BSGcast – RAZOR
So, if you’ve subscribed to the BSGcast RSS feed, you might have noticed that you got an early look at the BSGcast for RAZOR… THat was pretty much an accident, since it wasn’t quite right! But Matt’s just a bit of a crazed perfecetionist, so you might not even know the difference. If you’re not subscribed, you can get it on iTunes!
Either way, here is it is at last, and hopefully you have a lot to say about Razor, because we sure did… between the ’secrets’ that were revelaed, and the ones that weren’t, Razor had its ups and downs, but overall we loved the 2-hour telemovie. And if we didn’t have to wait until April to see more, we’d love it even more. So Pipe up and let us know what you think, too!
November 25th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Hi Folks!
now, I was expecting this “Episode” to be good – and that it was. It totally exceeded my expectations by a good margin. All I can say is WOW! Yeah, the story was great, it was good to see some more of Helena Caine, the new Face was very interesting (too bad seh’s gone, though), and they left us with yet a n o t h e r cliff-hanger –> “sir… it’s… Lt. Thrace…” what was that all about, who was the old dude in the bubble bath and who invented soft soap and why? Help us out here – who’s got some ideas on this? But before I go on rambling about all the usual Galactica-Gab and what not, there was something about this episode that really put a lumo in my throat and a smerk on my face:
They paid hommage to some sci-fi greats:
- to the Cylon Centurions from the old Series: the old Ships and one of them even said “by your command”
- to the Alien-Saga: “stay frosty” and “knock it off Hudson”
- to The Matix: “all of this has happened before and will happen again” (said by some old dude)
There were a couple more that just slipped my mind. Were they really paying hommage, oder are these unintentional? What do you crowd think?
So – gotta get back to work. Thanks again to Matt + Nat (you know, there’s a retail chain with that name, right?) for keeping up a great site!
Cheerio,
Lt. Ripley
November 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
…just re-read my Text:
Please forgive the typos – next meeting is in 5 Min… That’s what happens when you think faster than you can type
All the best,
Ripley
November 26th, 2007 at 3:30 am
as a canadian, i have to say going to vegas in january would have been AWESOME
as a bsg fan, i have to say watching battlestar in january would have been AWESOMER!
and yes i totally agree that something with the final 4 would have been cool to do, and also i agree that a LOT was left unsaid….like they had another hour of footage but had to make room for more commercials and such.
Listening to the razor podcasts is interesting and it does seem like they had a bettter more inclusive plot, but they had to cut it down by a lot due to budget/time.
Like they mention a story with admiral caine as a little girl that would have been cool, and in the credits for Razor they have “young helena cain” so it seems like it SHOULD be on the DVD at least!
But hey, it accomplished what it set out to do, and we all are waiting in even more intense apprehension because of it, and old cylon hybrid is one of my favourite guest stars now LOL….old guy in a tub with a bad ass voice….”youre scared arent you motherfrakker!” hahaha kendra shaw was a treasure.
As are you two, keep the Bsgcasts coming!
November 26th, 2007 at 5:36 am
At the end of Razor it said that Season 4 would start in March. I think they moved it up a month so…That’s good I guess. Plus with the writers strike they might move it up further to give fans what they want before they have to cut it off for lack of programs. (they have 11 episodes ready to air)
November 26th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Nice review, I pretty well felt the same way. I sorta figured there’d be a few things hidden in the past to complicate the matter of the final five or other such mysteries. There were several problems with Razor, but it did a number of things very well and basically I was just glad to see “old-school” Starbuck again. You know, back when she was only partially nuts.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Speaking of “old-school” Starbuck: now I remember what the other Hommage was… It’s where Kara says “ain’t it grand when a plan comes together”. Obviously playing on the old A-Team saying – which totally fits because she’s playing Starbuck who was played by Dirk Benedict who also played “Face” on A-Team…
Cheers,
Ripley
November 26th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Wow. March can’t come any faster, am I right or am I right?
Honestly, i forgot all about the final five during Razor. I know, “how could you forget the final five?! D:”. Trust me i wigged out about that for like…weeks after Crossroads. But I really liked seeing the transition into Apollo becoming the Commander of the Pegasus, flashbacking, then moving forward in time when Kendra had her, “heroic death”. It was a very coo, the way it was set up.
