Blood-C (2011 anime TV series)

Blood-C is a 2011 anime TV series with interesting origins. In 2000 Production I.G. made a short feature film called Blood: The Last Vampire about a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. It was an absolutely brilliant movie which has never received the acclaim it deserves. There does seem to have been some thought of turning it into a TV series. That finally finally happened in 2011 with Blood-C, but it’s not as simple as that. This series is more of a radical reboot than a follow-up to the movie.

There are plenty of superficial similarities. The TV series also features a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. She also uses a katana (a samurai sword). There are however major differences. Blood: The Last Vampire was set in the 1960s; Blood-C has a contemporary setting. The Saya of the movie worked for some kind of shadowy probably governmental agency. The Saya of the TV series is a kind of girl priestess belonging to a religious sect dedicated to battling supernatural evil.

And this Saya is a very different girl. The Saya of Blood: The Last Vampire is an attractive young woman but there’s something very dark, ruthless, dangerous and chilling about her. She’s one of the good guys but she’s a stone-cold killer. The Saya of Blood-C is a cute bubbly high school girl. The only real similarity between the two girls is that they are both named Saya.

One of the best things about Blood: The Last Vampire is its minimalism. It tells us only what we absolutely need to know, when we need to know it. We get no backstory at all on Saya, apart from one moment at the end which revels her true nature. But it leaves many many unanswered questions.

The TV series is clearly determined to give us a very detailed backstory on this new version of Saya. There’s nothing wrong with that. TV is a totally different medium. In TV you expect detailed backstories.

It may not be evident at first but you really do need to watch Blood: The Last Vampire before watching the series.

You have to be a bit patient with Blood-C early on. I can understand what the series is trying to do. Saya has a double life. She has been chosen to fulfil an exacting and dangerous duty battling supernatural monsters but she’s also a high school girl. She is trying to balance the two sides of her life. She accepts her duty without question and she is a brave and dedicated warrior maiden prepared to sacrifice her life if necessary.

But she also wants to be a normal teenage girl. She wants to have some fun. She wants the other girls at school to like her. She especially wants boys to like her. She has her eye on one particular boy. She has the perfectly normal feelings of any teenage girl.

I think this approach taken by the series is perfectly valid, but the high school stuff is very very cutesy. If you bought this series for the mayhem and monster-slaying you might find this cutesiness a bit over-the-top.

Even in the early episodes however her sacred mission is not forgotten and she does have some epic battles with monsters. These monsters are known as the Elder Bairns.

The series does quickly become a lot darker. The supernatural threats to the idyllic village in which Saya lives become more frequent and more extreme. Saya has promised to keep everyone safe but she starts to wonder if that’s possible.

She also has reason to think that there are many things she has always taken for granted that may not be as simple and straightforward as she’d thought. She had not realised that the Elder Bairns could communicate with humans. They tell her things that disturb her. 

There’s also a dog, a cute little dog she has befriended. He talks to her as well. Whatever he is, he’s not just a cute little dog.

The battle against the Elder Bairns intensifies but the series gradually becomes more interesting in other ways. Both Saya and the viewer are offered tantalising hints that there is something much more complex going on than the threat represented by the monsters. 

There is much that Saya does not yet understand and that she needs to understand but perhaps she is not yet ready for such knowledge.

Saya also has to deal with something else that is new and disturbing - the possibility that love might be blossoming for her for the first time. This is something that scares her a lot more than monsters.

The one minor weakness of this series is that although the monsters are very imaginative they are at times in danger of becoming just a little goofy. The monsters perhaps needed to be a bit creepier and a bit less over-the-top. The problem was that there was a obvious desire to make each new monster more spectacular than the preceding one. The gushing blood effects are also a bit iffy.

The action scenes are certainly lively.

There is some unexpected nudity in episode 8. It’s very tasteful and given the level of violence this is a series that is most definitely not intended for the kiddies.

Blood-C is an odd mix cuteness, mayhem and weirdness. It’s a mixture I like very much. Highly recommended.

