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104-571: Planet killers function in a variety of ways depending on the series. Weapons such as the Death Star and the titular ship in Lexx use a directed energy weapon capable of obliterating a planet in moments. In the game Spore , the Planet Buster is an antimatter bomb that is inserted in the center of the planet, causing the planet's core to split into countless fragments. Other weapons, such as

208-402: A World War I film using computer-generated imagery which had now become financially viable, but did not possess the estimated $ 35 million he needed to create it. In 1993, Donovan created a four-minute short film with a large amount of CGI and demonstrated it to international broadcasters to seek funding. The tape, titled The Dark Zone , featured security guard Stanley Tweedle refusing to let

312-608: A cult following . 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; the love-crazed robot head 790; and the powerful but simple-minded Lexx. Centuries prior, mankind was nearly destroyed in a war with the Insect Civilization, where both sides sought

416-400: A quantum field with imaginary mass . However, it was soon realized that Feinberg's model did not in fact allow for superluminal (faster-than-light) particles or signals and that tachyonic fields merely give rise to instabilities, not causality violations. The term tachyonic field refers to imaginary mass fields rather than to faster-than-light particles. The term tachyon comes from

520-403: A 1962 article examined various means "to put an end to the world", concentrating on "Doomsday Bombs". As astronomer Phil Plait has pointed out, the amount of energy necessary to shatter an Earth-sized planet is extremely large: "about 2 x 10 Joules.... about as much energy as the sun puts out in a week." Lexx Lexx (also known as LEXX: The Dark Zone Stories and Tales from

624-495: A Parallel Universe ) is a science fiction television series created by Lex Gigeroff and brothers Paul and Michael Donovan . It originally aired on April 18, 1997, on Canada's Citytv as four made-for-TV movies. Beginning with season two, the format changed to a traditional TV series with each episode running 45 minutes long. The series follows a group of mismatched individuals aboard the organic spacecraft Lexx as they travel through two universes and encounter planets, including

728-484: A dying star from becoming a supernova . The trio become separated from each other and discover the Time Prophet's prophecy of Kai destroying the insect civilization. Giggerota disables the towers, but the crew escapes aboard the Lexx without her. She and the planet are destroyed in the supernova. After some time, the Lexx runs low on organic fuel and lands on the nearby planet of Klaagia to feed. The group discovers

832-446: A faulty element of the experiment's fibre optic timing system. In special relativity , a faster-than-light particle would have spacelike four-momentum , unlike ordinary particles that have time-like four-momentum . While some theories suggest the mass of tachyons is imaginary , modern formulations often consider their mass to be real, with redefined formulas for momentum and energy. Additionally, since tachyons are confined to

936-431: A field theory. In the paper that coined the term "tachyon", Gerald Feinberg studied Lorentz invariant quantum fields with imaginary mass . Because the group velocity for such a field is superluminal , naively it appears that its excitations propagate faster than light. However, it was quickly understood that the superluminal group velocity does not correspond to the speed of propagation of any localized excitation (like

1040-461: A group of psychotics obsessed with "pattern", a liquid made from organic material that parasites within their bodies feed on. Stan, Zev, and Kai inadvertently awaken the parasite queen, who attaches itself to the Lexx and pursues them off the planet. The Lexx fires on the planet and destroys it, using the meteors to kill the queen. Meanwhile, Kai is running low on protoblood, which he needs to function in his undead state; protoblood can only be found on

1144-418: A parody of Earth . The narrative includes irony , parody , and sex comedy , and explores ideas of fatalism , reincarnation , the afterlife , and the paradigm of good and evil . The series is a Canadian and German co-production with some additional funding from Channel 5 . Sci Fi Channel purchased the series from Salter Street Films and began airing episodes from seasons one and two (the former under

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1248-466: A particle). Instead, the negative mass represents an instability to tachyon condensation , and all excitations of the field propagate subluminally and are consistent with causality. Despite having no faster-than-light propagation, such fields are referred to simply as "tachyons" in many sources. Tachyonic fields play an important role in modern physics. Perhaps the most famous is the Higgs boson of

1352-860: A planet (and even a star) with a single hit exist. Some devices can destroy entire star systems . Nova bombs in Andromeda , the Sun Crusher and Centerpoint Station in the Star Wars novels, and Dr. Tolian Soran's trilithium torpedo in Star Trek Generations , are all capable of causing a supernova , obliterating every planet in the Solar System . General Order 24 (see below) indicates that all Federation starships of cruiser size or above were capable of being planet killers by sustained use of conventional weapons to thoroughly bombard

