mystery, weirdness and melancholy. It’s my favourite of the three.

Final Thoughts

It’s worth pointing out that Japanese OVAs were not low-budget schlock. They were less expensive to make than feature films but much more expensive than TV series. They were ideal for telling stories that might be too risky as feature films but were much too grown-up and edgy for TV. There was nothing cheap and nasty about them and directors like Yoshiaki Kawajiri did not see them as lesser productions.

Cyber City Oedo 808 offers plenty of style and plenty of action. The first episode is OK, the second and third are excellent. Overall this is top-tier cyberpunk. Highly recommended.

Happily the Blu-Ray (which looks terrific) includes the Japanese-language version with English subtitles which is the only way to see this release.

Lexx season 2 (1998)

Lexx is of course the greatest sci-fi TV series ever made. The first season (which I’ve also reviewed) comprised four TV-movies. It then switched to a more straightforward episodic format for seasons two, three and four. It’s the second season with which I’m concerned in this review. This is a series that completely ignores all the established conventions of TV science fiction. Or rather it takes those conventions and stomps them.

One of the reasons it’s so good is that it wasn’t British or American. It was a Canadian-German co-production. The Canadians and Germans were simply not constrained by conventional ideas about how to do sci-fi TV. If you’ve ever seen the 1976 Anglo-German series Star Maidens (which in its own way is almost as crazy and inspired as Lexx) you know that the Germans have their own ideas about how to do sci-fi.

There are three things that stand out about Lexx. Firstly, the stunning visuals. The visuals are not just spectacular - they display genuine imagination, style and wit. Lexx just doesn’t look like other sci-fi TV series.

Secondly there’s the outrageousness. This is wild crazy stuff. At times Lexx veers perilously close to being a spoof or a satire on TV sci-fi but it never totally crosses that line. There’s plenty of comedy but this is not a comedy series. This is not Red Dwarf. Just when Lexx seems to descending into goofiness it will take a dark turn. And the humour is very black.

And thirdly there’s the sexiness. Prior to this the only people who had ever thought of combining science fiction with serious sleaze were the Japanese (if you’ve seen Wicked City you know what I’m talking about). British and American sci-fi would never dare to venture into outright sleaze territory. Lexx is unapologetically sexy, sleazy and scuzzy. Lexx gets down and dirty. Lexx is totally unconstrained by conventional notions of good taste.

It’s fascinating to compare Lexx to Farscape which entered production a couple of years later (and shamelessly stole the living starship idea). Farscape is also visually impressive and also tries to be grown-up sci-fi but by comparison it’s very conventional, very tame and very safe.

What makes Lexx fascinating is that it takes a very conventional basic premise - four misfits adventuring through space in a stolen starship - and does insane things with it.

Lexx is also not afraid to be nasty. In one episode three human astronauts on board the Lexx get eaten by a monster and the crew of the Lexx are totally unconcerned. They don’t know these people so they don’t care. Insofar as they have any loyalties those loyalties are to each other. There is nothing touchy-feely about Lexx.

There’s also perhaps a slight existentialist vibe.

The background to the first season is that many many centuries ago there was an epic war between humans and space insects. As an indirect result an evil genius, His Divine Shadow, ended up in control of a vast galactic empire. This was definitely a dystopian society, a species of theocratic/bureaucratic totalitarianism. Don’t get alarmed. Lexx has no political axes to grind.

A very low-level security guard named Stanley Tweedle ends up in possession of the Lexx along with his three companions. 790 is a robot, or was a robot. Now he’s just a robot head. Kai is the last of the Brunnen-G. He has been dead for two thousand years. He then served as an assassin for His Divine Shadow. Now he’s given up killing. Well, mostly. Kai is dead but he’s quite lively for a dead man. He’s undead rather than dead. And lastly there’s Zev Bellringer. She was turned into a love slave but something went wrong and so she’s also part cluster lizard. What’s a cluster lizard? You don’t want to know. Let’s just say that you don’t want to make Zev angry. Mostly she’s a sweet girl who just wants love but when the cluster lizard part of her is awakened she’s a killing machine.

The Lexx is like a gigantic living space crustacean. It’s also the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes.

There’s an ongoing story arc in season two, just as there was in season one. This time the crew of Lexx face an evil of a different type, an evil of total chaos rather an evil of total control.The evil is Mantrid. Who or what Mantrid is is uncertain. There’s also arguably a second minor story arc but to say more would risk spoilers.

Episode Guide

In the first episode, Mantrid, Kai isn’t quite himself. He isn’t himself at all. For a dead man he’s suddenly highly motivated. He insists on a return to the Light Universe. He wants to find Mantrid, a scientific genius who also happens to be evil, perverted and insane. But Kai needs his help. It’s all about a giant bug. Given that humans once fought an epic galactic war against insects giant insects should be approached with caution. This episode features two of the creepiest villains of all time.