And let’s not forget Kendra was pretty much, all around, badass throughout Razor. Especially when she was training the new nuggets. (One of my favorite scenes besides Cain killing her XO). But, yea. Kendra Shaw was harsh. she deserved a fist thump.
So yea, overall, I was extremely satisfied with Razor. i don’t think i really lacked much. and i liked the Starbuck cliffhanger alot. That definitely will keep me pumped till March…i hope.
So say we all,
Steenz
November 26th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Matt + Nat –
I got my hands on the exclusive copy of the DVD yesterday. Their are some neat features on it, including a more in-depth Season 4 look, and actor/actress interviews. However, the deleted scenes were nothing more than extensions from Razor itself. Only 3 extended scenes with hardly little information, which I agree, was disappointing. 3/5 stars on the DVD.
– Shane
November 27th, 2007 at 2:21 am
Hi All,
I totally enjoyed the tributes to other great sci-fi (the A-Team was a little much but I can see the connection with Dirk) – I think you got them all now Ripley. Too funny.
As I said in the Razorette forum,
the only part that bothered me in Razor is Lee sending Starbuck to her death. Does show everyone he is not willing to just sacrifice only Pegasus crew and willing to sacrifice a close friend….but it was a VERY BAD command decision because 1) there seemed to be a bomb expert with the away team, and because 2) pilots are in damn short supply, especially instructors…AND SHE’S THE CAG! You don’t send the CAG to her death! Bill should have called him on it immediately.
I don’t know why RDM did that, other than to have Shaw let her go as the harbinger of death and all that…- 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” and then just show her going in there and giving Gina the first of presumably many blows.
Interesting how Adama was also bent on war and revenge after the initial attack, just like Cain, and had to be strongly convinced otherwise by Roslin. It makes Cain’s military actions more believable.
On to Season 4,
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 that to mean Bill and as a Leoben trick to turn them against each other, but he could have meant Lee. (Of course, ‘Adama is a Cylon’ could also have meant Dualla, Lee’s Mom or Zac, but I am not convinced of these. They are too minor.) There’s lots more subtle things, but also his callname of Apollo, son of Zeus, the most powerful god, could mean he’s son of the Cylon God as well as being son of the most powerful human, Admiral Adama. Also at the end of Baltar’s trial, Lee says some pretty interesting things from this point of view. Re-watch that with this in mind.
He’s a protector of humanity, but has always been apart. He was never tested for being a Cylon etc. etc. (I will add more later)
My bet is now on Lee. Comments?
Stay frosty,
Tootie
November 28th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Wait…I thought it was Gina’s mission to just be a spy on Pegasus. I don’t think she managed to upload a virus, and I don’t think it is all Cain’s fault that the battlestars shut down because their network was shut down and Gina didn’t manage to upload the virus. Isn’t it all Baltar and Caprica 6’s fault? How was it Cain’s fault? What is the difference between what Gina was supposed to do and what Caprica 6 was doing? Confused!!
November 29th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Hi Graham,
Re. your last question, in my view, the difference between the objectives of Gina and Caprica 6 were identical. To infiltrate and destroy.
I think it was each Cylon’s mission on every ship to destroy it somehow after the initial attack if it had survived…to spy, and to destroy if needed.
Cain was of course not to blame for trusting someone who appeared to be human, but she FELT it was all her fault – not for the whole attack, but for the almost-destruction of Pegasus. She felt herself to have failed her military and her race in this respect, as an admiral, as the highest ranking officer in the fleet.
It was personal for Cain.
Imagine you are the highest rank there is, and you find out you’ve been sleeping with and trusting the enemy. For someone like Cain, who’s career is everything she has, this was devastating.
Tootie
December 1st, 2007 at 5:54 am
can some1 hlp me? i can u tell me a good website so i can watch Razor before it comes out on DVD beacuse i missed it.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:49 am
The impression I had of Cain’s role at the Scorpion Shipyards was that she, as ranking admiral, was responsible for letting Gina gain an abnormal amount of access to the ship and possibly to the shipyard itself. And given the fact that there was no military response whatsoever from the entire fleet of Battlestars in the shipyards when the raiders attacked, I assumed it was because they had been compromised by a cylon attack from the inside, since only Pegasus, with its network down, was able to operate enough to jump. With Gina on location and fiddling with the networks there, it would make sense that she had been responsible for incapacitating Scorpion.