1456-502: A planet. — The Armageddon Inheritance and The Shiva Option —feature inhabited planets' biospheres destroyed by the impact of asteroids or moons on deliberately modified intersecting orbits. —only one active sample has ever been found and is being pursued by the American military and several terrorist organizations. The E.C.Tubb story 'Little Girl Lost' (also, a filmed adaptation was done for USA TV Series NIGHT GALLERY) presents

1560-530: A potato planet, a planet that creates sitcoms , a vapour that changes sex organs into their opposite, a crashed prisoner transport captained by a gay cyborg, a graveyard planet for priests of the Divine Order, a cult led by the Wozzard who seeks to turn all beautiful women into ugly ones, and an island of secluded, illiterate monks . Eventually, the crew learns that Mantrid has been using drones to consume

1664-579: A scenario where a researcher, working on atomic weapons (in the TV adaptation, he is working for the US, in the original, for the British government) suffers a nervous breakdown when his daughter is killed in a car accident. In order to keep him working at his project, a psychologist is brought in to keep him in a delusional state, thinking that she is still alive ... it seems that he is completely fooled by this ruse until

1768-458: A sex slave. I like the part because she's not quite what she seems. She's tough, and people underestimate her because of her new appearance. And that's what makes it funny." After season one, Habermann would go on to other projects, leaving a gap in the show for her character after the end of season one; this was alleviated by having Zev die and later revived into Xev, now played by Xenia Seeberg . The character of Thodin (played by Barry Bostwick )

1872-504: A ship dock because of an invalid security code, then being reprimanded by his superiors. This scene would be reworked and included in the first episode of Lexx . Broadcast companies were impressed, prompting Donovan to build off the demo tape and abandon his original World War I idea. The first season was greenlit in Summer 1995 with a budget of $ 13 million, barely three months before filming began. Donovan had trouble finding writers for

1976-551: A single blast. The energy Stanley absorbed is revealed to be the key to the Lexx, making Stanley its captain. As Stanley instructs the Lexx to fly off the Cluster, they are cornered by Kai who throws Giggerota off the bridge. Before Kai can execute the others, he instead heads to the ship's hold to protect the Divine Predecessors who are being attacked by a Cluster Lizard. After saving them, Kai regains his memories from

2080-449: A surgical implant or artificial limb, saying "it's functional, but it sure doesn't look good up close." According to set designer Nigel Scott, "Our world is chaotic. All the cars and buildings are designed by different people, so nothing really matches. And Lexx is exactly the same - it's just chaos." The insect wars and the biological designs of the ships were made a central part of the story after they had been designed, with writers using

2184-401: A tachyon from the future (and violate causality) would actually create the same tachyon and send it forward in time (which is causal). However, this principle is not widely accepted as resolving the paradoxes. Instead, what would be required to avoid paradoxes is that, unlike any known particle, tachyons do not interact in any way and can never be detected or observed, because otherwise

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2288-541: A tachyon beam could be modulated and used to create an anti-telephone or a "logically pernicious self-inhibitor". All forms of energy are believed to interact at least gravitationally, and many authors state that superluminal propagation in Lorentz invariant theories always leads to causal paradoxes. In modern physics, all fundamental particles are regarded as excitations of quantum fields . There are several distinct ways in which tachyonic particles could be embedded into

2392-593: A tachyonic nature. The possibility of standard model particles moving at faster-than-light speeds can be modeled using Lorentz invariance violating terms, for example in the Standard-Model Extension . In this framework, neutrinos experience Lorentz-violating oscillations and can travel faster than light at high energies. This proposal was strongly criticized. If tachyons can transmit information faster than light, then, according to relativity, they violate causality, leading to logical paradoxes of

2496-456: A theatre format. Many of the themes from this episode are based on German nursery rhymes with new lyrics. The usage of existing musical themes as well as the addition of an outside choir has placed these tracks into a legal grey area; as a result, they have not been officially released. All tracks are written by Marty Simon All tracks are written by Marty Simon Tachyon A tachyon ( / ˈ t æ k i ɒ n / ) or tachyonic particle

2600-424: A time span of over six thousand years. Kai's "death" occurs 2008 years before the beginning of the main events of the series. For Seasons One and Two, each episode is focused on space travel and usually one different planet. Seasons 3 and 4 have a single general location for all episodes. At the beginning of Season 3, the crew spends 4000 years in cryostasis before arriving at twin planets Fire and Water. In Season 4,

