It’s been a long long long time since I’ve been able to talk about an episode of Battlestar Galactica that I JUST saw. Well… on Saturday night I was able to finally watch a new installment of franchise in the made for TV mini movie “Battlestar Galactica: Razor“.
The movie is a flashback to the first mission of the Pegasus once it came under Apollo’s command and a a flashback of the flashback (stay with me here) of Apollo’s new Executive Officer as she remembers first coming on board the Pegasus just before the start of the new Cylon War under Admiral Cain.
The main character of the movie is Apollo’s new first officer Kendra Shaw. Shaw first came aboard the Pegasus under Admiral Cain just before the Cylons launched their sneak attack. We follow both Kendra and Cain as the new realities they live under start to alter them, blurring their moral code ultimately leading us to seeing them do things that they probably would have never thought themselves capable of.
Now, under Lee Adama (Apollo) Kendra is the second in command and is tortured by her secret past while under Cain. Admiral Adama gives Pegasus a mission to find a missing scout ship, only to discover that the missing ship has been captured by OLD STLYE CYLONS from the first Cylon war (yes folks… the cylon models from the Original Battlestar Galactica serise), and the Admiral sends Pegasus back to rescue the crew of the scout ship, and to destroy the old Cylons.
THE GOOD STUFF (Possible spoilers)
Fist of all, it was so great seeing Battlestar Galactica on the TV again. Just hearing the theme music filled my empty heart with joy.
Second, seeing the old style cylons RULED!!!! Not only the robots, but also the old style ships being piloted by 3 cylons. The damn things even spoke in their classic robotic voices and one even said the immortal line “By your command”. I was grinning like an idiot when they did that.
Third, seeing more back story to Admiral Cain was great. Also, seeing how she went from a highly respected officer in the fleet, to the monster we saw in the second season of BSG was an interesting character study (SPOILER – We also find out that Cain and one of the Number Six models were lesbian lovers, which sort of explains a lot).
THE BAD STUFF
As much as I liked seeing Cain descend into madness, the descent was far to sudden (SPOILER – She literally went from one moment chatting with her Executive Officer who appears to be her best friend, to shooting him in the head… just like that).
The flashbacks of flashbacks of flashbacks got a little convoluted. Don’t misunderstand me… it’s not that it was hard to follow, it just took a lot of the flow out of the movie, The whole thing is a flashback, then Kendra flashes back from the flashback. Then Adama has a flashback in the flashback, then Kendra has a flashback of the flashback of the flashback. Some of the jumping around was good storytelling… but some felt intrusive and like excess baggage.
There was no point. This was the biggest flaw of Razor. If you’re going to have a flashback story like this one, it should serve a purpose to the larger ongoing story with where we’re at now… and Razor didn’t do that… EXCEPT… (SPOILER – At the very end, a dying Cylon hybrid tells Kendra that Starbuck if the harbinger of doom for the human race and that she will bring destruction on all humanity. That’s big… but it was one, totally out of place line that had NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie. So in essence, it felt like the whole 2 hour movie was just for letting that cylon say that one line, which sort of soured the who thing for me a bit)
OVERALL
It was great seeing Battlestar Galactica on the screen again, even better to see the old style cylons, and in general it was a good little tv movie. However, like the 2nd half of season 3, it felt lacking. I’m glad I saw it, but I certainly wouldn’t have been missing anything if I skipped it. Here’s hoping Season 4 follows the first 2.5 seasons and not the last .5