Seeing Blood: The Last Vampire first will add enormously to your enjoyment and it is in any case a must-see anime movie.

V (TV miniseries 1983)

V was a two-part 1983 American TV mini-series which gave birth to a franchise. It originally aired on the NBC network. I must confess that I had until now never seen the mini-series or any other parts of this franchise.

Flying saucers suddenly appear over major cities across the globe. But it’s OK. They’re friendly. We know they’re friendly because that’s what they told us.

They look just like regular humans except they always wear sunglasses. And they sound just a bit odd.

The aliens become known as Visitors. Everybody is excited to welcome them. No-one has the least suspicion that they might not be friendly. I have to say that I thought this was wildly implausible. Even with the media assuring everyone that the aliens are our friends nobody has any doubts?

It’s also odd that apparently the CIA, the FBI and the military take no interest in the arrival of the aliens. In fact the government plays no part whatsoever in this series.

The aliens then proceed to act in a way that would have made a five-year-old child suspicious but nobody does get suspicious.

Pretty soon, without anybody realising it, the aliens are in complete control. There are fifty gigantic mother ships and thousands of the Visitors. An invading army has been welcomed in.

TV journalist Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) develops some suspicions. He sneaks aboard one of the mother ships and discovers the truth about the alien Visitors. Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend has become the chief PR officers for the aliens.

Eventually a few people figure out that they’ll have to take a stand but their numbers are few and they’re disorganised.

While there are a few weaknesses to this mini-series there are some real strengths. The aliens do not take control by taking over the military. They take over the mass media instead. Once you control the mass media you control society.

Of course a critical difference between this series and an alien invasion series like The Invaders is that because of their weird voices the aliens in V cannot just blend in with humans. They cannot infiltrate human society. They must find another way to seize control and hijacking the media makes sense. And it does give this series a different flavour compared to other alien invasion series. The aliens have to operate in the open whilst using deception and manipulation.

And of course there are journalists who are only too happy to sell us out and help the invaders. There are also cops who are willing to sell out.

There’s a realistic dark and cynical edge. When the chips are down your co-workers, your friends, your family and your neighbours are all likely to betray you if the media tells them to. The basic human instinct for social conformity makes things easy for the alien invaders.

There’s a very effective atmosphere of paranoia and the paranoia levels rise inexorably.

There’s also a mind control angle which is handled skilfully. Giving the aliens unlimited mind-control powers would have made them too formidable. Their mind-control powers have limitations. It was essential that the aliens be seen as extremely difficult but perhaps not entirely impossible to defeat. 

I don’t want to any more about the ending other then the fact that it allowed for a follow-up series.

There are some pretty reasonable action scenes.

The mother ships are not miniatures but matte paintings (they had neither the time nor the money to build miniatures). When judging the special effects you have have to keep in mind (in this and in all science fiction TV series up to the 90s) that in 1983 people were going to be watching V on relatively small cathode ray TV sets. The deficiencies in the special effects would have been a lot less obvious than they are today when viewed on Blu-Ray. Some of the special effects are very iffy and have a cheap 80s arcade game look.

The budget was huge by 1980s television standards but the series was rushed into production so time was more of a problem than money.

Jane Badler as Diana makes a fine sexy villainess. The acting overall is quite adequate.

V is quite entertaining if you enjoy alien invasion stories (which I do) although I think the alien invasion idea was handled better in several other series both American (such as The Invaders) and British (such as Undermind). V is recommended.

V is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig

The Ghost in the Shell franchise began with Masamune Shirow’s original manga in 1989. There were two follow-up volumes. The Ghost in the Shell movie was released in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence followed in 2004. Both were directed by Mamoru Oshii.

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series first aired in 2002. The second season (or 2nd Gig) began its run in 2004. The film Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society served as a finale for the TV series in 2006. There have since been other entries in this spectacularly successful franchise.

What’s interesting is that Masamune Shirow’s manga series, the Mamoru Oshii feature films and the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series are all slightly different takes on the same basic premise. The TV series does not take place in exactly the same timeline as the manga or the two feature films. It takes place in the same fictional universe, almost. It’s like three variations on the same basic theme, and each variation has its own appeal. In their own ways they’re all equally worthwhile.

