Lexx travels to the planet Woz on a mission to save Xev's life. Her savior has his own agenda, and Xev may not survive his form of salvation.

Written by Paul Donovan and Lex Gigeroff
Directed by David MacLeod

Lenore Zann – The Dark Lady
Walter Borden – The Wuzzard
Lisa Hynes – Original Xev

"Woz" is -- obviously -- an homage to The Wizard of Oz. It succeeds due to its restraint.

Vanity episodes like this one often suffer from an embarrassment of riches. There is a temptation to front load so many elements from the original work into the story that the plot these elements serve becomes a secondary or tertiary consideration.

Not so here. Writers Paul Donovan and Lex Gigeroff included familiar and analogous elements that kept the source story firmly in mind, but demonstrated enough restraint that these visual and verbal references stood as cues rather than ends in and of themselves.

Thus, amid the tornadoes, evil witches and wise, powerful, manipulative wizards, Donovan and Gigeroff also found time to graft a feminist dialogue onto their homage to the classic film.

On a simplistic level, the Wuzzard represents a traditional interpretation of feminism. He endorses women's liberation from the notion that their value is a function of relationships with men. As a product of the beholder's eye, beauty therefore becomes a trap that limits women's acceptance of themselves.

The Dark Lady, on the other hand, follows a path to empowerment along which these traditionally male-interpreted ideals become powerful modes of self-expression. Far from being instruments of subjugation, beauty and sexuality become hallmarks of self-esteem.

This is evident in the way these people put their philosophy in action.

The episode suggests that the Dark Lady's transformations entail an element of choice -- she provides a service to women who want it, with no apparent coercion involved.

In contrast, the zealot Wuzzard believes his militant approach of rescuing "victimized" women is the only proper one, even if they don't want to be rescued.

Although they stand in polar opposition to one another, the Dark Lady and the Wuzzard are equally hypocritical. For all his sensitive new age protestations about true women and inner beauty, The Wuzzard is simply a guy whose girlfriend threw him over.

And what of the Dark Lady? While she recognizes and celebrates her own inner beauty, she suffers from the belief that her inner and outer selves don't match. She dispenses fantasy images, and resents the fact that the Lustikon cannot help her embody that fantasy. While she positions her gift as a means of liberation, she is trapped in a prison of her own negative self-perception.

Of course, the Lustikon also altered Xev's outfit, so genetic consistency may be a bit too much to ask.

Speaking of the Lustikon, the fact that 790 was able to reset Xev's expiry date suggests that the machine -- which apparently alters human physiology on the cellular level -- could function as a virtual immortality machine. Too bad the last remaining Lustikon was destroyed in this episode.

Lexx gets caught in "The Net" at the center of the universe as Mantrid's plan really starts to cause trouble.