Razor Premiere: Share Your Thoughts
If you hadn't already seen Razor, you got your chance last night as it premiered on SciFi. A number of us hooked up on the forum to liveblog the event as it happened, and the discussion is still raging. If you'd like to jump in and share your thoughts, you're more than welcome.
Razor Liveblogging Frak Party [GWC Forum]
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
wondering if I should listen to Grandoa Goo when he said what he said about Starbuck…brings up a whole new discussion…
Looking forwad to the ‘cast on this
Dave
Totally looking forward to the ‘cast. And it seems that it is definitive (due to the previews) that Starbuck is in fact there, and not “HeadBuck” as was previously postulated
It was nice to get some new content after such a long hiatus! And as always my final reaction was “Bast*rds!” RDM & Crew gave us more questions, and not enough answers.
Answers I liked:
-Why Cain would allow a 6 to be brutalized as she did… (be/c she was so deeply betrayed by it).
-How Pegasus escaped.
-The full-circle nature of the Gina/Cain relationship.
-How the Pegasus canibalized the other ships.
Questions I now have:
-What the heck is Starbuck?
-What the heck was that Hybrid?
-How did he know Kendra Shaw and Kara Thrace?
-Was that the missing Cylon link?
-Is that the Cylon God?
-How come PapAdama doesn’t believe in the Gods even now?
P.S. Nice to see Larry, Curly and Moe flying that pringle.
I thought that Admiral Ro delivered an excelent performance. However, there was a dire lack of hampsters.
I’m really looking forward to the ‘cast, particularly because of the present I left you, which may be one of my best if not the best call/intro thingy that I’ve ever sent in to any podcast ever. WOOT!
And as far as the spelling goes, don’t blame me, I’m just a hampster; in the colonial fleet, we’re forbidden to learn to read or write…damn that Roslyn.
You, my friend, need to be introduced to Hampster Lincon!
And shaymus, I sent one in, but it was only OK, can’t wait to hear yours tho!
That’s the best part – I can’t wait to hear it too! I send them in by el teleofono, never to hear them again until they’re sent back to me through the pneumatic tubes of the intarwebnets!
It reminds me a lot of taking film-based photos; you never really get to see the shots that you’ve taken until you not only develop the film, but make prints of the shots. When that happens it’s like seeing it for the first time, just like hearing my calls on podcasts is like hearing them for the first time 🙂
PS: Am I a bad person for
1) Sharing my thoughts about everything BUT Razor in the comments of this post
2) Refreshing the GWC home page, waiting for the ‘cast
😀 ?
Hi everyone,
Does anyone know where one can download Razor? I don’t have cable and usually watch the episodes on iTunes, but Razor hasn’t shown up there yet. Help!
🙂
You can’t download it legally. 😉
Google “bittorrent” to learn about the shadier side of *acquiring* such things.
And yes, I will buy the DVD when it comes out. So it’s not stealing. =D
Great story. I liked the way “Razor” provided a different perspective on events in the BSG universe than “as seen from Galactica” (i.e. the main Series 3 thread). Cain and her crew come across as more sympathetic (or at least empathetic) characters than they appeared in Series 3.
Eyeless – thanks very much!
I thought Razor was just okay. The best parts of the story were the parts we didn’t already know. The drop about Starbuck being the harbinger of the apocalypse was great. Knowing that there may be old Centurions still out there flying around was mind blowing.
Seeing the story of the Pegasus being played out was like going from Cliffnotes to actually reading the book. I knew the whole plot and it was interesting, somewhat, to see how everything played out, but it didn’t add anything to the show arc.
Again, the only bits that were interesting were the possible reveals we receive about the creation of the betajobs and the grandpa hybrid (Cylon God), the old model Cylon “guardians”, and the Starbuck red herring. Otherwise, I wasn’t really impressed. However I respect the job done after listening to a bit of Ron Moore’s writers meetings.
Razor: Just what I expected. Same high-quality writing and acting – good action scenes, but nothing unexpected occurs and all the prior spoilers proved true – down to the warning about Kara.
While entertaining (and yes it fed the need for a fix caused by stupid Sci-Fi Channel creating an insanely long wait until season 4)
I’d give Razor B-.
They chose to go backwards and sideways with the story than forward. With such rich material, Razor would have worked better as a flashback episode during season 3 (they could have jettisoned a couple of useless episodes like black market, labor strike and Sagitarron epidemic shows).
BSG needs to be careful with the slow reveal and the annoyance this can cause. Enought teasing out what Kara Thrace’s “special destiny” will be – bring it and be done with it already.
It was nice to see the original Hybrid and know that the new model Hybrids will be pivotal – as they should be – as the story concludes.
Did we really need to be hit over the head with “this has happened before and it will happen again” said like 5 times? Once was enough. We got it. We remember it from the first season, thank you.
Which leads this viewer to believe that the Cylon Plan must be to fracture the cycles of time somehow so they can be free of the endlessly repeating cycle since they can sense it – feel it.
