Review

Razor is a romp of the best kind; quite literally straight out the show's greatest times so far: the season 2 Pegasus arc. Even complete with a verbatim, authentic season 2 opening theme. As such, I will review this episode as if it were aired during the second season. It makes little sense to do otherwise. As Razor does not possess any real spoilers for chronology subsequent episodes, it should be viewed directly after The Captain's Hand and just prior to Downloaded.

First and foremost, what a ridiculous teaser! The teaser is nothing more than an overly verbose, vague, and at times retconned recap. (I so especially love it when they insert new or deleted material in recaps...) The climax of absurdity here is intercutting Kendra Shaw's symbolic Razor dialog with the recaps, as if the clip show is supposed to actually be part of the dramatic narrative.

That said, this episode leaves us with some interesting partial exposition. Sharon reveals to everyone that the Cylons created hybrids as an evolutionary step between the centurions and the humanoid Cylons. Many were created, but the experiments were considered a failure. Some hybrids remained in service to control the basestars, but one went into isolation, guarded by old style Cylons known as "guardians." Adama witnessed these experiments briefly during the final mission of the first war. This information raises a series of interesting questions. For example, did the Cylons prototype their human models off of real humans?

I like seeing some of the repercussions of, as Shaw puts it, Adama "throwing his son the keys to a battlestar." Moreover, we learn precisely why Cain had what seemed to be such an unusually incredible disdain for Gina, and humanoid Cylons in general. Certainly Gina being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of her crew was enough, but it was always fascinating to wonder just what set Cain over the moral edge that would allow her to see the justice in rape and torture of a prisoner. The exposition of her having had an intimate, sexual relationship with Gina prior to knowing what she was was just the aesthetic touch this plot thread needed.

Not only does it ironically parallel Baltar's plight marvelously, but it adds a whole new layer to Cain's viciousness. And what viciousness! There can be no doubt or debate now, Tigh was right! Fisk was telling the truth! She really did kill her XO and long time friend for cowardice in the face of the enemy, and what's scary is there are plenty of reasons to agree with what she did and why she did it, despite its heinousness.

Near the end of Razor's first part, we're treated to fascinating glimpse into the first Cylon war from Adama's perspective which, aside from being an amazingly fun ride, resolves a few continuity problems by making canonical a series of common fan rationalizations. Many fans had always wondered how both Adama and Tigh could be veterans of the same war, with Adama being so much younger. It is established here that he only fought in one battle, just as the war was ending. Also, the war lasted twelve years!

Moreover, this episode establishes once and for all that original Cylon centurions, baseships, and raiders from the original Battlestar series were not making a simple cameo appearance in the miniseries museum. That's actually how they looked during the first Cylon war and I am incredibly impressed that they've managed to make it all look so cool. The battle with the destruction of the Columbia and the ensuing firefight between Adama and an old style Centurion couldn't have looked better. There was a lot of room for cringeworthy nostalgia here, but I thought they walked the line quite well.

Overall, save a nitpick or two here and there, Razor has many merits which easily secure its status as among the best episodes of BSG ever done. The story of Kendra Shaw is indeed compelling and using this new and overlooked character to tie together all these events and time periods we'd have loved to have seen more of variously was incredibly clever.

By telling this story, we get to see all sorts of amazing things that previously were only talked about. Not only do all the events depicted in this episode precisely match their descriptions in prior episodes, but watching them occur despite knowing the outcome is no less compelling. In fact, I believe that the fact that the audience of this episode is already privy to the outcomes of large quantities of plot covered forced the writers to raise the dramatic bar for the storytelling. The narrative focus is not on plot in this episode, but on the emotional impact.

You need look nowhere else but the episode's musical score for evidence. Like Shaw's character, the music floats seamlessly from time period to time period, weaving a tapestry of emotional impressions using strong plots as its thread rather than expecting the plots to stand on their own.