All the different variations deal with Public Security Section 9, a shadowy fictional counter-intelligence, counter-terrorist cybersecurity agency run by the eccentric but brilliant maverick Aramaki. The commander of the field operations task force is Major Motoki Kusanagi. She is a cyborg. Her body is wholly synthetic (although it’s very female and she is in practice a perfectly functional woman) but she still has a human brain and human emotions and she still has her human memories. She was once a fully human little girl.

In this second season Section 9 will be up against a mysterious group known as the Individual Eleven.

The main cast members are substantially unchanged in the 2nd Gig. Aramaki still pulls the strings. Major Motoki Kusanagi is still the field commander. Batou is still her second-in-command and the one person in the world she really trusts. 

And happily the tachikomas, the combat robots used by Section 9, return to the series after a brief absence. The tachikomas are controlled by AI but whether it’s a collective AI or whether each tachikoma has some degree of individuality is uncertain. As is the question of just how far they are capable of operating autonomously. The tachikomas provide comic relief in what is other a very serious very dark series but it works - the writers rather cleverly use the tachikomas to reflect in a humorous way one of the main themes of the second season, the conflict between individuality and collectivity.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex deals inevitably with political conflicts. The series is more interested in the nature of ideological conflicts than with pushing a particular ideology. It’s not really interested in taking sides politically. And it accurately reflects the confused and contradictory nature of 21st century ideological conflicts. The Individual Eleven see themselves as radical individualists but they behave like a kind of hive mind. They also appear to believe in revolution for its own sake. Their goals seem somewhat mystical.

The series also deals with political infighting in government and law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Political leaders are mere puppets. Powerful shadowy forces are pulling the strings. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency is obsessed with ensuring its own survival. They don’t trust each other, for good reason. Aramaki is a clever operator but even he finds himself being manipulated by forces he doesn’t entirely understand.

There’s an ongoing story arc here, as there was in the first season. What’s interesting is that what appears to be happening on the surface is not what’s going on at all. The story arc deals with unrest in a refugee community in Japan, with tensions between the locals and the refugees which could lead to civil war, and government efforts to resolve the crisis. What is really happening is that a series of complex interlocking power games are being played out and none of the players have any interest in the refugee crisis. And I don’t think series director and chief writer Kenji Kamiyama is all that interested in that particular political issue. He’s more interested in the way political power games are played.

There are also ideological drivers but my impression is that Kamiyama is not interested in particular ideologies but rather in the way that political ideologies work. And, more to the point, the way ideologies are likely to work in an information age of total interconnectedness. They may work like viruses.

There are multiple players in the power game - several different intelligence agencies (including Section 9), the military, the bureaucracy, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, mega-corporations, the media and shadowy informal networks. They all have their own agendas. They are all concerned with protecting their own interests. They will all cheerfully sell each other out. They all manipulate each other. None of them care about Japan or about ordinary people. None of them has any genuine commitment to any principles. Winning is all that matters because that means power.

They all see themselves as puppet masters but often they are merely puppets. Mostly they have no idea who is really pulling the strings. The Prime Minister for example has no idea that she is a mere figurehead, a puppet who will be discarded when she is no longer useful.

Aramaki has more insight and he’s a wily old bird but even he finds himself manipulated. He does at least have the advantage of being a skilful player. Motoko is learning to be a skilful player. She’s learning to analyse problems on multiple levels.

The refugees are simply pawns who are being used by several different groups with contradictory agendas.

There are bad guys but some of the good guys might turn out to be bad guys and some of the bad guys might not be straightforward villains.

Other TV series have tried to engage with such issues but this is the first series to do so in a sophisticated and complex way in the context of the age of digital information sharing. And it’s hard to think of another TV series (or movie) that has taken such a brutally cynical approach.

The cynicism level rises as the series progresses. Most of Section 9’s assignments are not what they seem to be.

Mention has to be made of Yoko Kanno’s superb music. It’s very pop but very cyberpunk.

