#bsg razor

[mbharestuff]

battlestar galactica razor (space war crimes yuri)

[blue-mint-winter]

BSG Razor rewatch

This movie takes us back to the good old times of S2 when Lee takes command of Pegasus.

Kendra Shaw, protege of Cain, is assigned to be his XO. Through her, we learn all about Pegasus past and see the atrocities we only heard about.

I really like how this movie fleshes out even more admiral Cain and how she became who she was in the end. We see how she abandoned her sister during the first Cylon war, how she picked up that titular razor to fight Cylons. We see how driven she was, but she had heart - until the Cylon attack, when her war philosophy was finally put into action. The tragic events and hard choices she made then hardened her into stone.

To Kendra, Cain was a role-model. She even got the razor from which she then passed on to Kara.

Kendra’s interactions with Lee and Kara were really good. I wish she was there in the main series for those few episodes.

Pegasus goes on a search and rescue mission for a mission Raptor, but they find old Cylons from the first war. Kendra and Kara go with a team to rescue their people and nuke the baseship which also houses the first Hybrid, while Pegasus draws the Cylon forces away.

Adama’s flashbacks from first war and his last mission when he found the Hybrid before the armistice were interesting just for the fights. And the actor can pass for younger Adama which is harder to say about the actor from Blood and Chrome.

Kara and Kendra discussing how Cain and Kara’s mother would get along. This is one of the rare few and precious moments when Kara mentions her mother.

I don’t know if anyone cares, but this movie passes Bechdel test several times over. Kendra’s talking to Cain, Gina and Kara about various things that aren’t men.

The movie also gives more screentime to Pegasus crew - we see Fisk, first XO, Thorne, and Hoshi. And Laird before he got recruited :(

Seeing Gina before she was brutalized makes me emotional.

The first Hybrid is interesting for several reasons - it’s old, it’s the only male hybrid and it speaks coherently. It gives prophecies but it’s not babbling like the regular modern hybrids.

The Hybrid warns Kendra about Kara, that she’s a harbinger of Apocalypse and they shouldn’t follow her. Sounds ominous, but knowing what happens in S4 it seems that Hybrid was wrong or plain lied. It’s a misdirection from the creators so that Kara will be treated by the viewers with suspicion after she comes back from dead.

I liked Lee and Adama scenes about whether to nuke the baseship with the team still there, and later whent they discuss their decisions in hindsight. Much self-reflection, very Galactica XD

And so Kendra set off the nuke manually and completed the mission. Another badass character bites the dust, but at least she went in the blaze of glory. She chose this end, she did her duty.

[capitalist-cheburashka]

I did watch Razor buuuuut I don't have much to say about it. I did call Cain and Gina having been together, that's on record in my dms.

The flashbacks to the time circa the first attack don't make much sense, they are said to be 10 months ago but that lines up neither with Bastille Day's election in 7 months, nor with Hera being conceived within the first month or so after the attack born prematurely.

What's the military command/rank structure in this universe anyhow? Like most sci-fi militaries they model themselves like a space navy yet they have the rank of Major? At first I thought it's just a rank within the Air Group, but Apollo's XO in here was a Major also. I guess they're just using Air Force ranks but cap them off with Admiral?

The Pegasus really is a crimes against humanity ship, which we've known but holy hell. No wonder its command positions can barely be held down by anyone for longer than 5 minutes.

For an hour and a half of Starbuck being Apollo's CAG we got criminally little interaction between the two. And he's GOT to stop ordering her to her death, there's only so much devil's luck one can borrow.

[lela-dax]

bsg razor: on kendra and gina

obv gina’s arc is fucking heartbreaking, but the thing that i’m getting stuck on in this watch-through is the immense implausibility of gina’s cylon identity reveal. there are two glaring issues here:

1. the presence of the other six: ok what is she doing on pegasus during the attack?? gina isn’t a sleeper agent like boomer, and she was clearly on pegasus for at least several months before the attack on the scorpio shipyards, so the cylons should have known she was there. there’s no clear reason for a skinjob to be necessary at all during what seemed like a board-and-destroy-the-battlestar kind of mission, but they couldn’t have sent any model other than the one that would give their undercover agent away?

2. kendra’s olympic-level leap to conclusions: kendra sees a woman in a lab coat, apparently working with the cylons, who looks a heck of a lot like her new friend gina, and immediately comes to the implausible-yet-correct conclusion: 1) this woman is not just working with the cylons; she is a cylon. 2) therefore, the cylons must now have the ability to perfectly mimic human form. 3) therefore gina is cylon. 

we’ve already seen a much more believable version of a character who is out of the loop on the skinjob thing try to make sense of what they’re seeing. when helo sees a woman with the cylons on caprica who looks just like the woman sharon shot, his first conclusion is that somehow, it’s the same woman. he says to sharon, “you—you killed her! i saw her blood on my hands,” or something to that effect. then he considers (and rejects) the next-most-reasonable conclusion based on what he knows, that the only other living people on caprica besides him and sharon are a pair of identical twins working with the cylons. and finally, he asks sharon if maybe the cylons are messing around with human DNA and  cloning people.

given what kendra knows about skinjobs at this point (absolutely nothing, she shouldn’t even be privy to the early human experimentation adama witnessed in the first cylon war), the “human clones theory” is much more reasonable than the “multiple copies of robots impersonating people” theory. if the number six she shoots is a clone, it’s possible she’s a clone of gina, intended to replace her. yet, for plot-convenience reasons, kendra immediately guesses that gina must be evil and knowingly in league with the cylons. and cain believes her, giving her lover no benefit of the doubt!!

[prankoys]

You're born, you live, and you die. There are no do-overs, no second chances to make things right if you frak 'em up the first time. Not in this life anyway. You make your choices and you live with them. And in end you are those choices.

Kendra Shaw, Battlestar Galactica: Razor

[dreaming-carelessly]

LIST OF AWESOME FEMALE, TRANSGENDER AND NON-BINARY CHARACTERS:

Admiral Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica "War is our imperative. So we will fight. Because, in the end, it is the only alternative our enemy has left us."

[dreaming-carelessly]

LIST OF AWESOME FEMALE, TRANSGENDER AND NON-BINARY CHARACTERS:

Major Kendra Shaw, Battlestar Galactica: Razor "You're scared, aren't you, motherfrakker? You should be."

[lascapigliata]

no okay you DON'T UNDERSTAND it is worth watching the entirety of bsg just to watch razor

sonja once made a post about how voyager should have showed how people react the edge of space, how humans become animals (i cannot find the post)

but that's what razor does???? how do people remain people when isolated that much - do they stay honorable and benevolent as in adama's fleet or does their fight for survival turn into bloodthirst as on the pegasus - and because adama was surrounded by structure and cain was not how do leaders react to power

how did cain find solace in gina inviere and no wonder her heart closed off when gina was a six because of course

how did wide-eyed kendra shaw turn from a newbie to someone with all the life sucked out of her so willing to die for a mission she didn't take willingly

look at the kendra/kara parallels look at the cain/adama parallels and look at the kendra/lee parallels - the chosen one of their commanders, forced into a place they didn't expect - and how kendra learns the rules so fast, too fast

JUST LOOK AT IT

how people can be good people and still do bad things (cain) - how people can be bad people and still provide comfort (gina, though i don't think she was bad)

who are our heros in context?

what did they do to get there? do they deserve adoration in spite of or because of what they did - did kendra's experience on scylla tarnish her overall heroism or

just

HOW DID A 1.5 HOUR TV SPECIAL GIVE ME SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT A 1-OFF CHARACTER