If you recall watching the first season of BSG, is there any doubt in your mind how it would end? Boomer was destined to betray the Galactica. And she did. The outcome was obvious and not at all a surprise, but still incredibly shocking and moving. When you watch the events of Pegasus' past in this episode, it elicits the same feelings. You know what's going to happen, but the story is so compelling and the details are so fascinating, the climax hits you just as hard no matter how many times you see it. This is why HBO's Rome was so critically acclaimed, for everybody knows the story of Julius Caesar. But it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Rome retold that age old story exceptionally well and I'm proud to say BSG channels that style here once again.

Review

The second half of Razor lives up to its first half and then some in terms of action, however there are some deficiencies. Aside from the fact that the cameo scene featuring the old style Cylon centurions talking to each other was somewhat painfully authentic, I found the prophesies imparted by the Cylon hybrid/god/whatever to be murky at best. Few if any answers are dispensed here and like Flesh and Bone it is as difficult to evaluate the legitimacy of the statements made by the hybrid as it was to evaluate the statements made by Leoben. Will the prophesies dispensed here come more or less true like they did with season one's prophesies? If so, how did the hybrid know these things?

In particular, it's somewhat aggravating that only half-baked impressions are getting revealed to the audience. At the end of the pilot miniseries, a similar revelation about a main character being potentially harmful to the rest of the main cast was imparted as well, but was done so in a much clearer way. Boomer was revealed to be a Cylon. Simple.

But At the end of Razor, Starbuck is revealed to be "the herald of the apocalypse. The harbinger of death." (That is, if you believe the Cylon hybrid.) As I said before, this is murky at best, and leaves us with significant questions. How does the Cylon hybrid know these things? For that matter how does he know about Kendra Shaw's hunger for redemption? Is he the Cylon god and therefore some kind of supernatural entity? Did he create the other humanoid Cylons?

Aside from that, this thrilling action story still manages to be a profound commentary on the kind of person Cain and consequently Shaw turned out to be. Adama and Apollo being unable to truly judge them also says something interesting about their characters. I like how the story used the controversy between Apollo and Adama of whether or not to nuke the whole base and sacrifice the whole team to complete the mission as a way to counterpoint the similar controversial decisions made by Cain. As Adama said, nobody was wrong from a tactical perspective.

I also like how Shaw's willingness to sacrifice herself at the end of the story quite nicely resembles Cain's unwillingness to go forward with her assassination attempt on Adama. Just like at the end of Resurrection Ship, Part 2, we learn that like Cain, Shaw really was a good person at heart. Just psychologically twisted and messed up by circumstances outside her control.

Indeed, we see Cain get more and more vicious in the second part just as clearly as we do in the first. The progression is steady and unrelenting how they transition from the authorization of raiding civilians, to prison rape, to the murder of civilian families. Then to sit and watch Cain justify it all to Shaw's face and promote her for carrying it all out is just an astonishing piece of drama.

Other notable details, the jet pack scene reminded me of Firefly. The scoring even seemed to channel Firefly in that moment. Overall, the science fiction and space battle stuff in both parts of the episode are beyond gorgeous as usual. Even watching the old style Centurions conduct guerrilla warfare was pretty awesome. They certainly didn't look as clunky and useless as they did in 1978.

It is interesting to compare my review of Razor to my review of the pilot miniseries. I recall subtracting a point from the pilot miniseries for not showing us any of the major Cylon engagements against the Colonial Fleet. We got to see some of that here, however I must now subtract a point from this similar production as well for the opposite reason. We got quite the light show in Razor and plenty of action, but the ending was seriously lacking in profundity.

It was never satisfactorily explained why Starbuck decided to act as Lee's CAG after explicitly stating in The Captain's Hand that she was going to stay on Galactica and be Galactica's CAG. She then reverses her decision to be Lee's CAG at the end of Razor as arbitrarily and as inexplicably as she reversed her original decision to stay on Galactica at the beginning of Razor. Then throwing in the joking about Leoben's assertions from Flesh and Bone that Starbuck has a destiny didn't help either.

Razor actually would have been a superior story had it not had anything whatsoever to do with prophesying things about Starbuck's mystical destiny. However, this little gaffe aside, the two part special was an incredibly satisfying piece.