There’s both a DVD and a Blu-Ray boxed set containing both seasons of this series. Thankfully it includes the original Japanese language version with English subtitles as well as the English dub. I have a particular aversion to English dubbed versions of anime. Hearing the characters speaking with American accents just feels totally wrong. I like anime because it’s Japanese. I also really like Atsuko Tanaka’s voice acting as Motoko - her voice just sounds right. And Akio Ôtsuka sounds like Batou.

This is very much cyberpunk but with even more paranoia than usual. Science fiction TV doesn’t get much better than Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the original manga, the TV series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, 1st Gig and the first movie, Ghost in the Shell (1995).

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.

The Outer Limits - three season 2 episodes

I love horror/thriller/science fiction anthology TV series and The Outer Limits which aired on the American ABC network from 1963 to 1965 is one of my favourites. It certainly plays fast and loose with science but it was consistently inventive and original. It was created by Leslie Stevens.

I’m just starting to delve in the second (and final) season so I thought I’d review a couple of episodes.

Producer Joseph Stefano (who also wrote many of the scripts) had been the main guiding force but left the series after the first season. There was a slight change of emphasis in the second season, with fewer monsters.

Some of the stories were crazy but they were almost always at least interesting.

We do have to confront the special effects issue. This series has gained a reputation for the extreme cheesiness of many of the special effects. And yes, they are cheesy. Often very much so. The problem wasn’t really the technology of the time. The problem was that The Outer Limits was trying to do ambitious science fiction stories on a 1963 TV budget. It couldn’t be done. They went ahead and did it anyway. Younger viewers today may have real problems getting past the cheesy effects. You just have to accept them and concentrate on the stories.

The Invisible Enemy

The Invisible Enemy was written by Jerry Sohl and directed by Byron Haskin. It aired in October 1964. It concerns the first manned mission to Mars. It ends disastrously, with Mission Control hearing the screams of the astronauts before contact is lost.

The second mission is supposed to be better prepared. They have a super-computer at Mission Control. And the four astronauts are under strict instructions never to get out of sight of one another. They also have a bazooka that fires nuclear-tipped projectiles.

Predictably the first thing that happens is that one of them does get out of sight of the others and he is never seen again.

The audience knows from the start what’s going on. The sandy plain where they landed isn’t a plain, it’s a sand sea. And there are sand shark monsters lurking in that sea. The astronauts take a long while to figure this out. In the meantime another member of the crew vanishes.

Mission Control is really annoyed. They’re inclined to blame the spacecraft commander, Major Merritt (Adam West, yes Batman). They want the mission completed. They want the bad guys destroyed. They want to open up Mars for colonisation.

It becomes a test of survival, with a race-against-time factor.

This episode reflects ideas about Mars that would soon become untenable when unmanned space probes reached the Red Planet. The assumption here is that Mars has a breathable atmosphere. This was presumably so the actors wouldn’t have to wear helmets the whole time. The low gravity on Mars is ignored.

It has to be admitted that the sand sharks are incredibly cheesy.

The main interest of the story is the tough decisions that may have to be made by Mission Control and by Major Merritt, and the price that may have to be paid for the conquest of space. It’s not a bad story.

Wolf 359

Wolf 359 was written by Richard Landau and Seeleg Lester and directed by Laslo Benedek. It first went to air in November 1964. This one is really wild.

Jonathan Meridith heads a research project out in the desert. He and his team have created a miniature replica of a planet eight light-years away. It’s like a computer model except it’s real. The replica planet has a diameter of a few feet. Time is speeded up several millionfold on the miniature planet. Dr Meridith wants to watch the process of evolution on a distant planet take place before his very eyes in his laboratory. He has a special viewer gizmo that magnifies things a millionfold.

The problem is that something really is going on on that tiny world. Meridith has seen something very weird through that viewer. What he sees loses a bit of its impact because the special effect comes across as a bit too goofy.

The science is of course totally nonsensical and there’s lots of loopy technobabble but it has to be said that it’s a clever and original idea.

