Razor

I understand that this one-off, feature length special aired in between Season 3 and 4. I didn’t even know it existed until I took to browsing around certain websites looking to see if I could buy BSG on DVD cheap and noticed this curiosity amongst the regular seasons. I believed that it was purely going to be about Battlestar Pegasus – about Cain and her crew and the story of what had happened to them during and after the first Cylon attack. I got that story, and a little more besides. . .

The story of Pegasus was told in flashback alongside a story that slotted, chronologically, not too long after Apollo had been granted Commander status of the ship. He made the decision to make the tough, hardline Cain-enthusiast Kendra his X-O and it was through her eyes did we see the history play out.

In truth, I was a little disappointed by watching the story of Cain’s decisions and the plight of Pegasus before it encountered Galactica. We had already been given the ‘beats’ of the story by hearing about the X-O who got shot, and the shooting of civilians when ships were looted of their assets. What I wanted was to really get inside the mind of Cain and understand how it was she had made those decisions in good conscience. Really, I didn’t get much past the idea I had of her previously: that she was a bitch with a single intent and will to get it done no matter what.

The biggest surprise regarding her was that she was a lesbian, and one that was getting it on with the Cylon that would come to be known as Caprica Six. Six’s treatment once she was discovered as Cylon, and the torture and rape that was no doubt encouraged by Cain, were no doubt fuelled by her own hurt and self-loathing about how she had been taken in and perhaps fallen in love with Six. (It also makes the fact that Six would be the one to shoot Cain dead a more salient, poetic act.)

Otherwise the events we had heard about worked out pretty much how they had been said they did, which left little sense of surprise and no real understanding of the motivation. The closest to rationalisation was when Cain was of the belief that Pegasus and her crew were completely alone and the only thing they had left was vengeance and anger to deliver some payback. That was fair enough when they thought they were alone, but why the shut off and murder of civilians once they were discovered?

The title ‘Razor’ was the justification, with Cain’s viewpoint being that they had to become like a blade that cuts, coldly, to survive. I understood what was being said, I just couldn’t believe in it from Cain and see where her head state was at. That was a shame really, because the story of Pegasus was one I was willing to get along for the ride with. Perhaps it was the fact that the story was told in flashback, and so drained of dramatic impetus, that prevented me from fully engaging in it.

There were two other notable elements which, perhaps, justified this being a special episode that was aired between Season 3 and 4 (otherwise there was no real point in the story of Apollo’s command and the mission Starbuck and co made, and how Kendra eventually sacrificed herself as repentance for what she had done).

The first notable element was a young Adama’s story during the first Cylon war, how he had come across a Cylon base that was conducting experiments on humans. It was there he found the first prototype hybrids that were being created. Some of the detail on all of that was kind of lost on me, in truth, but I got the impression that the Hybrids were the Cylons first attempts at what would eventually become the likes of Six and Boomer and the other moulds. These hybrids, however, appeared to have some special sense of the patterns of the universe, and how things that had gone before would happen again. . .

Which brings me to the second notable element, and easily the most juicy in light of the end of Season 3and what Kendra heard about Starbuck. The hybrid delivered some form of prophecy warning of how Starbuck would bring about the end of humanity and that she must not be followed. Quite what the meaning was all about was, naturally, kept kind of oblique.

My own personal take on it, and the direction I think that Season 4 is going to take, is that Starbuck will indeed bring about the end of humanity. And I also think she will bring about the end of Cylons. And what will happen is that the perfection of a Cylon-Human hybrid will be complete, and that will be the new race. . .

On saying that, it sounds like kind of too much of a bleak ending for all the various people we have come to know over the course of the Seasons of BSG, so maybe that’s something of a longshot!

So, in short, not a bad feature length piece that served as a diversion and a mild curiosity – but there was never any danger of it generating the immediacy and excitement of Battlestar Galactica’s regular episodes when firing on all cylinders. The story of Pegasus was mildly interesting, but there’s a better story we want to see play out!