BSGcast – Razor Flashbacks
So, here it comes, just in time to enjoy before sitting down to watch Razor with a belly full of turkey and pumpkin pie: the first honest to goodness BSGcast in over a half year! We crammed all seven “Razorettes” into one BSGcast, it just made sense that way. And you can look for our Spoiler-iffic Razor review to pop up here in the next 24 hours!
Enjoy, gang!
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
Yay! great to see you guys back an hour before i watch razor! and i dunno if that was leoben, because it says in the credits on scifi.com, that the actor was “Terrified Man: BEN COTTON”…so maybe the voice was just dubbed in…i dunno. But definitely cool if it was karas dad…the piano player.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Interesting… this is the first I’ve seen the actual credits… perhaps my overly active conspiracy theories spoke too soon
~Matt
November 24th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Conspiracy theories are good though, even though if that guy was starbucks father….and he died then….that would mean starbucks 41 years old…but i cant wait for the razorcast…especially since it was hard to understand that Really Creepy old hybrid guy…and again and again and again…BOOM!
November 24th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Bring on the Razor review, but I’m supprised that you didn’t do it before this because most people have already seen Razor in October or early November.
November 24th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Nothing’s worse than finding out that huge plot point before you see the episode… so we thought we’d be fair to everyone who was waiting to see it on TV. But you’re right, we were ready to do the BSGcast almost a month ago! Gotta love BSG + web. They tag teamed the traditional broadcast TV model in 2003, and have been pwning it ever since! Long live the torrent
And iTunes…
~Matt
November 24th, 2007 at 4:46 am
I have to say I have been having withdraw pains without your podcasts… That being said, the Razor podcast help ramp up my excitement for the Razor Special. Since they are splitting the season into 2!!! Wouldn’t it be nice to have another BSG 2 hour special?
November 24th, 2007 at 5:20 am
“Nothing’s worse than finding out that huge plot point before you see the episode”
true….but what huge plot points were there? i mean, everything with the pegasus we already knew….karas special destiny (the destiny not the bad cover band lol sorrry bad joke) has already been known, and the old timey cylons were given away in the minisodes things…Razor was good, and cool, and will give much debate over whether “kara leading the human race it its end” means the destruction of the human race, or the end of their journey, but yeah, razor wasnt really anything new…
November 24th, 2007 at 5:29 am
True, James… very true… but we’ve been told off before on YourGeekNews.com for letting slip things that aren’t really that important… quite a delicate line, sometimes! I think we mentioned Jazz getting torn in half in Transformers once… and, jeez.. we really heard it for that one!
Thanks for enjoying the ‘casts so much, Jeff! And we’re glad we helped pump up the experience! Hopefully our Razorcast will be something that helps everyone chew on this 2-hour special a little longer… although, YES!!! I’d LOVE to see more 2-hour BSGs!
~Nat
November 24th, 2007 at 5:52 am
I don’t think that the “Kara leading humanity to it’s end” is debatable. I think that Razor was a way of giving people their BSG-god Admiral Cain, while setting up the next season with suspense.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Thank You! I’m so pumped for the Razor BSGcast, I haven’t seen it yet, apart for the bit I have had the time to watch online, (I get the tape tomarrow) I heard no new BSG season 4 till April 08, do you know anything about that? Well thanks for the light in our BSG “dry spell”
November 24th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Man, that was great. I totally missed you guys. ;D
November 25th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Hi Matt and Nat! and Everyone on BSGcast!
Glad to have you back!!!!!
I loved the 7 mini-sodes, and I agree that they did an excellent casting job…except I would have given young Bill a raging and realistic case of acne, which he would have had to get those scars later in life. So they missed the boat on that one…
We know now why Adama picked up so quickly on Leoben at Ragnar station being a Cylon. Adama knew…he didn’t want to accept it at that moment, but he knew. I can’t imagine the horror of that moment where you realize there are skin-jobs.
Hmmm, jumping ahead to Razor….the only part that bothered me is Lee sending Starbuck to her death so easily. Does show everyone he is not willing to just sacrifice only Pegasus crew and willing to sacrifice a close friend….but it still didn’t make a lot of sense at all in terms of command and survival because 1) there seemed to be a bomb expert with the away team, and because 2) pilots are in damn short supply, especially instructors…
So, not a good command choice at all. I will venture that this was very stupid in fact and Bill should have called him on it. Pilots make all the difference in most situations.
I don’t know why RDM did that, other to show that Lee was very willing to sacrifice her (twice – once with the nuke possibility and once by asking her to stay behind) – help please?