2704-428: A trial over the destination of his soul, revealing Fire and Water as the afterlife. All his bad decisions are weighed against his good deeds and he is ultimately sentenced to eternal punishment on Fire. Enraged over Stanley's death, Xev orders the Lexx to destroy Fire, releasing all of its tortured souls. Consequently, Prince possesses the Lexx and uses it to destroy Water. Stanley is released and returns to his body aboard

2808-468: A well-defined Cauchy problem (for reasons related to the issues of causality discussed above), and are probably inconsistent quantum mechanically. Tachyons have appeared in many works of fiction. They have been used as a standby mechanism upon which many science fiction authors rely to establish faster-than-light communication, with or without reference to causality issues. The word tachyon has become widely recognized to such an extent that it can impart

2912-471: A writer for "Super Nova", says "When I first got the script, it was all over the place because the writers had hit a wall with it. The main characters were these buffoons. That probably works on paper, but the audience needed something to hold on to. So that had to be tidied up a bit by adding some motivation for these characters." Scripts for season two were commissioned before season one premiered. Although our characters will try, in their own bumpy way, to do

3016-413: Is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light . Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are inconsistent with the known laws of physics . If such particles did exist they could be used to send signals faster than light and into the past. According to the theory of relativity this would violate causality , leading to logical paradoxes such as

3120-599: Is a planet killing weapon, that captures and destroy a planet's biosphere. At the end of the series, it is established that the Coralians have the ability to engulf a planet and form their own version of a planetary crust, although they did not exercise it with the purpose of making a planet uninhabitable. At the end of the movie, the Human Instrumentality Project is carried out and the Human race

3224-405: Is combined into one shared consciousness. In his discussion of the tradition of apocalyptic cinema Mitchell exemplifies what the film Doomsday Machine or Escape from Planet Earth characterizes as a "planet-buster" as belonging to the class of "Doomsday device". Secondary literature can also use terms like "planet-cracker" or "planet-busting superweapon". In the field of science journalism ,

List of fictional doomsday devices - Misplaced Pages Continue

3328-426: Is inhabited by evil people. During Prince's first encounter with the crew, 790 is damaged and falls in love with Kai rather than Xev, and gradually behaves much more erratically. Prince seeks to destroy Water and attempts to win the crew over to his side, especially Xev. 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

3432-399: Is larger than c {\displaystyle c} (the speed of light), the denominator in the equation for the energy is imaginary , as the value under the square root is negative. Because the total energy of the particle must be real (and not a complex or imaginary number) in order to have any practical meaning as a measurement, the numerator must also be imaginary (i.e.

3536-549: Is not (necessarily) a barrier, and particles can travel faster than the speed of light without infinite energy or causal paradoxes. A class of field theories of that type is the so-called Standard Model extensions . However, the experimental evidence for Lorentz invariance is extremely good, so such theories are very tightly constrained. By modifying the kinetic energy of the field, it is possible to produce Lorentz invariant field theories with excitations that propagate superluminally. However, such theories, in general, do not have

3640-482: Is wiped. The Lexx destroys the remnants of His Shadow's fleet that followed them through the portal. The three then begin searching the Dark Zone for a new home, away from His Shadow. During their search, they encounter Kai's homeworld and explore it for insights into his past. Finding the planet abandoned, they are pursued by Giggerota who attempts to destroy the planet by disabling a series of towers that are keeping

3744-400: The "kill your own grandfather" type. This is often illustrated with thought experiments such as the "tachyon telephone paradox" or "logically pernicious self-inhibitor." The problem can be understood in terms of the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity, which says that different inertial reference frames will disagree on whether two events at different locations happened "at

3848-574: The Neveu-Schwarz (NS) and NS-NS sectors , which are respectively the open bosonic sector and closed bosonic sector, of RNS superstring theory prior to the GSO projection . However such tachyons are not possible due to the Sen conjecture , also known as tachyon condensation . This resulted in the necessity for the GSO projection . In theories that do not respect Lorentz invariance , the speed of light

3952-606: The Standard Model of particle physics , which has an imaginary mass in its uncondensed phase. In general, the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking , which is closely related to tachyon condensation, plays an important role in many aspects of theoretical physics, including the Ginzburg–Landau and BCS theories of superconductivity. Another example of a tachyonic field is the tachyon of bosonic string theory . Tachyons are predicted by bosonic string theory and also

4056-598: The United Kingdom , and the British Virgin Islands . Lexx had very different tones throughout its run. While the original TV movies and the second season were mostly science fiction drama with dark comedy, season three was more serious and explored themes of life, death, and reincarnation. The show's final season – set on Earth in the early 2000s – took many turns into pure farce and introduced magic and other new elements. The series has garnered

