BSG - Razor
Apr. 11th, 2021 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessBSG - Razor parts 1 and 2, which the Beeb seems to be counting as 4.1 and 4.2.
Given my reaction to the end of season 3, good call on taking us back to a time when I wasn’t annoyed with the show, although certainly the final conversation between Kara and Lee was informed by our knowing about her ‘death’, let alone what the first hybrid had warned Shaw of.
There were two timelines, actually. I was confused because Lee referred to the attacks as happening ‘eight months ago’, but the flashbacks kept saying they were ten months ago. But then, I also groaned that the name of where Pegasus was docked when the attack started was Scorpion, as if that naming choice made years ago was aimed at me. (Seriously, the end of that show has cast a pall over the following week.)
So, the two-parter’s present was the start of Lee’s stint in command of the Pegasus, and the flashbacks were of the Pegasus’s first days after the Cylon attack, plus just one more flashback in the mix. I was a little hazy on where everything was at back then. But although it was grounded by the regulars (and Michael Hogan aside, it was just the main listed stars) and Pegasi, it also rested a lot on a newcomer, Kendra Shaw (I thought the actress did a good job), and she was quickly sketched out, and then suddenly fleshed out.
I wasn’t entirely sure why we needed to see what we’d assumed had happened on the Pegasus, and yet, the influence Cain had on Shaw was grimly fascinating. What was new was learning that ‘Insurrection’ (previously Pegasus!Six probably) had also been Cain’s lover, influencing her ‘war footing! REVENGE!’ mindset. (Adama claimed that Cain’s decisions could be argued as being tactically sound, but full-on toture and brutalisation of a Cylon really wasn’t, because IIRC, Galactica got more intel out of Athena, but then, before that, they’d done some torturing of He Has A Name!.)
ANYway, I dug the strongly female dynamic – the fact that Shaw had lost her mother feeding into the imprinting on Cain (that as well as her habit of shooting anyone who disagreed with her orders.) And the fact that Shaw was then Starbuck’s superior was interesting, harking back to Starbuck’s relationship with Cain (although where was Shaw then if she was such an Admiral’s pet?) and reminding us of Starbuck’s tussles with Tighe.
Which reminds me, having young!Adama having encountered the first hybrid (who did age) reminded me all over of the whole Tighe is a Cylon now thing, which brought back a wrinkle of displeasure. I still require an explanation for his model ageing and whether he and Dean Stockell’s model were around substantially earlier than the rest. And why do all the uninhabited copies age? Wouldn’t you want them at some optimal state?
Also, stupid of the Cylons to send a Six in the signature white coat, (which wasn’t strictly necessary, was it? Or was it just to try to save the budget for all the spacefighting?) when they had an undercover model on that very ship. Somebody wasn’t reading the databases there.
It seems like a shame now that they didn’t flesh out a former Pegasi crew member and see how they adapted to New Caprica and the destruction of their battlestar and all the rest of it – although it’d make the show even more crowded, it might be worth picking someone up even now. Adama played a counterbalancing role for Lee over launching a nuke vs. waiting for the team to return, interacting with his comment that Cain lacked all the voices he has in his ear to stop him from going all crazy dangerous military despot (though I think he was overall too generous to Tighe.)
So, we now know Kara is going to be a harbinger of death for humanity, but it’s interesting that the raiders jammed that warning from getting through, although if they hadn’t, it would have been a massive retcon, but it shows that they and He Ha A Name had autonomy from the first hybrid who seemed to claim status as a deity for his ‘children’ – the guardians? Was this part of why the Cylons decided to shut him down? Although I suspect theology on the show is as well-thought-out as anything by now i.e. not very. I wonder if ‘Razor’ will feel like something that illuminates future episodes.
Given my reaction to the end of season 3, good call on taking us back to a time when I wasn’t annoyed with the show, although certainly the final conversation between Kara and Lee was informed by our knowing about her ‘death’, let alone what the first hybrid had warned Shaw of.
There were two timelines, actually. I was confused because Lee referred to the attacks as happening ‘eight months ago’, but the flashbacks kept saying they were ten months ago. But then, I also groaned that the name of where Pegasus was docked when the attack started was Scorpion, as if that naming choice made years ago was aimed at me. (Seriously, the end of that show has cast a pall over the following week.)
So, the two-parter’s present was the start of Lee’s stint in command of the Pegasus, and the flashbacks were of the Pegasus’s first days after the Cylon attack, plus just one more flashback in the mix. I was a little hazy on where everything was at back then. But although it was grounded by the regulars (and Michael Hogan aside, it was just the main listed stars) and Pegasi, it also rested a lot on a newcomer, Kendra Shaw (I thought the actress did a good job), and she was quickly sketched out, and then suddenly fleshed out.
I wasn’t entirely sure why we needed to see what we’d assumed had happened on the Pegasus, and yet, the influence Cain had on Shaw was grimly fascinating. What was new was learning that ‘Insurrection’ (previously Pegasus!Six probably) had also been Cain’s lover, influencing her ‘war footing! REVENGE!’ mindset. (Adama claimed that Cain’s decisions could be argued as being tactically sound, but full-on toture and brutalisation of a Cylon really wasn’t, because IIRC, Galactica got more intel out of Athena, but then, before that, they’d done some torturing of He Has A Name!.)
ANYway, I dug the strongly female dynamic – the fact that Shaw had lost her mother feeding into the imprinting on Cain (that as well as her habit of shooting anyone who disagreed with her orders.) And the fact that Shaw was then Starbuck’s superior was interesting, harking back to Starbuck’s relationship with Cain (although where was Shaw then if she was such an Admiral’s pet?) and reminding us of Starbuck’s tussles with Tighe.
Which reminds me, having young!Adama having encountered the first hybrid (who did age) reminded me all over of the whole Tighe is a Cylon now thing, which brought back a wrinkle of displeasure. I still require an explanation for his model ageing and whether he and Dean Stockell’s model were around substantially earlier than the rest. And why do all the uninhabited copies age? Wouldn’t you want them at some optimal state?
Also, stupid of the Cylons to send a Six in the signature white coat, (which wasn’t strictly necessary, was it? Or was it just to try to save the budget for all the spacefighting?) when they had an undercover model on that very ship. Somebody wasn’t reading the databases there.
It seems like a shame now that they didn’t flesh out a former Pegasi crew member and see how they adapted to New Caprica and the destruction of their battlestar and all the rest of it – although it’d make the show even more crowded, it might be worth picking someone up even now. Adama played a counterbalancing role for Lee over launching a nuke vs. waiting for the team to return, interacting with his comment that Cain lacked all the voices he has in his ear to stop him from going all crazy dangerous military despot (though I think he was overall too generous to Tighe.)
So, we now know Kara is going to be a harbinger of death for humanity, but it’s interesting that the raiders jammed that warning from getting through, although if they hadn’t, it would have been a massive retcon, but it shows that they and He Ha A Name had autonomy from the first hybrid who seemed to claim status as a deity for his ‘children’ – the guardians? Was this part of why the Cylons decided to shut him down? Although I suspect theology on the show is as well-thought-out as anything by now i.e. not very. I wonder if ‘Razor’ will feel like something that illuminates future episodes.