The Kendra character in Razor was good – good transformational character arc – but so negative – really, couldn’t two episodes have been better spent on more Cylon history from their perspective?
Michelle Forbes was great, again. Good melding of past episodes’ version of events with what was in Razor. The lesbian love affair will perhaps be made more literal in the expanded “unrated” DVD? It was barely referenced in the screening of Razor I saw in Huntington Beach.
Battle scenes are good – more of the same – just different angles from the show – the large digital projection theatre screen (gads, I hate the pixelation visible in digital projection) had about 4 bad visual effects due to the technology – twice the CGI interiors of Pegasus’s landing bay and some other open side of the ship looked pretty shlocky (will probably be fine on TV).
Tricia Helfer continues to get the best parts on this show and her character here, although used sparingly, is possibly the best thing about Razor.
Frankly Razor is not a memorable episode and other than the backstory of the young Adama and the early Cylons and their first Hybrid, really lent nothing meaningful to the overall story. We could have lived without Razor. We BSG fans just need our fix so this will have to suffice for now.
The real mystery is if Sci-Fi channel is stupid enough to not air BSG in prime time either on its network or the parent NBC from beginning to the end of season 3 between now and January (April?) when season 4 starts. And if we really have to wait until April for new episodes that is nearly SIX MONTHS and that is insane. And if the writers’ strike (go writers!) really does cause the second half of season 4 to air in 2009 then the head of Sci-Fi Channel should be fired.
Lastly, RM and DE really must find a way of ending the story that resolves the Greek God dilemma. If they don’t, they’ve punted.
I have so many things that I would love to discuss about Razor, but I need to process it first and watch it a few more times. However, in talking with a good friend about the episode I realized I needed to come up with a name for the Six who was part of this story arc, and then I had to share it with the world:
“PegaSix”
🙂
Nice, Dave, but her actual name is just as cool.
When word of the changes that RDM was making leaked out, the existing BSG fan base started to call the project “GINO” for Galactica In Name Only. RDM then dubbed the Pegasus Six with the feminine version, “Gina.”
“Pegasix”…BRILLIANT. It rocks my world!
I noticed in the credits mention of a “Young Helena” and “Helena’s Father”. Did I miss something in Razor, or is this perhaps aluding to something we’ll see in the DVD version?
I thought overall RAZOR was good, but wasn’t blown away. I could have done without the “Young Adama” scene, as it felt a bit out of place for me.
I also found the story a bit rushed and Cain’s transformation a bit quick. Perhaps the story may have worked better as a two-part mini-series?
Actors get a credit even if their entire performance is left on the cutting room floor. So, the “young Helena” scenes were shot, but evidently not used. Odds are good that they’ll be DVD extras.
If you listen to RDM’s writer’s meeting podcast they speak of a “personality defining scene” where young Helena sees her father killed on Armistice Day.
I’ve had a chance to watch Razor a second time and it’s got a lot of depth. But while the character study and morality tale part of it improved with the second watching it’s still not really exciting because, as others have pointed out, there’s nothing new. The Adama flashback felt very unnecessary and tacked on. Still the dialogue, the ideas presented and the acting are very good. I’d say, for BSG it was an average show and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Check out my BSG music videos at youtube.com/vogt48
I think Sean and Audra made some comments about “Kendra Shaw’s” accent. I think they made comments about it being British or Kiwi.
The last I can understand as there is some overlap between Australian and New Zealand accents, with many New Zealanders (esp from some parts of the West Coast, which had a lot of Australian settlers) sounding very Australian and many Australians (especially from the only other convict free former British colony in Australasia , namely South Australia) sounding very New Zealander. And on top of that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders and Australians live in the other country. Some linguists even say that the NZ accent is actually taking root in Australia and lots of kids speak with a more Kiwi style vowel sound than in the past.
Jacobsen’s background includes Norse, British, Portugese and Chinese. These kind of combinations are not uncommon in Australia, especially in the biggest cities (and remember if Sydney and Melbourne were in the US they would probably be the 5th and 6th largest cities in the US, top ten anyhow). Growing up in Sydney a close friend’s parents came from Poland and Hong Kong and a workmate of mine is of Indonesian background and his wife is from Armenia. (We asked him if his child is Indonesian-Armenian or Armenian-Indonesian, he replied “no just Aussie”.)
There is some more Jacobsen accent trivia on this site (see here). which features a worthwhile interview with Jacobsen about her role in BSG, under the ‘Did You Know’ section (on left)
“Jacobsen, a native of Australia, used an American accent for her audition but it was decided for her character to have Jacobsen’s own natural accent.”
She’s been in Australian soap operas for a long time, as well as a comedy series here called ‘Pizza’.
Not all Australians speak like ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ anymore than all Texans speak like John Wayne. Thank the gods that the BSG directors had the good sense to cast Jacobsen with her natural accent rather than acting school Americana!! 🙂