4160-541: The World Championship of 1834 . In this show it's not a friendly marriage of man and dragonfly. I compare it to the old high school experiment where you make the dead frog's legs move with a small battery. Nigel Scott, stage designer Donovan rejected the sleek, futuristic look common in science fiction in favour of organic, fleshy materials. Many of the creatures and machines are a hybrid of organic material and technology. Producer Bill Fleming compares it to

4264-404: The grandfather paradox . Tachyons would exhibit the unusual property of increasing in speed as their energy decreases, and would require infinite energy to slow to the speed of light. No verifiable experimental evidence for the existence of such particles has been found. In the 1967 paper that coined the term, Gerald Feinberg proposed that tachyonic particles could be made from excitations of

List of fictional doomsday devices - Misplaced Pages Continue

4368-400: The spacelike portion of the energy–momentum graph, they cannot slow down to subluminal (slower-than-light) speeds. In a Lorentz invariant theory, the same formulas that apply to ordinary slower-than-light particles (sometimes called bradyons in discussions of tachyons) must also apply to tachyons. In particular, the energy–momentum relation : (where p is the relativistic momentum of

4472-495: The speed of light .) Therefore, just as bradyons are forbidden to break the light-speed barrier, so too are tachyons forbidden from slowing down to below c , because infinite energy is required to reach the barrier from either above or below. As noted by Albert Einstein , Richard C. Tolman , and others, special relativity implies that faster-than-light particles, if they existed, could be used to communicate backwards in time . In 1985, Chodos proposed that neutrinos can have

4576-529: The Cluster Lizard reaches the Giga Shadow's brain and consumes it, killing the Giga Shadow. With a fresh supply of protoblood, the crew returns to the Dark Zone to search for a new home. Before the Giga Shadow's destruction, the last remnant of His Shadow possessed Kai. Kai lies to the crew and states that he requires more protoblood to survive, leading them to the imprisoned supreme Bio- Vizier of

4680-428: 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. Other prisoners, including a group of Ostral-B heretics and their leader, Thodin, are sentenced to be publicly executed. Thodin attempts to use an explosive device to free himself, but the device malfunctions and releases giant Cluster Lizards from containment, wreaking havoc across

4784-476: The Cluster. 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. As the Lexx and its crew are almost destroyed,

4888-401: The Cluster. Thodin escapes and frees the other heretics, and reluctantly rescues the cannibal Giggerota. During Zev's transformation into a love-slave, she is attacked by a Cluster Lizard, turning her into a love-slave/Cluster Lizard hybrid. Before the brainwashing portion of the transformation begins, Zev frees herself and places the 790 droid in charge of her transformation in her place, causing

4992-460: The Dark Zone through a portal as Xev and Kai destroy Mantrid and his final drone. Without any other nearby planets and the Lexx running out of food, the crew place themselves into stasis and the Lexx goes dormant while 790 reactivates annually to search for nearby planets. After four thousand years in cryostasis, the crew reaches the twin planets Fire and Water. All of season three takes place on these two planets. The crew meets people they knew from

5096-529: The Divine Order, Mantrid and his servant. During their meeting, His Shadow transfers his essence into an insect carcass, resurrecting it and attempting to kill the crew of the Lexx. Mantrid is gravely wounded in the attack, and his servant transfers his consciousness to a spaceship he had created to save him. Kai kills the insect, resulting in His Shadow's essence becoming mixed with Mantrid's. Mantrid, now intertwined with His Shadow, swears revenge on humanity as

5200-404: The Divine Order, resulting in the deaths of billions. Stanley, subsequently captured by the Divine Order and after undergoing interrogation, is made a class-four security guard on the Cluster, the capital planet of the Divine Order and League of 20,000 Planets. After being reprimanded for insubordination and failing to turn himself in, he becomes a fugitive on the Cluster. Zev Bellringer arrives on

5304-486: The Divine Order. 2008 years later, Stanley H. Tweedle is an assistant deputy backup courier for the Ostral-B heretics, a resistance group fighting against the Divine Order. After unknowingly leading His Divine Shadow to an Ostral-B outpost, resulting in its destruction, he is captured by the mercenaries Feppo and Smoor who extract information from him on the locations of other Ostral-B planets. They sell this information to

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5408-501: The Earth to the size of a pea in the process. As Lyekka's asteroid attacks Earth, the crew flees with the particle accelerator to destroy the asteroid. As they leave Earth, Prince appears to Kai and fulfills his promise to him, restoring Kai's mortality. 790, now completely insane and still madly in love with Kai, takes advantage of the Lexx's senility and has it destroy Earth to kill any potential "competitors" for Kai. With Earth destroyed,