I, Robot

I, Robot was written Robert C. Dennis, based on Eando Binder’s robot stories published in the Amazing Stories pulp in the late 30s and early 40s. It was directed by Leon Benson. It first went to air in November 1964.

An eccentric scientist has built an almost-human robot. He has named it Adam. Adam appears to have the ability to think for himself. He also appears to have some capacity for emotion.

The scientist is now dead and the robot is blamed. Cynical but smart newspaper reporter Judson Ellis (Leonard Nimoy) smells a story. Trial lawyer Thurman Cutler (Howard da Silva) is coaxed out of retirement to handle the case. The robot is tried for murder. The events that led up to the scientist’s death unfold in a series of flashbacks.

There is some attempt to grapple with the problems posed by artificial intelligences. Adam appears to be capable of thinking but is he really? He appears to have emotions but are these merely simulated emotions - is he simply copying human behaviour without understanding it?

There’s a bit of speechifying at the end but mercifully it doesn’t get political.

The robot does have that classic Tin Man look but he doesn’t look any sillier than robots from big-budget movies of the time. It’s a reasonably successful episode.

Final Thoughts

These three episodes are typical of the series in combining incredibly cheesy special effects with reasonably good writing. They’re all worth a look. Wolf 359 is the best, with the coolness of its ideas.

The Twilight Zone - The After Hours

Of the many and varied horror, science fiction and mystery anthology series that were such a feature of American television in the late 50s and early 60s The Twilight Zone is probably the one with the most glowing reputation. I have always had slightly mixed feelings about this series. There are many episodes that I love unreservedly and at its best it had a unique atmosphere that was profoundly unsettling rather than overtly scary.

On the other hand it could at times be a bit sentimental, and rather preachy. It’s the episodes written by Rod Serling with which I mostly have issues. Serling was definitely prone to sentimentalism and he could be very preachy. At his worst the preachiness could be clumsy. He did write some great episodes, but he wrote quite a few that I find difficult to enjoy.

Having said all that, my all-time favourite episode was in fact written by Rod Serling - The After Hours.

This is episode 34 of the first season of The Twilight Zone. It originally went to air on June 10, 1960. It was directed by Douglas Heyes (arguably The Twilight Zone’s ace director).

It’s a tricky episode to discuss, because I really don’t want to spoil any of the twists.

It starts innocently enough. Marsha White (Anne Francis) has gone to a department store to buy a gift for her mother. She’s looking for a gold thimble. She is advised to go to the ninth floor. Which she does. That’s something that will later be disturbing and perplexing for both Marsha and the store staff.

She finds the thimble but later finds, to her intense disappointment, that it is damaged. Naturally she complains and for some reason which she cannot fathom this causes great consternation to the staff. Then she has a shock. She is advised to lie down and rest. She has a sleep and when she wakes up things start to get really strange.

Marsha finds herself in a very frightening situation and it’s the kind of situation which would lend itself to a horror plot. But there’s no actual horror here. No gore. No bloodshed. No violence. No monsters. Nothing except a gradually increasing atmosphere of strangeness and disorientation. To the extent that it is horror, it is very subtle existential horror.

This is more akin to the literary genre of weird fiction than to horror. The temptation would have been there to give the story a horror story ending but Serling cleverly resists this temptation. This is The Twilight Zone and Serling here achieves exactly the feel that he had in mind when he created the series.

One of the great strengths of this episode is that this time Serling has no real axe to grind. He’s simply trying to make us feel uneasy. And he succeeds admirably.

Douglas Heyes as usual does a fine job as director. The visuals are impressive and a bit creepy. There aren’t any special effects as such. Everything is achieved through fine directing and good production design. 

And some very special props.

Anne Francis is excellent, playing Marsha as a woman who is bewildered and disoriented rather than hysterical. The supporting cast is very good, but this episode belongs to Anne Francis. There are some lovely nuances to her performance. You don’t fully appreciate just how good her acting is until you get to the end of the story, and then you realise what her performance has been leading up to. And according to director Douglas Heyes most of the really clever touches were her own ideas. Anne Francis was a very fine actress but I don’t think she was ever better than this.