What do you think?
~Matt
December 5th, 2007 at 2:40 am
No, the battlestars were all non-functional because of the wireless virus. Plain and simple. Pegasus luckily was unaffected due to network down. There was no mention of any inside attack, and I don’t think there’s any reason to believe Gina was anything other than a network administrator on a battlestar without security clearance. There’s no evidence for that.
It’s only when she had the codes that she became dangerous.
Anyone with thoughts on Lee at the final Cylon????
Tootie!
December 6th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
tootie lee can not be a cylon beacuse he is the son of bill adam, thats way tootie………..
December 11th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I agree with Tootie. All the battlestars were networked, and the program was the one written by Baltar, with a huge uncredited helo by Caprica Six, who installed the backdoor that allowed the virus in the defense network at the time of the attack. Galactica was unaffected because it was not networked, as an old ship about to be decommisioned, and Pegasus was unaffected because the system was down because of the repairs. It makes sense that the Cylons would have agents on the two ships that were likely to escape. Gina’s job was to sabotage Pegasus’ defense network from the inside. Shortly after the attack, Kendra noticed the virus in the system, so the system had to be cleaned and reinstalled. Gina needed security code to be able to sabotage the defense network before the Cylon boarding party. Cain might or might not have felt guilty for trusting Gina, but she wasn’t the one who screwed up, it was Kendra. Kendra gave Gina her password, even though Gina didn’t have clearances…because she trusted her, regarded her as a friend (Gina’s pleasant personality helped there, she was the only person who was nice to Kendra when she first arrived), and you may say that Gina’s relationship with Cain was one of the things that made Kendra think that it would be OK to give Gina security code because she would be regarded as a person of confidence. It would be interesting to compare Kendra’s transgression to Baltar’s, basically they both broke rules by giving security clearances to an unauthorized person, who turned out to be a Cylon spy, which they had no idea about…So it people think that Baltar commited *treason* by giving access to Caprica Six, was what Kendra did also an act of *treason*?
The one thing that was lame and unconvincing in “Razor” was the way Gina was unmasked as a Cylon. First of all, why did the Cylons send a Six to lead the boarding party, when there was a risk of compromising an agent they had on Pegasus? That’s either a very stupid blunder, or a sign of extreme over-confidence in the complete success of the boarding party. Second, security cameras conveniently installed in that hallway, but apparently nowhere else on the ship (prisoner cell, the access to Admiral’s quarters…)? And third, how the hell did Kendra figure out so quickly Gina was a Cylon? How did she go from “Oh look, there’s a woman in civilian clothes who looks a bit like Gina with different hair” to “She must be Cylon! The Cylons look like humans now! There are many copies! Gina must be a Cylon spy!” And all in a matter of seconds?! Did she know all 2000 people (or how many were supposed to be there) on Pegasus? Obviously not. Were the civilian clothes an obvious sign of Cylonity? Was she only suspicious because the woman resembled Gina? I don’t think most people would think she looked the same as Gina if they saw her from several meters away, with completely different hair and makeup. And if she does look like Gina, so what? Human twins look the same, relatives can look very similar, and even people who are not related at all get mixed up very often. Many people confuse James Callis and Alexander Siddig all the time (even though I am surprised by it because I never thought they were that similar to be mistaken for each other, but nevermind). How could she be sure immediately that the woman she saw and Gina were clones – let alone immediately conclude that they must be Cylons, if she had no idea previously that the Cylons ever wanted to take human form? Or did she also know about the experiments on humans that were conducted 40 years ago?
It now makes sense for Adama to have made the conclusion that Leoben was a Cylon as quickly as he did in the miniseries (because we know now he knew about the experiments on humans)…but Kendra’s even quicker thinking doesn’t really hold water.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:30 am
Just a random thought… to respond to the commentary… maybe the experiments hadn’t progressed in 40 years because there weren’t any humans beyond the red line in all that time to progress the experiments with…
January 4th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Matt&Nat I believe you’ve said it all. You are my favorite Geeks ever.
I hope with all my heart that Seaso 4 will be great. Have fun and keep going