The Science Fiction Review TV Battlestar Galactica Razor (2007)

Battlestar Galactica Razor (2007)

Battlestar Galactica Razor DVD

It had been a few months since I watched Battlestar Galactica: Razor, so I figured I would watch it once more before finally reviewing it. I of course watched the Unrated Extended version. I wonder why they even bother releasing the regular cuts. Does anyone buy them? Anyway, I’m just a bit behind because I wanted to review it prior to the season 4 premier. There are four separate storylines told with lots of flashbacks involved.

From the Battlestar Wiki:

  • William Adama’s mission at the end of the first Cylon War.
  • Helena Cain’s loss of her family at the same time.
  • The events on Pegasus during and shortly after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
  • The events surrounding the Battle of the Guardian basestar, set in the time period between “The Captain’s Hand” and “Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I”.

One of the more interesting characters I noticed was the alternate Six model (Gina Inviere) that was captured aboard the Pegasus. From the perspective of Galactica’s crew, she was portrayed as a beaten and broken prisoner of war. Now aboard Pegasus we see the manipulative and violent side of her. I still feel some compassion for her, but she’s no longer a completely innocent victim. Her mission was to subvert Pegasus and she got caught.

I thought that seeing Cain’s side of the story would make me understand why she had to be so ruthless. The fact is she was under almost identical circumstances as Adama was. It has been quite a long time since I watched the opening mini-series, but from what I remember, Adama was faced with the same decision as Cain. Do we cut loose the dead weight (colonial fleet), or guard and protect them? Cain went a step further and stripped the ships she came across and left everyone that wasn’t useful for dead.

I didn’t really care for Admiral Cain’s protégé, Kendra Shaw. I got the impression she was supposed to be Starbuck’s foil, but it didn’t quite work that well. Shaw’s transfer to Pegasus and Cain’s corruption of her was a bit predictable. This was the classic story of a green recruit whose heart was turned black by the spoils of war.

Probably one of the best extra features on the DVD is the inclusion of the minisodes that show the rest of the details of William Adama’s mission at the end of the first Cylon War. These events are just touched on in Razor. I’m pretty sure they were cut because the run time would have been too long. Overall it was very interesting but I have two minor gripes.

  1. Why does there always have to be a scene someone fatally injured asking if they will be OK? The other person says, “You’ll be fine -insert name here-!” Arg!!!
  2. How in the world did the cylon with no parachute land in the same exact research station that Adama landed at with his parachute? I find it hard to believe.

Razor is a decent addition to the new Battlestar Galactica franchise, and I highly recommend watching it prior to viewing Season 4. I have the first episode of Season 4 recorded, but I haven’t watched it yet. I’m contemplating waiting until this Saturday to watch episode 1 and 2 back to back.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove you are a human * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Post

Flash Forward Thursdays on ABCFlash Forward Thursdays on ABC

Flash Forward

Flash Forward

When I first heard of Flash Forward, I was intrigued. Time travel stories always have piqued my interest. This new show isn’t a typical time travel story. One day all of humanity is knocked unconscious, and most of them see what appear to be hallucinations (2:17 minutes worth) of the future. The rest of this pilot episode is the main characters picking up the pieces from the fallout of this event. Can you imagine the scale of destruction if that would really happen? Interestingly enough, by the end of the day everyone is home and contemplating what their visions actually mean. I would think they’d be busy cleaning stuff up for weeks after all of the crashes and looting that took place. I’m not sure if it was poor scripting or what, but quite a few times I felt like I was being spoon-fed information and “insights” as the actors tried to piece things together.

For example, some of the visions were disturbing. They didn’t like what they saw and were afraid the vision of the future would come true. The flipside of this is also touched on, but what about those that had no vision?  Also, how will seeing the future affect the future? It is apparent that some will fight FOR the future, while others will fight AGAINST it. Who will win? Can both sides succeed?  I am waiting to see how the writers can add a unique twist of their own.

Anyway, give it a try and judge for yourself.

Flash Forward – No More Good Days – Full Episode

So I have been a bit behind with my reviewsSo I have been a bit behind with my reviews

I’ve been a bad reviewer lately. I usually try to write my reviews right after viewing or reading but I haven’t had as much time to write them lately. I’ve been playing World in Conflict quite a bit lately, which competes with my reviews here. I should actually do a review for that sometime, since I spend so much time playing it. It takes place in an alternate reality where the Soviets invade the US in 1990. For more information in the meantime just click the link above.

So, here are the things I have watched so far, but have yet to review:

  1. Blade Runner – The Final Cut: (I’ve watched the movie, which was awesome, but I still have to work through the rest of the special features on the last disc)
  2. I am Legend (2007) – I’ve actually watched this twice, once with my Father while on vacation, and again with my wife
  3. Battlestar Galactica: Razor – Unrated Extended Edition

I’m also in the process of reading two books: Children of Dune by Frank Herbert, and The Age of Spiritual machines by Ray Kurzweil. The latter is not really science fiction, but I’m about half way through it and many of the ideas probably seemed like fiction back when it was published in 1999. Many of the predictions Kurzweil makes in the first half are fairly accurate, so I’m interested to see what he will say in the second half.

My next major milestone will be to read Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations and Robots, and Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction.

That should keep me busy for a little while.

IBM’s Watson beats Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad RutterIBM’s Watson beats Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter

For all of you geeks that have had your head in the sand, artificial intelligence has hit a milestone. Yesterday, IBM’s Watson trounced these bags of meat known as Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Jeopardy. If I ruined the result of the match, I apologize, but I figure posting a day after is enough notice for anyone that was following this from the start. For some more background on Watson and behind the scenes info, check out my original post on this. I have to admit that I was rooting for Watson from the start. I was a bit worried when after the first day in the tournament Watson was only tied for first place. I’m not sure what happened between the first and second matches, but Watson rocketed ahead in the second day and never looked back.

I think IBM might have been in a rush to show off their new creation. It was interesting to see the answer confidence levels during the rounds, often revealing some really wacky possible answers. Watson crashed several times during the second day of filming, nothing a regular viewer would notice while watching the recorded match on TV.  One criticism I’ve heard about the match was that Watson was fed the questions electronically rather than relying on voice and character recognition. I have to agree that the electronic delivery could have been an advantage.  Had voice recognition and OCR  functionality been used in Watson, the victory would be quite a bit more impressive. I could clearly see the two mere mortals struggling to buzz in and shake in frustration when Watson was faster. The producers touted the physical buzzer plunger that Watson had to activate, but I still think that Watson had the advantage.

I would be interested to see a rematch in a year but with only inputs into Watson be voice and video of the Jeopardy board. After all, Deep Blue was given a second chance versus Garry Kasparov, so why not give the humans a second chance on more equal footing? It is quite possible that programming algorithms over the year would improve enough so that Watson still would win, despite the reliance of voice recognition and OCR. In that case, the victory would mean that much more. Even if you know the outcome already, I still recommend watching the matches. I already saw the Nova special, so I skipped through most of the background stuff from the IBM folks. Here is a link to my YouTube  playlist that has the three episodes broken into 6 videos. Check it out! Then you can tell your grandchildren how you watched a computer beat humans in Jeopardy for the first time. Then they’ll ask, “Humans were allowed to play Jeopardy back then?”