In Terminal Kai accidentally pulverises Stanley’s heart. The only hope of saving Stanley is an orbiting hospital. Unfortunately the administrators of the hospital are crooks and the doctors are both evil and insane. They have plans for Kai and for Zev, and for the Lexx. The doctors do make one mistake. They forget to check if Zev is entirely human before they start experimenting on her. Of course she is not entirely human and that has consequences. There are serious consequences for Zev as well but I won’t reveal them for fear of revealing a spoiler.

In Lyekka Stanley meets the girl of his dreams. Literally. He dreams about her, and then there she is. She’s cute, bubbly and friendly. She’s really sweet. Her name is Lyekka. The perfect woman. Well, almost. She’s missing something vital. And she might be more of a plant than a woman. There are other strangers to deal with - a spacecraft from the planet Potatoho. A planet famous for, well actually potatoes are what it’s famous for. They’re not hostile. They get to meet Lyekka as well. Perhaps they would have been better off not meeting her.  We will see more of Lyekka in later episodes.

In this episode the writers had to come up with a way of dealing with a major potential problem. Eva Habermann was leaving the series, to be replaced by Xenia Seeberg. Writing Zev out of the series was unthinkable so a way had to be found to explain why Zev now looks different, and why she is now Xev. In fact the writers found a rather clever way to deal with this but naturally I’m not going to spoil things by telling you any more.

In Luvliner Stanley and Xev both have a problem. They both desperately need to get laid. They can’t do it with each other because Xev just doesn’t go for Stanley. When they make contact with the orbiting brothel Luvliner (that caters to ladies as well as gentlemen) it seems like a godsend. Stanley and Xev head over to Luvliner for some serious bedroom action. Sadly the Luvliner is the crummiest most down-market most scuzzy brothel in the two universes. And there’s another problem - two very nasty sleazebags who want to steal the Lexx.

Lafftrak is typical Lexx with a totally off-the-wall opening sequence about a war between two planets over TV ratings. The Lexx encounters a strange object which is a kind of mini-planet. Stanley and Zev decide to investigate and find themselves cast as characters in TV series. They find that TV stardom is not all it’s cracked up to be and it has unexpected hazards. There’s some merciless mockery of television and the desire for celebrity status. in this episode. It’s totally insane and outrageous but this is Lexx so you expect that.

The whimsical oddball craziness of Lafftrak is followed by a very much darker episode, Stan’s Trial. Stan has been accused of horrific crimes that took place ten years earlier and has to stand trial after being captured on board a high-class orbiting brothel. In any other TV sci-fi series we would be relieved to find out at the end that Stanley is totally innocent but characteristically Lexx throws some curve balls at us. In fact Stan may be guilty, in a way. In another way, perhaps not guilty of horrible crimes but guilty of cowardice and dereliction of duty. This episode displays the interest that the show’s writers had in the ambiguous nature of justice and guilt and in the temptations that power brings. It’s also an intriguing and complex study of evil.

In Love Grows the sexual desperation of both Stanley and Xev leads to disaster and the Lexx and its crew are infected with a virus that has very disturbing results.

In White Trash the crew of the Lexx find themselves reluctant hosts to a family of space hillbillies. They’re not overly thrilled although Stanley starts coming around to the idea when the daughter indicates that she’d be a very willing bed partner. Xev thinks she might get lucky as well. The son is a long way short of her ideal of the perfect man but he is at least a man and if he wants to do the humpy-jumpy with her she might consider it. Of course it doesn’t end well.

Wake the Dead is Lexx spoofing slasher movies. Lexx picks up five annoying teenage delinquents on their way to summer camp on a summer camp planet. They accidentally put themselves into cryo-sleep for 287 years. Now they’re aboard the Lexx and they find themselves stalked by a psycho killer. In fact the psycho killer intends to kill everybody. These kinds of whimsical spoof episodes were sometimes done in sci-fi series but this being Lexx it’s done with real edge and nastiness. It also has the juvenile humour, the crassness and the obligatory nudity of a slasher film.

Nook is a planet that is all ocean, with one small island. It is inhabited by monks living a very simple life. The monks find the arrival of Stanley, Xev and Kai very disturbing. They have never seen a man like Xev before. Explaining to them that Xev is a woman does no good. They have no knowledge of the existence of women. Some of the brothers do however notice that this strange man is oddly attractive. Stanley gets accused of murder. Xev finally gets to do it - yes, after so much frustration she finally has sex with a man. In fact with several men. Quite a few times. She’s now a very happy Xev. It’s a typical Lexx story with some weirdness, some creepiness and a sting in the tail.