5512-526: The Greek: ταχύς , tachus , meaning swift . The complementary particle types are called luxons (which always move at the speed of light ) and bradyons (which always move slower than light); both of these particle types are known to exist. The first hypothesis regarding faster-than-light particles is sometimes attributed to physicist Arnold Sommerfeld , who, in 1904, named them "meta-particles". The possibility of existence of faster-than-light particles

5616-463: 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." The Lexx's name was formed by finding a word that would work well in all languages without translation, and it doubled as a pun on Lex Gigeroff's name. The scripts for "Super Nova" and "Feeding Pattern" were changed several times during shooting. Ron Oliver,

5720-484: The Lexx dying, and no other habitable planets nearby, the crew decide to sacrifice themselves to destroy Lyekka's asteroid. They travel inside the asteroid, but Kai becomes separated from the others as he is trapped inside with the particle accelerator. In a final sacrifice, Kai crashes into the centre of the asteroid as the accelerator calculates the particle's mass, destroying the asteroid. The Lexx's senility becomes terminal as it disintegrates. Xev and Stanley discover that

5824-527: The Lexx had created another ship within it before it died, "Little Lexx". Little Lexx gives Stanley its key as they search for a new home. 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. Salter Street's next projects did not enjoy the same degree of success: George's Island , Buried on Sunday , and Paint Cans received praise but were not financially successful. Donovan then sought to create

5928-468: The Lexx reaches Earth in the early 2000s. Kai and a small group of other Brunnen-G warriors mount a last stand against His Merciful Shadow as their planet, Brunnis-2, is destroyed. In a final act of defiance, Kai crashes his ship into the control pod of His Shadow's flagship, the Foreshadow. He is killed by His Shadow, his memories are taken from him, and he is forced to serve as an undead assassin in

6032-419: The Lexx was outfitted with easily removable "skin", allowing it to be shot from any angle. This skin would later be removed entirely after season one. The food that the Lexx produces for the crew was mashed yams in season one, and rice pudding for the rest of the series. The Season two episode "The Net" is largely made up of recycled footage from the previous episode "The Web". Director Chis Bould says this

6136-441: The Lexx's showerhead "is this luminous pink tube that's a little too interested in its work... It'll snake all over you if you're not paying attention. It's quite frisky." Sources have also pointed out the Lexx's seemingly phallic appearance. Writer Jeffrey Hirschfield only incorporated the bare minimum of "accurate" science when absolutely necessary. Lexx is a very complex build of elements to create final effects scenes. With

6240-469: The Lexx, while Prince and the other souls reincarnate on a nearby blue planet . The Lexx travels to Earth looking for food. 790 informs the crew that it is located in the very centre of the Dark Zone and assumes that it must be a very dangerous place. The crew again meet people they knew from the Light and Dark Zones and from Fire and Water. Only Prince and Priest can remember their previous lives. On Earth,

6344-427: The Light and Dark Zones who cannot remember their past lives, though their personalities are the same. Fire is ruled by the charismatic Prince and his lackey Priest, while Water does not have a ruler. The inhabitants of both planets live in isolated towns. On Water, they live on islands in a huge ocean; on Fire, they live on massive towers separated by long stretches of desert. Water is inhabited by good people, while Fire

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6448-667: The Shadow Planet Killer in Babylon 5 and Covenant warships in the Halo series , render a planet uninhabitable. The Shadow Planet Killer does so by firing missiles which burrow into the planet's core and detonate, causing planet-wide volcanic activity which renders the planet lifeless. Covenant warships use plasma weapons to superheat the surface of the planet; the crust is turned into a glass-like substance rendering it uninhabitable. In Star Blazers , missiles that can destroy

6552-519: The access to live action background plates, greenscreen and bluescreen foreground plates, motion control and model elements, as well as 3D and 2D computer animation, we have the thread with the AVID Illusion compositing package to put these pieces together. Brian Howald, VFX Supervisor Computer-generated imagery for season one was created by twenty animators over the course of fifteen months. For "Super Nova", matte paintings were used as

6656-400: The bradyon and m is its rest mass ) should still apply, along with the formula for the total energy of a particle: This equation shows that the total energy of a particle (bradyon or tachyon) contains a contribution from its rest mass (the "rest mass–energy") and a contribution from its motion, the kinetic energy. When v {\displaystyle v} (the particle's velocity)

6760-497: The brain of the Divine Predecessor who killed him, prompting him to turn against His Shadow. The Lexx is pursued and boarded by His Shadow, who attacks Kai for turning against him. 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. While traversing the portal, the Lexx's memory of His Shadow and its allegiance to him

