A character on the TV show
Lexx. Mantrid was the
villain of the second season (the first season was
movies shown on
Showtime.), and the first
episode was named after him.
Lexx 2.1: Mantrid
The episode begins with some history. It is the aftermath of the Insect Wars, the humans are finally victorious thanks largely to the work of the Brunnen G. What they don't know is that one insect has survived and buried itself inside a small planet, where it will go dormant, waiting for a new host to pass its essence to.
Many, many years later, a small ship has come to this planet, perhaps looking for ore or other useful resources, or perhaps just to explore. One man on the crew goes too deep into a cavern and is possessed by the insect essence. He goes on to become the first His Divine Shadow and founds the Divine Order that will eventually create and rule the League of 20,000 Planets. The people never know he is possessed by an insect until, thousands of years later, the order is finally destroyed by Kai, last of the Brunnen G.
What Kai, our hero, does not realize is that the insect essence was passed to him when he did so. But because Kai is dead, the essence can not remain inside him and must find a new, living host.
And so we join Kai, along with the beautiful Zev and the whining Stanley Tweedle (who is in fact captain of their ship), in the Dark Zone, where they have fled in search of a home. Kai awakens from cryo-sleep with a strong motivation to find more proto-blood, the chemical that keeps his body animated. Stan is suspicious because Kai has said many times that the dead have no motivation, but Zev loves Kai and will do anything he wants, so she convinces Stan to return once again to the Light Universe to find the proto-blood.
Kai guides them to Mantrid, once a "bio-vizier" to the Divine Order. He believes that, with his knowledge and the insect larva they have from the remains of The Cluster, Mantrid can surely make more proto-blood.
Mantrid is not much of a man anymore; he is more just a vial of guts with a head on top and four robotic arms that float around. He is searching for a way to extend his own life, and he has found a way to transfer his memories to a new body but not his consciousness with them. He thinks that with the special organ from the insect larva, he can do it. He pretends he is helping Kai but instead finishes the new metal body he made for himself, transplants the insect organ into it, and has his crony do the transfer. He gets the insect essence from Kai and lives again in this new body, part human, part insect, and part machine. As an insect, he has a strong drive to destroy all human life, so he attacks our heroes. But they escape and use The Lexx to blow up his planet. They do not know until much later whether Mantrid himself survived.