Norb is a young boy marooned in space, or at least that’s how it seems. Appearances can be deceptive. The crew of the Lexx are about to be engaged in a deadly battle with an old enemy.

In Twilight Stanley becomes very ill. A nearby planet appears to offer some hope of medical help. The only human in habitats of this world are the last surviving member of the Divine Order, his wife and their daughter. This is a spectacularly awful dysfunctional family and they’re not to be trusted. Especially the daughter who is giving Xev some rather lustful glances. There are also plenty of non-human inhabitants here. They combine the most unpleasant features of zombies and ghouls. And Kai is behaving very strangely.

Patches in the Sky presents the Lexx’s crew with a serious problem - the stars are going out one by one. Meanwhile Stanley is sampling the delights of the NarcoLounge which allows a person to control his own dreams. Unfortunately Stanley gets trapped in a very very bad dream.

In Woz Xev has a problem and may have only a few days to live. The only technology that could save her is on the planet Woz. There are two bitterly opposed factions on Woz and initially it’s by no means clear which faction represents the good guys. There’s what appears to be a religious cult but intriguingly (and daringly) the writers have chosen to make it more an ideological cult than a religious one. And it’s another episode that demonstrates Lexx’s willingness to get pretty dark.

In The Web the Lexx is caught in, you guessed it, a kind of web in outer space.

Brigadoom is the all-singing episode of Lexx. It’s a riff on the Lerner and Loewe musical Brigadoon. The Lexx discovers a theatre floating space. It only comes into existence at lengthy intervals. Otherwise it exists in a kind of non-existence outside time and space. The theatre company always performs the same play, a musical version of the story of the Brunnen-G. It’s an original offbeat way to give us Kai’s backstory and the history of the Brunnen-G. This episode is even more clever - Kai, Xev and Stanley all learn about themselves and how to face their fears. This is the kind of off-the-wall episode that makes me love Lexx so much.

In Brizom the Mantrid story arc kicks into high gear. Brizom is a bio-engineer. He’s a deeply unpleasant man but he has his good points - he hates Mantrid and he may the knowledge needed to stop him.

The End of the Universe may actually mean the end of the universe, unless the crew of the Lexx can find a way to defeat Mantrid.

Final Thoughts

In this second season all the main characters either have to confront their pasts or learn to come to terms with their true natures. Even 790 discovers that he’s not quite what he thought he was. They also learn that their only hope of survival is absolute in-group loyalty. They don’t owe anything to anybody else but by the end of the season they do owe a lot to each other. They have all perhaps grown up a little.

It’s a very strong season and it’s very highly recommended.

I reviewed Lexx season one not too long ago.

Lexx (1996-2002)

Lexx is a series that lies slightly outside the usual time frame covered by this blog but if you’re talking about cult TV then Lexx is about as cult as you can get. Compared to most US and British sci-fi series Lexx is wildly different. This ain’t Star Trek.

The first season of Lexx is a series of four TV movies. It then became a regular series for three further series.

Lexx polarised sci-fi fans at the time and it still polarises people.

It’s the story of four oddly assorted people (only one of whom is entirely human) who roam the galaxy in the most powerful and destructive spacecraft ever built, the Lexx. The Lexx is a living spaceship.

At this point, if you’ve never seen Lexx, you might be thinking that it sounds like a rip-off of Farscape. In fact Lexx preceded Farscape by a couple of years so if there was any borrowing of ideas going on it was Farscape that copied Lexx. And Lexx is as different from Farscape as any two series could possibly be. Lexx is very very unconventional.

Lexx was a Canadian-German co-production, and that’s significant. It has a very European feel. It rejects conventional Anglo-American approaches altogether. It’s interesting to compare it to Star Maidens, a much earlier example of a distinctively European approach to sci-fi (Star Maidens was an Anglo-German production). Lexx, like Star Maidens, is sci-fi with sexual themes and they’re very sexual and they’re kinda kinky.

Stanley Tweedle (Brian Downey), a very unimportant very low-level functionary in the service of His Divine Shadow, gets caught in the middle of a revolution in the Cluster (the capital city of the League of 20,000 Planets). Also caught up in this revolution are 790, Zev Bellringer (Eva Habermann) and Kai and these four will end up forming the crew of the Lexx.

790 used to be a robot but all that’s left of him is a head, but he still has his robot brain. Unfortunately when Zev’s transformation into a love slave went slightly wrong he became part love slave and since the only female around is Zev he develops a sexual obsession with her.

Kai (Michael McManus) is the last of the Brunnen-G, warriors who once won great victories for humanity. He’s been dead for 2,000 years but he can be reactivated. Kai is used by His Divine Shadow as a merciless assassin. Kai can be reanimated with proto-blood but the supply is limited.