6864-443: The concept art as a basis for the plot. Head art director Mark Laing says that the design of the Cluster was based around medieval cities, explaining how "the whole city is built on top of a ruin built on a ruin. Buildings are built on top of buildings, incorporating still standing structures into their own structures, which are also somewhat run down." The Lexx itself has sexual undertones as part of its design. Laing points out how

6968-458: The crew about to be overwhelmed by Mantrid drones, Kai employs a last-ditch strategy to destroy Mantrid. Kai taunts Mantrid into pursuing the Lexx towards the centre of the universe with all of his drones. 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. However, the Lexx rematerializes in

7072-402: The crew escapes. The rest of the season involves the crew searching for a new home. During their adventures, they encounter Lyekka, a plant that can transform into a human appearance and feeds on living beings. During their adventures, Zev is killed but later reincarnated by Lyekka as Xev. The crew has various encounters with strange creatures and civilizations, such as a group of astronauts from

7176-455: The desensitization of violence in Halifax, citing clubbing harp seals as an example. They rejected making the series scientifically accurate or logical, with writer Hirschfield explaining, "We only wanted enough science to get us through the stories. The Lexx has a particle accelerator , and that's all you need to know. We don't want to bother with dilithium crystals . The Lexx gets its fuel from eating. Simple enough." They openly acknowledged

7280-504: The end, where it is discovered that his weapon can (and does) destroy the planet, or at least that is implied ... ▪ Stephan Ames Berry Kronarian book series has two versions of planet busters one produced by the old imperium burrows into a planets cores and explodes destroying the planet from the inside out. The other was produced by the Trel called a worm maker creates a wormhole to consume a planet or in some cases whole solar systems. this one

7384-730: The final shots contain CGI in some form. The scene where the Lexx destroys the customs station was a model that was blown up in the parking lot of the VFX studio. Animations were done through three production houses, including C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures in Toronto and Berlin and pixelMotion in Halifax. Models and animations were created using Silicon Graphics Indigo workstations, as well as Avid 1000 and 8000 series workstations. Modelling and animation software such as Prisms, Flint , and PowerAnimator were used to create digital imagery. A render farm that

7488-413: The forms of other crew members to deceive them. The crew are frequently separated from each other, forcing them to act individually. After jumping from the Lexx to the surface of Water, Kai has trouble functioning normally without the other crew members. Deep beneath Water's surface, Kai encounters his soul essence awaiting rebirth. During one of Prince's attacks on Water, Stanley is killed and Prince holds

7592-576: The insect civilization and eventually became hopelessly depressed at their immortality, waiting for the forces of His Shadow to come and destroy them. Kai, refusing to surrender, led a small group of rebels against His Shadow in a final act of defiance. Reinvigorated by Kai's story, the crew decide to stop running and face Mantrid. With the help of 790, the crew finds that they can convert some of Mantrid's drones to fight for them. During their attack on his ship, Lyekka boards Mantrid's pod and disables him, but Mantrid kills her before she can finish him off. With

7696-419: 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." When asked about Zev's appearance and the amount of sexual content, Gigeroff responded that "I think we have far too puritanical notions about sex. Sex is fun, sex is good, and I hope we can get a lot of it in the show." He also addressed the criticism he received from

7800-474: The locals and in Prince's continuous attempts to take control of the Lexx. Although the crew keeps swearing not to return to the planet, they constantly find themselves back on Earth for one reason or another. Kai's soul is trapped in limbo because he is undead, and he decides to regain his mortality. He makes a wager with Prince in a game of chess and wins, but Prince does not immediately fulfill his promise. In

7904-707: The massive amount of energy needed to fire it (except in Rebirth, where the ship could fire six shots without recharging.) Also included would be the Desler (Desslok) cannon, built on the same principle ( Tachyon Compression), and the main cannon in Zordar's dreadnaught, which was deployed at the end of season 2. In the remake Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 the White Comet of the Gatlantis Empire

8008-471: The microphysical origin such particles might have. Oleksa-Myron Bilanuik, Vijay Deshpande and E. C. George Sudarshan discussed this more recently in their 1962 paper on the topic and in 1969. In September 2011, it was reported that a tau neutrino had traveled faster than the speed of light; however, later updates from CERN on the OPERA experiment indicate that the faster-than-light readings were due to