Moving on, I would have thought it realistic to have Cain go in there and kick Gina around quite a bit in the cell. I can see her being so angry that she just explodes. Or beforehand, she could have said to Shaw something like ‘You’d better leave now unless you want to see something pretty violent. It’s up to you” sort of thing, and then just show her going in there and giving Gina the first of presumably many blows.
On the scifi.com board, there’s a person making quite a case for Lee to be the final Cylon. I must say I’m pretty convinced. For one, Leoben said to Roslin before being blasted out the airlock, ‘Adama is a Cylon.’ Everyone took it as Bill and as a Leoben trick, but I think it’s clear now that he meant Lee. There’s lots more subtle things, but also his name, son of Zeus – most powerful god, could mean son of the Cylon God. Also at the end of the trial, Lee says some pretty interesting things if you have this point of view. He’s a protector of humanity, but has always been apart.
‘Adama is a Cylon’ could also have meant Dualla, but I am not convinced of that.
There’s also discussion on the scifi.com board about torturing Gina and whether that’s a war crime….
Tootie
November 25th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Hey Matt and Nat,
First time poster although been following BSGcast for a while now. Love your comments and theories. Its a good platform to compare them to my own and get new ideas
I kinda skipped the other comments because I watched Razor yet. Don’t wanna get spoilers. Just though Id share an interesting bit of trivia that may or may not have been intentional.
Campbell Lane, the guy who voices the Hybrid in Razor had previously voiced the “Bentusi” in the computer game Homeworld some years past. Now, Homeworld had several plot (escape of a people from a destroyed world to a new home) and mood (Homeworld had a very spiritual feel like Galactica) similarities to Galactica and the “Bentusi” there were, like the Hybrid, people who had integrated themselves to their starships to the point that they ARE the starships. I rewatched a cutscene where a Bentusi describes his existence in space and I only then realised how similar it was to Six’s decription of Hybrid’s existence. No idea if Campbell Lane was chosen because of this (or he got typecast
) but thought it was interesting.
Oh and, scifi better not be serious about extending the series to 2009
November 26th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
i glad u’re back matt+natt
November 27th, 2007 at 4:03 am
I’m glad to finally see you again. I will write a longer comments later, I don’t have time now, but I really have to say something or I’dd explode. I enjoyed “Razor” very much…
…that is, until I started reading articles and posts by people who say one thing you two have said here…at first I was really, really surprised, then shocked, in disbelief, and now I’m really sick and tired and MAD at hearing this…
Are you guys being serious when you say that Cain was REDEEMED (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) when we learned that the person she had brutalized, GANG RAPED, tortured, beaten, humiliated for months by her crew, was not just a random Cylon agent she thought of as a machine that destroyed her race, but her FORMER LOVER, someone she had known and been close to for months??!!! Now, I did think it was understandable – it explains, or at least adds one more reason for Cain to be brutal – because that’s what Cain was like. For her, everything was about REVENGE. She felt angry, betrayed, deceived, and probably most importantly, angry at herself that she had allowed herself a human weakness – so she took it all out on Gina, and did her best stip herself of one more layer of humanity. But to understand is one thing; I certainly don’t see her that makes her more sympathetic. I sure as hell don’t see her reaction as a normal one, something that I could do in a similar situation. But, even more than that, to say that SHE WAS REDEEMED?!?!?! And that that’s why you started to LIKE her?!? If she had hit Gina, beaten her up with her own hands, shot her, strangled her, had her airlocked in a bout of anger, I could empathize. If she had ordered her to be kept in a cell and REALLY interrogated, I would take that as a sign of a good commander who manages to keep her personal feelings in check. But to order her to be RAPED and made to feel “PAIN, FEAR, DEGRADATION, SHAME”… sorry, that’s where I can’t feel any empathy anymore. I found that scene blood-curling. (And that is why it was great.) I do feel more sorry for Cain after “Razor”, but in the sense of her being such a tragic, sad, and horrible person. To do that to ANYBODY is really horrible and inhumane (notice I don’t say “human”; humans can be incredibly cruel, so yes, Cain is human); to do that to your former lover is even more DISTURBING and TWISTED beyond words.
I really, really cannot understand people arguing that this somehow makes Cain a better or more likeable person. And, we saw very little of her relationship with Gina, but people are still arguing that Gina meant more to Cain than anybody in the world, etc. She could have loved her a lot in her own way, but how do you know? Apparently, the fact that she had her ex-lover raped and tortured (not to mention spitting on her, kicking her while she was literally down on the ground catatonic and in bruises, saying things like “Can you make it roll over? Beg?”) is a proof that Cain was capable of “love”?? Come again?
