It�s sort of like the Star Wars prequel films. It feels unnecessary. We know Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader, so why�d we actually have to see it on film? Pretty much just so George Lucas could have Stormtroopers in colorful armor and Jedi against green-screen backgrounds. Meanwhile, the bulk of Razor is events we�d been told about: Pegasus escaping the Yard, Cain executing her XO, the shootings of civilians on military orders. All of these were events referenced in the �Pegasus/Resurrection Ship� arc in BSG�s second season, and seeing them on screen was, to me, gratuitous.
Meanwhile, all of this is framed into what could�ve been an episode of the series proper (and is set in the latter portion of the second season � Lee has just assumed command of Pegasus, and reference is made to the episode Epiphany): a Raptor has disappeared on a research mission, and Admiral Adama transfers his flag to the newer Battlestar to oversee the rescue operation. Major Shaw, who turned into a cold hard bitch under Cain�s command, then found herself peeling potatoes in the mess, leads a rescue operation onto an ancient Cylon basestar with a tie to Admiral Adama�s past, and the old Cylon centurions (from the original series) show up and say �By your command.� In other news, Starbuck moves her �Bitch� act from Kat to Shaw, and it�s pretty much Galactica as usual, with most of the show�s regular cast making guest appearances (Tyrol, Callie, Baltar, Helo, and Dualla are absent).
posted
Well Razor was made so that the Sci-Fi channel could have something decent to release on DVD. To that end, it was successful. If that hadn't been the case, then Razor probably would have never been made. Besides there's more footage than what was shown which was used as a cock tease to get us to buy the DVD.
(BTW Baltar was there in the background when the Old Skewl Raider was hauled up, he doesn't say anything though.)
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posted
And I'll be buying the DVD ('cuz I'm a sucker), but I bet a lot of the additional footage is those sequences with young Adama that were released as "Razor Flashbacks."
My point remains: it wasn't as great as what I expected, and instead of really showing something new about what Pegasus went through after the attack, we just got to "see" what we'd previously heard about ... and, gotta say, kinda wish they'd left that to our imagination, y'know?
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
Agree with Sol here, mostly. Pretty good, not crazy good.
Yeah, we didn't see much that wasn't already talked about, but how often have we itched to see something only alluded to on screen? So we got to see spaceships shoot at each other and blow up, I'm always thankful for that.
A friend and I were going to see it in the theaters, but forgot about it until it was too late. Ah well, would've been nice to see Scorpion Fleet Yards twenty feet across.
As for the whole mystery, I'm sure I've said it before but god knows how long ago, that it's plainly obvious that RDM doesn't know how it'll all turn out, so speculating to it now seems rather pointless. Though I hope he's got a clearer picture now than he did right after the miniseries.
And good god could that Shah girl not act. Didn't anybody else find it painful to sit through her performances?
I am somewhat disappointed in the structure of the thing. I was hoping it'd be a straight up telling of Pegasus' journey starting at Scorpion and ending with meeting the Galactica, but alas.
And yes, the old school Cylons were awesome in every capacity. This whole aspect was a very cool thing for the fans - to follow through on an in joke and make it damn cool. I loved watching the old school Cylons go at it in the webisodes, and that love scaled up appropriately on a 52" HDTV. Though I'm torn, part of me thinks the raider interior "By your command" bit was too much, and part of me makes the counterpoint of, "Weeeeeeee! Awesome!"
I think the thematic point of it, buried inside all that plot, was that Adama and Cain were two ends of a spectrum. Cain was willing to sacrifice anybody and anything for the greater good too quickly. Whereas Adama has trouble making those sacrifices sometimes. Cain is hard and tight while Adama is soft and loose, both are extremes, and reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
Which goes back to the discussion of what kind of commander is Adama. I think Reverend has it spot on, and I remember making this argument a long time back. Adama isn't a good commander, and subsequent flashbacks have revealed this. He saw one mission in the war, got back in thanks to nepotism, fucked up his real command, and got handed Galactica to quietly wait out retirement. And looking at the crew, at least at the start of the miniseries draws it out even further; the troublesome pilot that decks superior officers, the fraternizing pilot and enlisted crew chief, and the drunk mess of an XO. The only apparent blemish on this view is Lee's callsign as Apollo, which he presumably got because he was the son of a "god," presumably meaning William Adama. But one flight instructor's ironic sarcasm can explain that.
Also, that Rising Star model was in the Pegasus fleet and therefore not the Rising Star, only the same ship type. But we'll be seeing the Rising Star in season 4, should it ever air.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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quote: I'm not so thrilled with the idea that the old Cylons were destroyed by the new Cylons they created. I mean, I get the thematic significance, but it seems a little played out, to me, and I guess I'm not looking forward to the rumored Centurion revolt, or at least not as much as I could be.
Depends on how you look at it. To a machine conciousness scraping an obsolete model doesn't mean "killing" them because the new skinjobs ARE the old centurions, just in new bodies. The old ones were probably running on non-sentient programming, just like the modern Centurions by the time they were scrapped.
posted
Of the top of my head: Galactica-type battlestar Valkyrie-type battlestar An never before seen design with what I can best describe as a wing-span like an airplane. Of course Pegasus
There may have been more designs, but all the explosions obscured them.
posted
I recall seeing something that looked like a cross between the Valkyrie and the Pegasus, but without the hanger pods, or very small hanger pods.
Oh, wow! A login screen! I must've missed that in the theatrical release... was it something that appeared while Gina was screwing with the Pegasus' computers?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Catching up a bit from the holidays and actually watching Razor on TV.....
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: One niggle, though not about the movie exactly; What ever happened to that civilian engineer bloke they pressed into service? I recall he replaced Tyrol during the Pegesus two parter, but after that he seamed to vanish, along with the Peg's original CAG.
I'm pretty sure we've seen the Pegasus CAG in a few pilot assemblies since the Pegasus' destruction. He hasn't had any lines, but is just another face now. As for the engineer, I didn't think he replaced Tyrol, just had the same job as him on Pegasus. Also, I thought (I could be wrong) that he was the guy in Razor that they were talking to on that civilian ship.
quote:Originally posted by Bones McCoy: I loved the idea of renegade Cylons hiding out and carrying on a war that ended decades before... just like those stories you hear about Japanese soldiers growing old in some jungle, continuing to man their posts cos nobody bothered to tell them the war was over.
Side note here - I recently read about one such Japanese solider that remained in the jungle of an island up until the mid-70s. They tried frequently to tell him the war was over and/or hunt him down, but he refused to believe anyone but his former commanding officer. They finally tracked the right guy down, and he came out of the jungle willingly.
quote:Originally posted by OnToMars: Which goes back to the discussion of what kind of commander is Adama. I think Reverend has it spot on, and I remember making this argument a long time back. Adama isn't a good commander, and subsequent flashbacks have revealed this. He saw one mission in the war, got back in thanks to nepotism, fucked up his real command, and got handed Galactica to quietly wait out retirement.
Not to mention that in his one combat flight, he got downed by running headfirst into a Raider. That can't look good on his record. Why the frak wasn't he looking at his DRADIS?
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posted
Also, did it seem that that Hoshi guy died when those missiles hit the Pegasus only to pull a Valtane and resurrect in later scenes?
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