Zev is a woman who failed in her wifely duties. As punishment she was reprogrammed into a living sex slave. But something went wrong. She’s now almost entirely a human woman and almost entirely a love slave but she has just a touch of Cluster Lizard in her. Since Cluster Lizards are awesome killing machines that touch of Cluster Lizard can come in handy. What makes this particularly useful is that people look at her and just see a pretty young girl and they tend to underestimate her. If they upset her she can turn them into minced dog food in a trice. And she’s quite happy to do this.

As for His Divine Shadow, he rules the League of 20,000 Planets in the name of order (and a kind of religion) but his regime is both totalitarian and arbitrarily brutal. There are heretics who seek to destroy his regime.

So why did (and do) so many people hate Lexx? That’s easy enough to answer. Lexx rides roughshod over the conventions of both its genre and series television as well. Many science fiction fans could not accept the way it combines apparently incompatible elements - it veers from goofy comedy to incredible darkness and nihilism, it combines extreme violence with overt sexuality. And it does not have conventional sci-fi heroes. Many viewers could accept the idea of a cast that included a few amusing misfits but they could not accept a series without at least one conventional Square-Jawed Hero and at least one conventional Strong Capable Woman.

The four regulars are all misfits, but they’re not even conventional anti-heroes or flawed heroes. Stanley is cowardly and untrustworthy, and obsessed with getting into Zev’s pants. Kai is a merciless killer. 790 is a disembodied robot head who wants to be Zev’s sex slave. Zev is a sweet girl but she’s totally amoral and she’s a nymphomaniac. All four take great delight in slaughtering their enemies, or even just anyone who gets in their way. They do what it takes to survive. And they’re the Good Guys.

Lexx is also cheerfully politically incorrect and cheerfully sleazy.

If your idea of TV sci-fi is Star Trek: The Next Generation it’s all a bit bewildering. It has dialogue that you just don’t get in Star Trek: TNG. At one point Zev asks 790, “What sort of robot are you?” To which he replies, “I’m a robot that wants to live in your underpants.”

Of course the very things that some sci-fi fans hated about Lexx are the very things that made other fans love it with a passion. Lexx is sci-fi for grown-ups. This is not a kids’ show. While its critics saw it as appallingly disreputable its fans saw it as delightfully disreputable and loved its wild unconventionality.

Lexx is also extraordinarily impressive visually. It was the first sci-fi series to use CGI effectively and imaginatively. There is so much sexual symbolism in the visuals that one’s head begins to spin. This is not a kids’ show. But given the sexlessness of most TV science fiction Lexx’s approach is refreshing.

It also covers all bases when it comes to eye candy. Female viewers could swoon over the handsome psychologically tortured bad boy Kai. Male viewers could drool over the luscious Zev.

Episode Guide

The first movie, I Worship His Shadow, explains how four misfits gained control of the most powerful destructive force in the galaxy. It gives us our first glimpse into the Lexx universe. Or rather, the two Lexx universes. There’s the Light Universe and the Dark Universe. The Light Universe represents order, the Dark Universe represents evilness. But this is Lexx, so things are not that simple. The Light Universe is ruled by His Divine Shadow and there is certainly order there, but in fact it’s a bureaucratic dystopian nightmare. There’s chaos in the Dark Universe, but also the possibility of freedom and dignity. If you can survive.

Super Nova takes us to the home planet of the Brunnen-G, where Zev hopes to find a way to restore Kai to life. At the moment he has a kind of precarious half-life. He can be revived for brief periods but that’s not enough to give Zev what she needs. As she admits to Stanley, her sexual needs are beyond measurement. The Brunnen-G home world is an abandoned dying planet with a sun that is only prevented from going supernova by artificial means. Giggerota the Wicked, who featured in the first episode, makes a reappearance. She’s not a very nice lady. For one thing she’s a cannibal, and that’s one of her lesser character flaws. Both Giggerota and the Divine Predecessors (the disembodied brains of previous incarnations of His Divine Shadow) are trying to get control of the Lexx.

Visually this episode is perhaps even more bizarrely imaginative than the first episode. It also significantly ramps up the kinkiness factor and the erotic subtexts. Eva Habermann even has a brief but memorable nude scene.

We get to know some of the characters a bit better. Stanley is a coward who displays occasional brief flashes of courage, and he’s treacherous and untrustworthy but capable of occasional moments of self-sacrificing loyalty. He’s more than a mere comic character. Zev is single-minded, ruthless and driven by lust.