And that usually comes from the same people who argue that Baltar is incapable of love… because he’s selfish, self-serving, etc. But, you two are Baltar fans. Yes, as you pointed out, it’s impossible not to notice the parallel between Baltar’s and Cain’s situation. (Even though Cain, true to character, never gave Gina security codes against the military protocol; Kendra was the one who really screwed up in that case.) Tell me, can you possibly imagine Baltar having Caprica Six raped, and gloating in her pain?! On the contrary, as we know from “Pegasus” trilogy (and those were among my favourite episodes of the entire series), he was deeply shocked, upset and moved to see another Six who had been victimized and brought to a catatonic, suicidal state; I am sure he would have been shocked if he had seen anyone in that state, but his memory of Caprica Six made it all a lot more painful, and it made him decide to do everything to help Gina, another Cylon agent who reminded him of his former lover. Why were his reactions so different than Cain’s? Did that make him unsympathetic? Do you think it made him look like a bad person, did you like him less because of it?
For that matter, did you start disliking Chief Tyrol in “Pegasus”? He was also angry at both Boomer and himself when he found out she was a Cylon. But he still later didtried his best to save Sharon from a rape, killed her rapist and nearly got himself executed – for protecting someone who reminded him of his former lover.
This was quite a rant…sorry if I seem too emotional. Admiral Cain is a great character, and I do see her a multi-dimensional character, tragic in many ways (although I still hate her)…but I just can’t get my head around this concept that it’s a normal, sympathetic and redeeming quality in a person to be able to have their lover RAPED as a punishment for deceiving or betraying them. If that is a normal human reaction, then I guess I am not a normal human, because I can never imagine doing that to someone I cared about.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Just wanted to say that I agree with Ivana about the whole Cain situation. Although, I must say that the things she did or wanted done to Gina do fit in her character. Cain was already that type of personality and this situation reinforced that, if not added to her ways. Also, as for enjoying Razor or not…..I mostly agree with Matt and Nat about their comments on this movie, but I was really happy to see some BSG again and I didn’t feel let down by it. I loved the casting of the movie as well as casting in the webisodes. I could see a new series for us with the young “Husker” fighting the Cylon baddies! Anyway, thanks for giving us BSGCast!
December 1st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Ha ha, I love the idea of young Adama having a raging case of acne, Tootie… it certainly would be a bit more full circle!
And Neackal, that’s a crazy parallel in Campbell’s repeated type-casting! Good observation.
~Matt
December 1st, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Ivana,
I think I’d have to agree that ‘redeem’ might be too strong a word for someone who was able to be quite as cold-blooded and heartless as Cain was to Gina… and of course, the definition of ‘human’ is up for grabs here, but if you think of Gina as a misbehaving electric shaver, then it’s hard to fault Cain for wanting to explore her programming to exact some revenge. But Razor definitely gives her excessive treatment of Gina context, if not redemption. As it turns out, she wasn’t just a cruel Admiral, she was a woman scorned. And in this case, Hell really hath no fury like Helena Cain.
~Matt
March 5th, 2008 at 11:16 am
In the words of Yoda, “There is another……..ADAMA”
Who would be the two people that could destroy Bill Adama just by showing up? In the right instance he could cause him to freeze or hesitate and cost them everything?
How about his ex-wife and his dead son Zack.
If an Adama IS TRUELY a cylon, my money is on one of those two.
AND in true Babylon 5 style, they had an episode centering around his wife, and used it for mis-direction. Adama gets over a psyc problem and the viewers get introduced to his wife, making Lee a hybrid.
Not much is mentioned about Starbucks father either, however, the Cylons would not have wanted her overy if she was already one of them. However, to insure that there would be another Starbuck for the next cycle (happened before, will happen again) OR…………
to make a clone.
Cylons can download there minds into another body……
Could there technology download a human mind into another human body? or hybrid?
Now Starbuck can die, and come back, AND it almost makes sense.
In light of this though, she wouldnt be on the side of the final 5. It was a known model that took her overy and it was already stated that the current skinjobs do not know hwo the final 5 are. (except for Xena, who got boxed).
In order for the cycle to be maintained, there MUST be an Apollo, and there MUST be a Starbuck.
Would it not be something if Tigh was Starbucks father and neither one of them knew it………..
Well, thats my take…….cant wait to see if Im right….
Star