8112-690: The name Tales From a Parallel Universe ) for the United States audience in January 2000. Lexx was co-produced by Salter Street Films, later absorbed by Alliance Atlantis . In Canada, Lexx aired on the Alliance Atlantis -owned Showcase network. Lexx was primarily filmed in Canada and Germany , with additional filming on location in Iceland , Thailand , Namibia , New Zealand ,

8216-403: The others into the ship. Inside, the heretics are attacked and killed by a Cluster Lizard. Before his death, one of the heretics releases a form of energy into Stanley. Stanley, Zev, 790, and Giggerota reach the ship's bridge. 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

8320-524: The reincarnated souls cause chaos across the planet. Priest is elected President of the United States and acts as a puppet ruler for Prince, who is now the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms . Giggerotta becomes a Florida real estate agent and is elected pope , and the Wozzard becomes Dr. Ernst Longbore, a paraplegic rocket scientist. The crew attempts to settle in and make Earth their home, but keep getting caught up in absurd situations with

8424-445: The reply before sending the original signal, challenging causality in every frame and opening the door to severe logical paradoxes. This is known as the tachyonic antitelephone . The reinterpretation principle asserts that a tachyon sent back in time can always be reinterpreted as a tachyon traveling forward in time, because observers cannot distinguish between the emission and absorption of tachyons. The attempt to detect

8528-733: The rest mass m must be imaginary, as a pure imaginary number divided by another pure imaginary number is a real number). In some modern formulations of the theory, the mass of tachyons is regarded as real. One curious effect is that, unlike ordinary particles, the speed of a tachyon increases as its energy decreases. In particular, E {\displaystyle E} approaches zero when v {\displaystyle v} approaches infinity. (For ordinary baryonic matter, E {\displaystyle E} increases with increasing speed, becoming arbitrarily large as v {\displaystyle v} approaches c {\displaystyle c} ,

8632-515: The right thing, basically they're just in it for themselves. If a planet deserves to be blown up, it's blown up. Paul Donovan, co-creator Brian Downey had worked with Donovan previously on Norman's Awesome Experience and portrayed Stanley Tweedle in the original demo tape. Downey describes his character as having "some heroic qualities, but it's always a surprise when he does something heroic." Eva Habermann portrayed Zev after her love-slave transformation, saying that "She doesn't see herself as

8736-427: The robot head to be programmed to be a love-slave. Upon seeing Zev, 790 immediately falls in love with her and pursues her as she escapes. His Shadow awakens Kai from cryostasis to protect the secret weapons laboratory. Stanley and Zev meet up and make their way towards the secret weapons laboratory, where they find several Ostral-B heretics attempting to board a ship. They are pursued by Kai, who kills Thodin and chases

8840-445: The same time" or not, and they can also disagree on the order of the two events. (Technically, these disagreements occur when the spacetime interval between the events is 'space-like', meaning that neither event lies in the future light cone of the other.) If one of the two events represents the sending of a signal from one location and the second event represents the reception of the same signal at another location, then, as long as

8944-506: The second film adaptation, an entire universe is destroyed in the Anti-Spiral's clash with the similarly powerful Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In the final battle with Kain, who is apparently powerful enough to destroy a planet on his own. Washu decides to have Kiyone make use of a "Dimensional Cannon". In spite of Kiyone's protests that you shouldn't even use it on a city because it is made for taking out small galaxies. Throughout

9048-535: The series and movies, including Rebirth and the recent live action film, the Yamato (Argo) and similar battleships in the Earth Defense Force are armed with a Wave Motion Gun. This weapon of last resort is capable of obliterating entire fleets in one shot, as well as most moon and planetary sized objects. The downside of using this weapon is that it leaves the ship defenseless before and after firing due to

9152-480: The series can destroy planets. In the first 3 Gall Force movies both sides the Solnoid and Paranoid Axis forces have had both their home worlds destroyed in a war of mutual assured destruction . They plan on using the last of their planet destroyers and include the new system destroyers in their final battle plans. The main antagonist, the Anti-Spiral, is shown to have destroyed many planets, stars, and galaxies. In

9256-441: The series finale, Earth is threatened by plants resembling Lyekka. 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. Furthermore, Dr. Longbore has created a rocket to escape Earth and, out of spite, leaves behind a particle accelerator to determine the mass of the Higgs boson particle , which will shrink

9360-599: The show as " Dirty Dozen meets Alien or Beavis and Butt-Head ". He also found inspiration in Fires on the Plain and Dark Star and considers the show to be a homage to Space Precinct . Many of the crew were also fans of Red Dwarf . 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