Things take a decided turn for the grungy and the gruesome in Eating Pattern. Lexx is hungry. Less is of course a living spaceship and he has to eat. And if Lexx is starving his crew starves - they depend on him for their food supply. So although the planet Klaagia on which they have chosen to land looks very uninviting (it’s literally a garbage dump) they don’t have much choice. The planet’s inhabitants are very excited to see Zev. What they see is fresh meat. They depend on a substance called Pattern, and you can’t make Pattern without meat. The only meat on the planet is human. But fresh human meat makes excellent Pattern.

It’s a nightmare planet ruled by the clearly insane Bog (Rutger Hauer giving a deliciously off-the-wall performance). There’s also a pretty young woman named Wist (Doreen Jacobi). She’s cute and sexy and very very dangerous. Everyone on the planet is insane but it takes a while before we figure out the horrifying explanation.

It’s Rutger Hauer and Doreen Jacobi who make this episode worth watching.

Giga Shadow gets into seriously epic territory. Things have been happening in the Light Universe. Scary things, like the Cleansing and the Rebirth. And the emergence of the Giga Shadow. Heretical clerics, including Yottskry (Malcom McDowell) have tried to stop the Giga Shadow and have failed. The crew of the Lexx know nothing of this when they decide to return to the Light Universe to replenish Kai’s proto-blood supply.

We get more character development. Zev had a horrific and very artificial upbringing. She doesn’t really know what it’s like to be human, and she doesn’t really know what it’s like to be a woman. But she is a woman and she’s having to learn to grow up and deal with a woman’s emotions. She shows unexpected tenderness and unexpected emotional depth in this episode. Eva Habermann gives a startlingly good performance.

And Kai changes as well. He’s dead but he lives and he’s having to come to terms with that. And he gets a pet - a cute little baby cluster lizard. He actually manages to bond emotionally with his pet. Perhaps Zev will be able to teach him to bond emotionally with her? Stanley displays surprising intelligence and we start to see that while he’s still a coward there are smidgeons of decency and even bravery buried deeply within him.

Final Thoughts

Lexx is dark, richly imaginative, intelligent, crazy, sexy, sleazy, violent, outrageous, inspired, visually lush, funny and goofy and if you just go with the flow it’s an amazing ride. Very highly recommended.

Mission: Impossible (the 1996 movie)

Movies based on popular 1960s TV series are usually pretty dire but the 1996 Mission: Impossible movies is an interesting exception.

At this stage of his career Tom Cruise had reached the very reasonable conclusion that the best way to ensure that he got rôles that appealed to him was to produce the movies himself. As a kid he’d been a huge fan of the 1960s Mission: Impossible TV series and making a movie version sounded like a tempting idea. The fact that Cruise was a sincere and enthusiastic fan of the TV series is significant. He didn’t want to do a deconstruction of the TV series or a parody. He wanted to make a movie capturing as much of the spirit of the TV version as possible.

This was actually quite a challenge because Mission: Impossible was a very unusual TV series. Bruce Geller, the creator and executive producer of the TV series, not only had some highly idiosyncratic ideas as to the form it would take he actually managed to persuade the production company and the network to allow him to do it his way. His first and most notable idea was that the characters would have no personality whatsoever. The focus would be entirely on plot. And, after all, spies don’t have personalities - their whole lives and their very survival are based on being able to pretend to be something other than what they are. By the time you get to the end of the 171 episodes of the series you know no more about any of the characters than you knew at the beginning. You know pretty much nothing important about their backgrounds and absolutely zero about their personal lives. Does Barney have kids? Is Cinnamon married? Does Mr Phelps play golf on the weekends? Was Willy in the army? We have no idea. Having characters with zero personality was going to be tricky for a 1990s feature film.

The TV series also has no humour at all. Humour might have humanised the characters, which was not what Geller wanted. That was also going to be tricky for the movie version.

The series also had a very distinctive structure. These were very specialised spies. They conducted not just covert operations but what would later be known as black ops, totally illegal. Almost every mission was an elaborate con game, a tortuous exercise in deception and misdirection. The Impossible Mission Force did not shoot people but it did very often manoeuvre them into a position where their own side would shoot them. Any attempt to transfer the series to the big screen would have to at least partially incorporate this idea.

The movie nails its colours to the mast right at the start. We get a pre-credits scene that is classic Mission: Impossible deception stuff and then we get the opening credits, done very much in Mission: Impossible style. And we get the theme music, and yes it’s Lalo Schifrin’s original theme music for the TV series. After which we get Mr Phelps (yes, Mr Phelps) receiving his instructions complete with the “this tape will self-destruct in five seconds” thing. He chooses his IMF team and explains his plan.

