The series follows a group of mismatched individuals aboard the organic spacecraft Lexx as they travel through two universes and encounter planets, including a parody of Earth.

Sci Fi Channel purchased the series from Salter Street Films and began airing episodes from seasons one and two (the former under the name Tales From a Parallel Universe) for the United States audience in January 2000.

The main characters of the series are the Lexx and its crew, consisting of security guard (class four) Stanley H. Tweedle; the love slave Zev (later Xev) Bellringer; the undead former assassin and last of the Brunnen-G, Kai; and the love-crazed robot head 790.

Zev Bellringer arrives on the Cluster as a prisoner and is sentenced to be turned into a love-slave, after failing to perform her wifely duties and assaulting her fiancé.

The ship introduces itself as the Lexx, a machine-insect hybrid and "the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes", capable of destroying an entire planet in a single blast.

Stanley and Zev distract His Shadow long enough for Kai to destroy him; his essence retreats from the ship as it travels through a portal into the Dark Zone.

The group returns to the Cluster to find it abandoned, learning that the entire population of the League of 20,000 Planets was culled to feed and awaken the immense Giga Shadow, the last remaining insect.

With help from a defecting priest of the Divine Order, they stall the Giga Shadow's awakening long enough for Kai to plant a baby Cluster Lizard inside of it.

Kai lies to the crew and states that he requires more protoblood to survive, leading them to the imprisoned supreme Bio-Vizier of the Divine Order, Mantrid and his servant.

During their escape, they encounter an interdimensional theatre crew that tells the full story of the Brunnen-G, including how they defeated the insect civilization and eventually became hopelessly depressed at their immortality, waiting for the forces of His Shadow to come and destroy them.

The resulting movement of mass creates a big crunch, which Mantrid, the drones, the Lexx, and the rest of the Light Zone are pulled into and destroyed by.

Believing that the Lexx is "the grain of sand that will tip the scales", he tests their sense of morality through various temptations, including taking the forms of other crew members to deceive them.

The crew discovers that the fake Lyekka have destroyed other planets on their way through the Dark Zone and flooded the Earth with alien probes to sample the taste of its lifeforms.

Salter Street Films' first sci-fi production, Def-Con 4, had been a moderate success and showed Paul Donovan that there was a potential market for similar material.

[9] Donovan found that many science fiction films and shows at the time were too serious and wanted to create something more "fun" with a higher production value, sexual motifs, and aspects of dark humour, which Hirschfield says comes from the desensitization of violence in Halifax, citing clubbing harp seals as an example.

"[7] They openly acknowledged the large amount of sex and violence present within the script, with Gigeroff admitting that he "[wants] teenage boys to pull off to Zev's poster."

He also addressed the criticism he received from the Halifax film community about the sexual content, joking "God, you can't even show a woman as a sex object without someone thinking it's bad.

[10] Malcolm McDowell agreed to play the part of Yottskry after a previous film he was scheduled to star in fell through, saying that he was drawn to the script because of how "peculiar" and "weird" it was and that he had wanted to visit Nova Scotia.

Their game is a move-for-move recreation of the first casual match played between Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell in the World Championship of 1834.

Nigel Scott, stage designer Donovan rejected the sleek, futuristic look common in science fiction in favour of organic, fleshy materials.

Season One debuted in Canada on April 18, 1997, and consisted of four two-hour TV movies (sometimes screened as eight one-hour episodes), alternatively titled by Sci Fi for the United States Audience as Tales from a Parallel Universe.

Season One consists of four 90-minute movies, following the misadventures of Stanley Tweedle, Zev Bellringer, Kai, 790, and the Lexx as they escape from the Cluster and try to find a new home in the Dark Zone, an evil and unforgiving universe.

[28] In a negative review, Linda Stasi of New York Daily News says she "can only imagine that the great SciFi channel must have been captured by idiot monsters from outer space and Germany".

[citation needed] Staff of The Independent called it "a wacky German-Canadian sci-fi import for people who find Babylon 5 too cerebral... it's extremely gory, not a little nasty and rather fun".

[30] Annalee Newitz of Wired calls Lexx "one of the most underrated science fiction TV shows of the late twentieth century", explaining that "some of the episodes are silly and bad, but the best ones are like Barbarella crossed with Kids in the Hall and multiplied by Blake’s 7.

While the cast acknowledge rumors about talks of a movie being in the works, Xenia Seeberg stated it is unlikely to occur due to funding and rights issues.

[36][37] Ellen Dubin says she was offered her role as Aunt Ilene on Napoleon Dynamite as the director Jared Hess was a fan of her part on Lexx as Giggerota.

Paul Donovan says the changes were in response to TV audiences being confused about Stanley's loyalty and the bug bomb's purpose, joking that "My mother didn't understand it at all.

The story is told through both new and recycled footage and is narrated by the Lexx and 790 as they travel through a portal into the Light Zone, who speak directly to the audience about the events that have occurred thus far.

[39] It also provides a backstory for 790: His organic brain belonged to a waitress in a bar that attempted to bribe a priest in the Divine Order with sexual favors, but was caught and sentenced to become a 790 droid.