9464-469: The show as most resided in Hollywood and outside of his budget. He eventually came across Lex Gigeroff and Jeffrey Hirschfield , calling them "gems in the rough". Jeffrey had a background in theatre and acting, but was unable to find work and on the verge of abandoning the industry entirely until he met Paul, while Lex was working odd acting jobs in Halifax. Donovan described the thought process behind

9568-405: The show was quickly going over budget for CGI work. Bob Munroe, president of C.O.R.E Digital Pictures , states that CGI shots get expensive very quickly. "So when the script said 'a brand new planet you've never seen before,' that's a lot of work, and it may translate into $ 200,000. It got to the point that it was easier to do matte paintings than five people building this whole world." Up to 70% of

9672-430: The signal is moving at the speed of light or slower, the mathematics of simultaneity ensures that all reference frames agree that the transmission-event happened before the reception-event. However, in the case of a hypothetical signal moving faster than light, there would always be some frames in which the signal was received before it was sent, so that the signal could be said to have moved backward in time. Because one of

9776-401: The total annihilation of the other. Although the Brunnen-G led humanity to victory, they were later enslaved by the Divine Order, a religious cult centred around His Shadow, a mystical being who seeks to enslave the two universes . It was foretold to Kai by the Time Prophet that one day his people would destroy His Shadow and the last remnants of the Insect Civilization. The plot unfolds across

9880-518: The two fundamental postulates of special relativity says that the laws of physics should work the same way in every inertial frame, if it is possible for signals to move backward in time in any one frame, it must be possible in all frames. This means that if observer A sends a signal to observer B which moves faster than light in A's frame but backwards in time in B's frame, and then B sends a reply which moves faster than light in B's frame but backwards in time in A's frame, it could work out that A receives

9984-402: The universe and convert its matter into more drones, quickly bringing the Light Zone to an end. The crew attempt to flee by travelling to the centre of the universe , where the rules of causality are different, offering them a potential hideaway from Mantrid. During their escape, they encounter an interdimensional theatre crew that tells the full story of the Brunnen-G, including how they defeated

10088-416: Was 60 times faster than the industry norm was used for rendering animations. Two official Lexx soundtracks have been released. The first album, Tales from a Parallel Universe , consists of music from Season One. The second album, Lexx: The Series , consists of music from Seasons Two through Four. "Brigadoom" (S02E18) is a musical episode that tells of the destruction of Brunnis-2 and the death of Kai in

10192-408: Was also attracted to the part of Bog because of the script, saying "It takes a lot of liberties – but in a good sense. This goes farther than anything I've ever done." Tim Curry's character as Poet Man was filmed on the final day of shooting entirely in front of a green screen. He compared the series favourably to his time on The Rocky Horror Picture Show , saying "I'm grimly aware that Rocky Horror

10296-486: Was also proposed by Lev Yakovlevich Shtrum  [ ru ] in 1923. The term tachyon was coined by Gerald Feinberg in a 1967 paper titled "Possibility of faster-than-light particles". He had been inspired by the science-fiction story "Beep" by James Blish . Feinberg studied the kinematics of such particles according to special relativity . In his paper, he also introduced fields with imaginary mass (now also referred to as tachyons) in an attempt to understand

10400-442: Was copied by the antagonist AI's and was used against them destroying their fleet. The titular Halo installations themselves only kill sentient life, leaving planets and their biospheres-as well as any creature without sufficient biomass to support The Flood -otherwise intact. However, Forerunner and ancient Human fleets are known to possess less selective weapons capable of inducing stellar collapses at will. Many characters in

10504-420: Was created to subvert the audience into believing he was the hero and main character of the series, only to have him be killed off by Kai in the premiere. 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. Rutger Hauer

10608-463: Was done due to production constraints, as both episodes had to be shot in nine days as opposed to the regular schedule of one episode over eight days. In the Season Four episode "The Game", Kai plays a game of chess with Prince to win his soul back. 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

10712-544: Was done on a non-existent budget over three weeks in a tiny theatre. Yet it was a good idea. Sometimes it's important to show up for guys with really good ideas." Nigel Bennett had previously worked with Donovan on Paint Cans and was approached to play the role of Prince in seasons three and four. He liked the character "because he didn't say a word for 20 pages". As part of his character, Bennett had at least three different outfits and would have his hair and eyebrows bleached "about every ten to fourteen days". Season one

10816-506: Was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia , primarily at a repurposed Volvo plant on the waterfront. Additional scenes were shot at Babelsberg Studios in Berlin . The "protoblood" that Kai lives off of was a combination of honey and hand lotion. One hallway set for the Cluster was so long that it extended outside the studio, through a dressing room, and into another studio. The command "chair" for

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