The key member of the team is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and he’s rather in the same mould as Rollin Hand from the TV series although considerably more athletic. He is a master of disguise (just like Rollin) and he even does magic tricks (just like Rollin). There’s also hacker Jack Harmon who performs pretty much the same function as Barney in the TV series. He even has to climb up inside an elevator shaft, just as Barney did in at least one TV series episode. Instead of Cinnamon Carter the team includes three glamorous females.

Up to this point the movie is practically an episode of the TV series. It then departs from the original formula in some respects button entirely. The film’s most spectacular action sequence could have been taken straight from the TV series, albeit it’s done on a much more lavish scale. There is a major action set-piece at the end of the movie that is very Bond movie, but commercial realities being what they are there’s no way they could have avoided including such a sequence.

The famous lines from the TV series about the Secretary disavowing all knowledge of the IMF if they got themselves killed or captured also become painfully relevant.

It’s also interesting that despite a few Bondian moments this is definitely not a Bond movie clone. And Ethan Hunt is most definitely not a James Bond clone. In this movie he does carry a gun but it’s noteworthy that he doesn’t shoot anybody. He also doesn’t rely on his fists or martial arts skills. He does make use of his superb physical fitness and his nerves of steel but mostly he relies on out-thinking his opponents and on the classic Mission: Impossible TV series methods of deception and of setting elaborate traps. As the CIA agent tasked with catching him says at one point the difficult part of hunting someone like Hunt is that he’s so pro-active. And that describes him perfectly. He’s constantly devising plans. When you thinking you’re hunting him he’s probably actually hunting you. His mind never stops working (there’s one superb scene in which you see him talking to a key character and all the while Hunt is analysing the data available to him and fitting the pieces of the jigsaw together). As action heroes go Ethan Hunt is pretty cerebral. His methods are more like George Smiley’s than Bond’s. And the plot is the kind of classic mole-hunt that Smiley would have relished.

What’s most notable is just how closely this movie adheres to the formula and the structure of the TV series. Ethan Hunt is a more well-rounded character than any in the series but when you think about it how much do we actually learn about him? Was he ever married? Is he married now? Does he have children? Is he ex-military? How was he recruited to the IMF? What does he do on his days off? What are his tastes in music and books? The very very few facts that we learn about him are those essential to the plot.

The movie’s plot is a series of complex snares relying on deception and misdirection. Some of the traps are laid by Mr Phelps, some by Hunt’s enemies and some are improvised by Hunt himself.  Any of these traps could have made a fine episode of the TV series.

The only departures from the formula are those that were unavoidable given the commercial realties of the film marketplace. Tom Cruise had to be permitted the occasional (actually very occasional) wry wisecrack. Ethan Hunt had to be marginally more human than the TV characters. There had to be more action. There had to be a Bond movie-type action finale.

There’s also no more sex than there was in the TV series, the violence isn’t graphic and there’s very little bad language.

There’s some definite Cold War atmosphere in the movie and visually there are even a few hints of film noir. And with Brian de Palma directing there are of course lots of references to other movies. In this case de Palma has fun paying homage to the classic heist movies of the ’60s, movies like Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair and Gambit.

To be honest I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate this movie fully unless you’re a fan of the original TV series. There are all sorts of little touches that only make sense when you recognise them as homages to the TV series. Ethan Hunt’s disguises and his magic tricks are much more fun when you know they’re nods to the series. The same applies to the gadgets (which are much closer in spirit to the original series than to the gadgets in a Bond movie). The insanely over-complicated plot is more enjoyable when you know that the series was renowned for its insanely over-complicated plots. The lack of a really strong romance angle makes more sense when you know that in the TV series romance was only ever present as a weapon used by the IMF to entrap people. I suspect that a lot of the critics who disliked the movie didn’t notice the extraordinary efforts to capture the feel and the conventions of the series.

Mission: Impossible is surprisingly successful in retaining the feel of the TV series whilst still being an exciting ’90s action movie. It’s enormously enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Diagnosis Murder season 1 (1993)

One of the more interesting of American pop culture phenomena of the late 20th century was the geriatric television detective series. Or perhaps it would be kinder to speak of senior detectives. This particular craze probably began with the hugely successful Barnaby Jones series. There were other key series, like Matlock, but the most successful of them all was Murder, She Wrote, one of the most popular crime series of all time. A late entrant in this genre was Diagnosis Murder which premiered on CBS in 1993.

Dick Van Dyke is the star and the cast includes his real life son Barry Van Dyke, playing Dr Sloan’s cop son Steve. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that Dick Van Dyke is a great actor but what can’t be denied is that he is a star. He’s very much like Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote - he has the charisma and he has the likeability and he has the same compulsive watchability.

There’s also Scott Baio (from Happy Days) as the cheerful Dr Jack Stewart who gets roped into crime-solving as well. He’s surprisingly good but there is one slight problem. Baio is Italian, he looks Italian and he sounds Italian. Who on earth decided to give him a Scottish name?