The After Hours is a great example of what is now a lost art - short-form television drama. The half-hour television episode or standalone television drama was a very distinctive form and while it has its weaknesses it had very considerable strengths as well. It required discipline, focus and economy. Information that the viewer required (information about what sort of people the characters are, what kind of place it is that forms the setting of the story) had to be conveyed with extreme economy. 

Which meant that the sets, the set dressing, the lighting, the costumes and the makeup had to be carefully thought out because most of that vital information was going to be conveyed through an immediate visual impression. There just wasn’t time for detailed explanations. 

And the actors and actresses had to give the viewer an instantaneous impression of the characters they played, with no time for them to tell their life stories.

In The After Hours Serling and Douglas Heyes give us a master-class in this lost art. There’s not a single wasted shot, or a single unnecessary line of dialogue.

The After Hours is beautifully shot, and by 1960 television standards it’s visually very very impressive.

I’ve seen The After Hours at least three times now and I think I like it even more with each viewing. Very highly recommended.

I've also reviewed some other Twilight Zone episodes here and also here.

E.C. Tubb’s Space: 1999 Rogue Planet (TV tie-in novel)

E.C. Tubb’s Rogue Planet, published in 1977, was the ninth of the Space: 1999 TV tie-in novels. It is an original novel, not a novelisation of episodes from the TV series. It’s based on Year One of the TV series.

E.C. Tubb was a prolific British science fiction writer. He wrote several Space: 1999 novels.

It’s relaxation time for the crew of Moonbase Alpha. They’re enjoying an amateur performance of Hamlet, but when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears they see and hear something strange, something Shakespeare certainly did not write. It’s a warning that Moonbase Alpha is heading for danger. But every member of the audience saw and heard something different. And every member of the audience agrees that what they saw and heard was terrifying.

Was it some kind of mass delusion? Was it some mysterious message beamed from somewhere in space? Not long afterwards some kind of temporary collective madness afflicts the Alphans. It passes, but again it was terrifying and inexplicable.

Moonbase Alpha’s commander, John Koenig, wants answers. The base’s chief scientist Victor Bergman and chief medical officer Dr Helena Russell cannot provide answers, only speculation. Alpha’s instruments can detect nothing threatening.

Then the brain appears. It can’t be a brain of course, but it looks like one. An enormous brain the size of a planet. And Moonbase Alpha is trapped in a separate miniature universe. There appears to be no escape but some means of escape must be found. One crew member has already died of old age and he was only thirty-two. The same fate may await all of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha.

Space: 1999 was a great series (or at least Year One was great) but you do have to accept the outrageous premise of the series - the Moon being thrown out of orbit and hurtling through space at an absurd speed like a gigantic spaceship. You also have to accept the idea that in the almost unimaginable vastness and emptiness of space they keep encountering countless planets and alien spacecraft. But then the science fiction genre as a whole requires a huge suspension of disbelief. If you love science fiction you learn to accept some wacky science.

The novel captures the feel of the series extremely well. The principal characters - Commander Koenig, Dr Russell, Professor Bergman, chief Eagle pilot Alan Carter etc - behave the way they behave in the TV series. There’s the same mix of space adventure and reasonably cool science fiction concepts.

There’s a reasonable amount of emphasis on Koenig’s responsibilities as commander and the need to be strong and decisive while always bearing in mind that he’s dealing with people not machines. Similarly with Dr Russell there’s emphasis on the awesome responsibilities she has to shoulder alone.

Tubb’s prose is straightforward but pleasing enough.

It’s a very entertaining story with a few serious touches. The crew of Moonbase Alpha have to confront the imminent threats of death (death from accelerated ageing which is certainly a very frightening prospect) and madness. Death is ever-present in this story, in varying forms.

Space: 1999 was not a series that offered spectacular space battles. It offered action, but the action was more likely to be battles against strange unseen alien forces rather than hostile star fleets. This novel follows the same sort of formula. There are narrow escapes from mortal danger but the dangers in this case come from strange force fields and from being trapped in caverns and suchlike things.

