Posted by Sarah

Razor opens with a visual and a voiceover: someone’s dragging a knife blade up and down their arm, speaking to us in an accent we don’t recognize from any of the characters we know so far. “You’re born, you live, you die.” Flashback to Galactica’s meeting with Pegasus, the Cylon we know as Six killing Cain, the murder of Cain’s successor, Fisk, and the heroic death of his successor, Garner. Lee is promoted to Commander. “You make your choices and you live with them. In the end, you are your choices.”

Opening credits: 49,579 survivors remain.

Lee addresses the crew of Pegasus and the public, telling them that “We can’t always choose our circumstances, but we can choose the way we handle them.” A girl we haven’t seen before is injecting herself with something, and has flashbacks of dead bodies and people crying. She’s been summoned to Lee’s office, and we find out that her name is Kendra Shaw. Lee’s review of her file leaves him puzzled: Cain had nothing but the highest praise for Shaw, but each of her successors reprimanded and demoted her for insubordination and irresponsible behavior. “Who are you?” he asks.

Flashback: Shaw arrives on the Pegasus and passes *gasp!* Six in the hallway. This version of Six is named Gina and is the network administrator (uh-oh …) and points Shaw to the CIC. As soon as Shaw sets foot in the CIC, Cain lays into her for being late on her first day as Cain’s aide, and dismisses her. “A little mid-morning snack.” No sooner are those words out of Cain’s mouth than the ship is hit — fires break out, people are down, Shaw is bleeding in the hall and the ship is in chaos. Cain spots Shaw paralyzed with fear in the corridor and slaps her out of her daze. They go to the CIC, and learn that the Cylons are swarming Pegasus and pelting it with nukes, in violation of the armistice. Cain orders an emergency jump — a blind jump. Shaw reminds Cain that a blind jump could land them in the middle of a sun, but Cain repeats the order, and the ship jumps just before what would have been a fatal impact.

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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Drama, Recap by knockturn
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Posted by Sarah

Raise your hand if you were bummed to hear that Razor would be about Pegasus instead of Galactica. Quite a few, okay … Now raise your hand if you were even more bummed to hear that it would be about events that had already taken place. Almost everyone, wow … All right, now raise your hand if you yelled “oh, come ON!” when you heard that it would mainly be about Admiral Cain and focus on a character we’ve never heard of before. Thought so.

I was just like you. Kind of thinking, “As much as I desperately need a BSG fix because I’m in serious withdrawal and it’ll be aeons before Season 4 starts, I’m not really excited about watching something about a character I never liked, seen through the eyes of a character I’ve never met, in the past.” It didn’t appeal to me much at all, outside of the fact that it’s BSG. But I should’ve known better — the writers who’ve hooked me for three seasons of what is arguably the best show on television (despite the unconscionable lack of tangible, shiny critical acclaim) couldn’t possibly let me down. And they didn’t. Razor is two hours of the most gripping drama possible, and it’s even nice enough to give us a juicy little tidbit to take with us into Season 4.

The little mini-sodes — the teasers featuring Bill Adama’s discovery of the Cylon lab during the first Cylon war — did a great job of setting up for Razor. In fact, if you missed them, don’t worry: They’re included in Razor.

Razor’s time frame falls roughly between “The Captain’s Hand” and “Lay Down Your Burdens” in Season 2, and it flashes back to the events immediately following the Cylons’ breach of the armistice and briefly to the first Cylon war. Razor follows Kendra Shaw, Cain’s aide, from the first time she sets foot on Pegasus through Lee’s first mission as commander, and through her we get to witness firsthand all of the events we heard about only in hushed, vague whispers when the crews of Galactica and Pegasus started working together.

It’s a complex show in which every subplot is important to our understanding of the series as a whole. One of the most valuable things we get is a three-dimensional portrait of Admiral Cain. Her brief appearance in Season 2 had us cursing the air she breathed, and her crew seemed made of evil. With Razor, we see them all before, during and after the Cylon attack. We get a revealing look at who Cain is behind the uniform, and why she does what she does while she’s in it. And Shaw’s not just a lens through which we observe the action, she’s a fully-fleshed-out character with a key role in the history of Pegasus, Galactica, and the human race.

Fans of BSG will love Razor. The writing is among the best of the series, the characterization is intense, the plot is edge-of-your-seat thrilling, and it really, really makes you think (like all good sci fi does). Razor will haunt you long after the show’s aired (this Saturday, November 24 at 9pmET), and you’ll be chomping at the bit for Season 4.

Photo © SCI FI Channel. Credit: Carole Segal

Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Drama, Preview by knockturn
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