Dr Sloan seems to spend more time investigating crimes than treating patients and he gets plenty of help from both Dr Stewart and Dr Amanda Bentley.

The plots are not always brilliant or staggeringly original but they’re generally pretty solid and they’re executed with conviction.

The most difficult things to get right in a series like this are the tone and the balance. It has to be light-hearted enough to be fun but it must not descend into parody or out-and-out farce. There has to be humour but it must not be allowed to overwhelm the plots. And Diagnosis Murder mostly does get these things right.

It’s also refreshing to find a series made as recently as this (it ran from 1993 to 2001) that eschews graphic violence, gore and bad language. Although they’re both series about crime-fighting doctors Diagnosis Murder is noticeably less gruesome than Quincy, M.E., made fifteen years earlier. Diagnosis Murder is a reminder that a television series can be wholesome and still be very entertaining.

The Episode Guide

The season one opener is Miracle Cure. This is an inverted mystery story. We know who the killer is right from the start. We don’t know why a priest would be a killer. It’s actually a hit-and-run incident that would not never have attracted the attention of the police except that Dr Mark Sloan is puzzled by the death of the hit-and-run victim. He’s not surprised that the victim died but he is surprised, very surprised, that he seems to have died of heart failure. That just doesn’t make sense. And when things don’t make sense Dr Mark Sloan gets rather curious and starts poking about in matters that don’t concern him.

Amnesia involves a professional hit woman who wants to become a patient at Community General so she can carry out her assassination. Since there’s a senator in the hospital it seems reasonable to assume he’s the target. The plan is just about perfect, if only Dr Mark Sloan hadn’t started asking awkward questions and if only Dr Jack Stewart hadn’t noticed some some odd things about a certain female patient.

Telethons were one of the more bizarre manifestations of 20th century popular culture and they still survived in 1993. And in Murder at the Telethon a telethon provides a pretty good opportunity for a murder. The murder victim is Buddy Blake (Dom DeLuise), a has-been comic. Everybody who has ever met Buddy Blake has a motive for killing him. This is an episode that is totally excessive and outrageous but it works extremely well.

In Inheritance of Death Mark’s rich 93-year-old cousin wants to leave his vast fortune to Community General Hospital but he also believes that his three children are trying to kill him. Mark is inclined to think the old boy could be right. The gimmick here is that Dick Van Dyke plays the 93-year-old and the three possibly murderous children. He of course hams it up. The results are silly but reasonably amusing.

In Vanishing Act Steve Sloan has his suspicions that some of the detectives at the 15th Precinct are corrupt. He makes a report to an Internal Affairs officer but then everything goes wrong and Steve finds himself facing a murder charge. This is a two-parter and while it isn’t a bad story I don’t think it’s the right kind of story for this series. It’s a hardboiled tale of crooked cops and gangsters. It seems to be two completely different productions. It’s as if Dr Sloan and his son along with Dr Jack Stewart and most of the guest cast are making a tough gritty cop show while the various regular cast members at the hospital are making a broad comedy and then somebody has spliced the two together. The two halves are just too discordant. And Dick Van Dyke does not belong in a hardboiled gangster story (Scott Baio on the other hand manages quite well). It’s an interesting episode because it seems like it may have been intended as a bit of an experiment but for my money it doesn’t quite come off.

The 13 Million Dollar Man is much more the sort of story that suits this series. A patient named Dale Harlan dies of gunshot wounds and leaves Mark Sloan with a winning lottery ticket, worth 13 million dollars, and instructions to use the money to do some good. There are however three other people who believe that the ticket should by rights be theirs. And Mark suspects that one of those three people murdered Harlan. Mark comes up with some clever schemes to unmask the killer. There’s plenty of fun, some effective humour and a very neat plot. And it’s all extremely well executed. An excellent episode.

Shanda's Song is another case of a fairly clever plot but again a story that doesn’t seem quite right for the series. Someone is trying to murder rock star Shanda. Had it been an ageing rock star from the 60s it might have made sense but Shanda is supposed to be the latest thing among trendy twenty-somethings. Which kind of suggests that someone thought the series should try to to appeal to trendy twenty-somethings, a remarkably optimistic idea.

In The Restless Remains investment guru Robin Westlin arrives on Mark Sloan’s doorstep and promptly dies. By the time the ambulance arrives the body has disappeared. Since Mark had just been to the dentist and had a head full of nitrous oxide everyone assumes he was hallucinating. Mark thinks so too, until he finds Westlin’s diary under his couch. Now he has to prove that Westlin is dead and then find out who did it. This is a tightly constructed and very entertaining story.