This novel also offers us an alien life form that is genuinely alien.

Rogue Planet is a very decent science fiction novel. If you’re a fan of the TV series you’ll enjoy and even if you’ve never seen the series you’ll probably find it entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed one of Tubb’s other Space: 1999 novels, Alien Seed (which is excellent). I’ve also reviewed another Space: 1999 novel, John Rankine’s Android Planet (which is quite good).

Man from Atlantis (TV-movie, 1977)

Man from Atlantis started life as a series of four made-for-TV movies in 1977. They were quite successful and NBC gave the go-ahead for a weekly series which lasted just 13 episodes. I haven’t seen the series but the consensus seems to be that it was nowhere near as good as the TV-movies.

Patrick Duffy starred. He would soon go on to major stardom in Dallas.

The premise is rather silly, but then if you start worrying about the silliness of the premises of science fiction movies and TV series you’ll pretty much have to give up on the genre altogether. I figures that if I can accept impossibilities like faster-than-light travel then I can accept a water-breathing man.

The man (later given the name Mark Harris) is found washed up on a beach. He is taken to hospital but all attempts to resuscitate him seem doomed to failure. Then Dr Elizabeth Merrill figures out the problem. This man breathes water! She insists that he should be thrown back in the ocean, whereupon he immediately revives.

But where does a water-breathing man come from? The Navy’s super-computer has the answer. He must be from Atlantis.

The Navy sees possibilities in this young man, as a weapon. Dr Merrill doesn’t want him used in that way. Mark is also not interested in being used in this way. Mark is eventually persuaded to carry out one mission. The Navy has lost a super-secret deep-sea research submarine. It’s lying at the bottom of the sea, 35,000 feet down. That’s no problem for Mark.

What Mark finds at the bottom of the sea is not what he expected. He finds himself a prisoner of sorts. And mixed up in a terrifying plan for world domination.

It was clearly intended from the start to make this a series of TV-movies so, quite sensibly, lots of questions are left unanswered. They did after all want people to watch the next movie in the hope of getting those answers.

Mark, very conveniently, has amnesia. He has no idea of his own origins. All he knows is that the sea is his home and that he understands the language of whales. Maybe he is an Altantean. If so, does Atlantis still exist? Is he the last surviving Atlantean? Where was Atlantis? Was it really a fabulously ancient highly advanced civilisation? We don’t know and Mark doesn’t know.

He is suspicious of the US Government (this was 1977 so it’s the era of 70s paranoia) but we’re left unsure what plans the Government has for Mark. Those plans might well be somewhat sinister.

His relationship with Dr Merrill remains unclear. She has obviously developed an emotional attachment to him but whether it’s a kind of displaced maternal affection or whether there’s a romantic elements to it, and possibly a physical attraction, is uncertain. Mark may have developed an attachment to her but that is less clear.

All of this offers potential for further development, which is a sound storytelling strategy in this context.

There’s an over-the-top mad scientist/diabolical criminal mastermind involved, which is always a good thing.

Visually it’s reasonably impressive for a TV production.

There’s some action but it probably needed a bit more and it definitely needed a bit more zing.

The biggest weakness is that there are not enough exciting underwater action scenes. Such scenes are pretty much an essential ingredient for such a series. What they really needed to do was to get hold of someone like John Lamb, the man who did the underwater photography for Sea Hunt and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Lamb knew how to do that sort of stuff and make it look good on a tight television budget. As it stands the underwater sequences are OK but just a little disappointing.

The action climax also needed to be a bit more spectacular but there was of course a limit to what you could do on a 1970s TV budget.

Patrick Duffy is OK. He’s supposed to be a kind of alien so his slightly detached performance works well enough. Belinda J. Montgomery as Dr Merrill is an adequate female lead and does the idealistic doctor thing convincingly. Victor Buono makes a fine mad scientist.

The four original TV-movies have been released on DVD in the Warner Archive series and they look quite acceptable. The TV series has also had a DVD release. I believe the first TV-movie is also available on Blu-Ray.

Man from Atlantis isn’t great but it’s fairly entertaining and just interesting enough that I’ll probably watch the second TV-movie.

Lost in Space (TV tie-in novel)

Lost in Space by Dave van Arnam and Ron Archer is as its name suggests a TV tie-in novel inspired by the classic TV series.

One intriguing thing about TV tie-in novels is that some are very close in spirit to the TV series while others are quite different. Some were commissioned at a time when only one or two episodes had gone to air. The novels sometimes reflected the original concept for the series, rather than the way the series actually turned out.

In this case the series premiered in 1965 and the novel was published in 1967 so I can only assume that the reason it differs so radically from the series is that it was a conscious decision on the part of the writers.

It is however worth observing at this point that Lost in Space was not conceived of as a silly goofy kids’ show. If you watch the pilot episode (No Place to Hide) or, even more to the point, the first few episodes of season one then it is plausible that the authors of the novel decided to make that very early version of the series the basis for their novel.

It’s obvious that the authors were attempting to write not just serious science fiction, but Big Ideas science fiction.

Some of the characters also differ markedly from their television counterparts. Especially Dr Smith. The Dr Smith of the novel is a serious scientist and he’s not the least bit lazy. He’s also not especially treacherous. He’s not even all that cowardly. He does have some megalomaniacal tendencies, which the TV version of the character doesn’t really have, at least not to anywhere near the same extent.

The authors also decided that the Robot would be groping towards acquiring independent decision-making abilities, which is certainly not the case in the TV version.

It’s also obvious that the only characters in whom the authors are interested are Dr Smith and Professor Robinson, and to a much lesser extent Don West and the Robot. Maureen Robinson becomes a very minor character. Will, Penny and Judy are even more minor characters. I suspect that the authors marginalised Will and Penny because they didn’t want to be seen as writing a science fiction novel for kids.

There is some of the familiar verbal sparing between Dr Smith and the Robot but the relationship between the two is overall quite different. In the novel the Robot’s function is not to provide comic relief. The relationship between Professor Robinson and Dr Smith is very different.

One positive thing about the novel is that it takes advantage of a huge advantage that novels have over TV series - the ability to operate on a truly epic scale. The novel takes the form of a series of three linked short stories and not one of those stories could have been attempted with a 1960s television budget.

In the first story the crew of the Jupiter II find a city that seems to have been home to an advanced civilisation but the planet is now deserted. Deserted, apart from a large number of robots and a central computer, all of which are dedicated to maintaining the city for the benefit of its non-existent inhabitants. The first mystery to be solve is obviously the lack of living inhabitants. There’s a second mystery - the central computer is hiding something very important and appears to be hopelessly conflicted over its own deceptions. It is now neurotic and guilt-ridden.

In the second story our spacefarers find a planet which is home to intelligent life, but it seems to take the form of a kind of hive mind.

The third story is even more ambitious. Our space adventurers find a vast city which turns out to be rather old. Billions of years old. And the history of this planet is somehow intertwined with Earth’s history and its destiny may be linked to Earth’s as well.


And Dr Smith believes he has finally gained what he aways wanted - the power to be a galactic emperor. Of course he’ll need an empress, and he feels that Judy Robinson would be an ideal choice. The prospect of marriage between Dr Smith and Judy is certainly something you wouldn’t have seen in the TV series,

If you’re looking for a novel that captures the feel of the TV series then you’re going to be pretty disappointed. About the only things it really has in common with the series are the names of the characters and the name of the spaceship. If that bothers you then you definitely should avoid the novel.

If you approach it merely as a science fiction novel then it’s not too bad. It grapples with big ideas with reasonable success. If you’re content with that then it’s not a bad read.

So I can’t really say whether I recommend it or not - it depends so much on what you’re looking for.

I’ve mentioned the origins of the series. I’ve reviewed the pilot episode Lost in Space - No Place to Hide and the first few episodes of the first season and they’re very much worth seeing as a glimpse of what the TV series could have been like.