I just love murder mysteries dealing with stage magic and Murder with Mirrors is a good one. An extremely unpleasant magician named Madison dies performing his most famous trick. There are four people with very strong motives for killing him and three have unbreakable alibis. The fourth is Madison’s partner and also an old friend of Mark’s so he’s naturally arrested but Mark is determined to prove his innocence. The solution is very simple and obvious once it’s revealed but it’s one of those simple solutions you’ll almost certainly  be fooled by. Which is a fine recipe for a murder mystery plot. An excellent episode.

Flashdance with Death is much more far-fetched but it is ingenious and it has a rather unexpected twist. It’s another murder with a theatrical background (which gives Dick Van Dyke the opportunity to show off his tap-dancing skills). There’s murder at a dance studio and Steve Sloan’s girlfriend is a suspect. A solid episode.

It seems like all of Mark Sloan’s relatives and friends are going to end up being murder suspects and in Reunion with Murder it’s Dr Amanda Bentley. Since she’s one of Sloan’s crime-solving buddies he’s naturally anxious to clear her. It seems that in college she was one of the mean girls who made life hell for Nancy Barlow. Now Nancy is out for revenge and she has some very juicy dirt on all her former tormentors. It’s no surprise that this leads to murder. A decent episode.

In Lily Jack’s old friend Sandy Hoyle has become a high-class call girl with a sideline in blackmail. It’s a dangerous game to play, and it’s especially dangerous for someone as foolish as Sandy. Predictably she gets herself murdered. The police write it off as an OD but Jack and Dr Sloan have come across some very interesting clues that point unequivocally to murder. A decent episode.

In Guardian Angel the mayor gets murdered. There’s an obvious suspect but Mark is sure that he didn’t do it. He has his own ideas about the actual identity of the killer. There’s an alibi that is just too flimsy and there’s a red car that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A routine episode.

Nirvana is quite enjoyable although seasoned mystery buffs will probably spot the surprise twist fairly early. Yet another of Jack Stewart’s disreputable friends has landed himself in trouble. It’s the sort of trouble that is likely to lead your body being found in the burnt-out wreck of a car. The car happens to belong to Dr Jack Stewart. Dr Sloan checks in to the Nirvana health farm looking for clues (that’s where Jack’s friend used to work). Both Dr Stewart and Dr Sloan end this story battered and bruised, for very different reasons, and Jack gets a chance to play the hero. Excellent episode.

Broadcast Blues  is an impossible crime story. Convict Paul Dunbar is taken to Community General for tests that cannot be performed at the prison hospital. He escapes and takes a hostage, and demands to speak to TV anchorman Jordan Sanders. Sanders agrees to meet him. Shots are fired through a partially opened door and the end result is both Dunbar and Sanders dead. It is absolutely clear what has happened. Dunbar killed Sanders and then killed himself. There is no other possible explanation. Until Mark Sloan realises that it simply could not have happened this way.

The solution is fairly simple but it works. The key to the success of the plot is that what we actually know is not quite the same as what we’re sure of because it must have been that way. A very fine episode.

There are lots of things to worry about when you’re in the middle of an earthquake so you normally wouldn’t have time to think about committing a murder. But in Shaker a murder des take place during an earthquake. A solid episode.

Hitman Bruno Crespi is a really sick guy. Now even hitmen can get sick but it’s the nature of the illness which is unusual. Bruno Crespi has bubonic plague. So The Plague is a medical disaster tale but there’s a crime element as well, centring on how exactly Crespi managed to get infected. Another solid episode.

Sister Michael Wants You is a very light-hearted tale of murder in a nunnery, with a hardboiled Mother Superior and a missing clue that has to be somewhere in the nunnery but repeated searches have come up blank. A fun story.

Final Thoughts

My main doubt about Diagnosis Murder is that I get the feeling that no-one was quite sure exactly which demographic they were trying to chase. Mostly they seemed to be after the demographic that had made Murder, She Wrote such a huge hit. Which would have been a very sensible strategy. But then you get episodes like Vanishing Act and Shanda’s Song that seem to be chasing a totally different audience. If Murder, She Wrote sometimes errs by being just a bit too cosy Diagnosis Murder makes the opposite mistake by occasionaly not being cosy enough.

Obviously it’s a series that to some extent recalls Quincy, M.E. but despite the latter’s pretensions to being more scientific Diagnosis Murder is generally less far-fetched. Not that Quincy, M.E isn’t a fine series but at times it stretches credibility a little.

The Region 4 DVD release includes as a bonus the Jake and the Fatman episode It Never Entered My Mind which featured Dick Van Dyke and was in effect an unofficial pilot for Diagnosis Murder.

On the whole though this is a thoroughly enjoyable series and much better than I’d expected. Recommended.