 |
Battlestar Galactica
"Razor" Part 1
0:00-55:04 on the extended version
Blu-ray
TV episode
Written by Michael Taylor
Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá
Original air date: November 24,
2007
|
Apollo is promoted to commander of the
Pegasus and must work through the crew's prejudices and tackle a
legacy of the Cylon past.
Read the summary of the
full Razor telefilm at the Battlestar Wiki Site
Notes from the BSG
chronology
The story indicates it has been about 10 months since the Cylon
attack on the Colonies, but in the timeline it is more like 9
months given the previous timeline established in
"Downloaded" and judging by
Caprica-Valerii's pregnancy, assuming her pregnancy lasted about
9 months like a human's. Also, The Plan later
establishes the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens" Part 1 (two
episodes after this) as taking place 280 days after the fall of
the Colonies, which is slightly over 9 months.
Didja Know?
Though the story is set near the end of the second season,
Razor was originally broadcast as a 2-hour TV movie at the
beginning of the fourth season; by telling a story set a bit in
the past, it was able to set the stage for a revelation about
Starbuck in the middle of Season Four. I have broken down the
study on PopApostle into two ~1 hour episodes and placed them
chronologically within Season Two.
This study is based on the unrated extended version of Razor that appears
on the Season Four Blu-ray set. It runs an additional 14 minutes
compared to the broadcast version.
The extended version also contains scenes originally shown as online
webisodes studied here on PopApostle as
"The Lab", featuring a young Lt. William Adama making a
shocking discovery on the final day of the first Cylon War, as
well as a previously unseen subplot about Helena Cain and her
sister as children at the end of the first Cylon War.
The opening titles show the fleet at a population of 49,579,
down five from the previous episode
"The Captain's Hand",
accounting for the deaths of Commander Garner, Buster, Shark,
and the crew of Raptor 314 in that episode. However, the episode
"Downloaded", which would take place after "Razor" Part 2, also
shows the same population count, not accounting for several
Pegasus deaths in the "Razor" two-parter (Major Shaw, a Raptor crew, and
an SAR marine). This discrepancy is due to "Downloaded" being
shot during Season Two, a couple of years before "Razor" and
with no knowledge at the time that Razor (and the Pegasus'
crew deaths within it) would be retroactively squeezed in
between
"The Captain's Hand" and
"Downloaded". The viewer must simply pretend that the fleet was
down to a population of 49,575 at the beginning of "Downloaded"
(and the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens" Part 1 for that
matter, which also has the same population as "Downloaded", no
deaths having occurred in that episode).
Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode
Starbuck
Apollo
President Roslin
Admiral Adama
Major Kendra Shaw
Gus
Chief Petty Officer Laird (in flashbacks only)
Admiral Cain (in flashbacks only, deceased)
Commander Fisk
(in flashbacks only, deceased)
Commander Garner
(in flashbacks only, deceased)
Frank Bruno (in
flashbacks only, presumed deceased)
Marta Shaw (mentioned only, deceased)
Colonel Jurgen Belzen
(in flashbacks only, deceased)
Rika Belzen
(mentioned only, presumed deceased)
two daughters of Jurgen and Rika Belzen
(unnamed, mentioned only, presumed deceased)
Lucy Cain
(in flashbacks only, deceased)
Gina Inviere (in flashbacks only)
Riggs
Lt. Hoshi
Showboat
Colonel Tigh
Baltar
Head Six
Caprica-Valerii
The Hybrid
(mentioned only)
Banzai
Didja Notice?
Apollo is promoted to commander of the Pegasus in this
episode. He assigns Starbuck as the CAG.
This episode is the first glimpse of Scorpion Fleet Shipyards,
where Pegasus was docked just before the Cylon attack
against the Twelve Colonies.
In a flashback,
as
Colonel Jurgen Belzen talks with Admiral Cain about
"hobbies", he has a copy of a magazine called Scorpia
Paragliding. Notice that the magazine's title is printed in
the font of the opening titles of the original
Star Trek
series.
During her conversation with Colonel Belzen, Admiral Cain
reveals she is from Tauron.
Colonel Belzen tries to talk Cain, who's walking on a treadmill,
into taking some time off during the Pegasus refit,
saying, "Once in a while, it's okay to get off the treadmill."
Cain tells him she'll think about it. But notice that, as soon
as Belzen leaves and the door closes behind him, she actually
increases her pace on the treadmill.
At 10:39 on the Blu-ray, we see a civilian technician aboard
Pegasus during its refit at the shipyards
wearing Integral Systems Engineering coveralls. Gina Inviere is
also seen to work for this company.
Shaw states that Gina's last name of Inviere is Gemonese for
"resurrection". As we know, Gina is a Cylon and Cylons are able
to resurrect after their deaths. In the real world,
înviere is Romanian for resurrection.
Cain accuses Shaw of using her mother's connections to leap
ahead to more prestigious postings in her military career, hence
her assignment to Pegasus. Ironically, Commander Adama
speculated to President Roslin that Cain herself used her own
connections to get her promotion to admiral
"Pegasus" Part 1.
|
Razor features "modern
day" Cylon Raiders that have a
"head" that looks like the
current Cylon Centurion instead
of the old-style head seen on
the Raiders in previous episodes
of this series. Beyond the
"Razor" two-parter, the Raiders
seen for the rest of Season Two
and all of Season Three have the
original head, the new head
style not seen until the opening
of Season Four. This presents a
bit of an "anachronism" if you
will within Razor. It
might be argued that the
baseship encountered here had a
wing of prototype Raiders and
after their success here it took
time to produce more, finally
appearing in general usage
aboard all baseships by the time
of Season
Four. |
 |
 |
| Cylon Raider
head, version 1 |
Cylon Raider head, version 2 |
The rifles seen being loaded by Colonial Marines during a
practice drill on Pegasus are
Beretta
CX4 Storms.
At the end of the blindfolded rifle assembly drill, the
young recruit called Riggs removes his blindfold from his head.
But then he is alternately seen with the blindfold both off or
around his neck instead throughout the scene.
This episode reveals that Admiral Cain was involved in a
romantic relationship with Gina Inviere before discovering she
was a Cylon. This brings new meaning to the torture to which
Cain later subjects Gina and to Gina's murder of Cain in
"Resurrection Ship"
Part 2.
At 29:16 on the Blu-ray, an M1911A1 pistol is seen in Admiral
Cain's gun case behind Colonel Fisk. A few seconds later, a
Luger P08 pistol is seen in the case behind Colonel Belzen.
On Viper patrol, Starbuck suggests that Showboat sing a song and
Showboat asks, "How about '99 Bottles of Ambrosia'?" This is, of
course, in reference to the popular drinking song in the U.S.
and Canada "99 Bottles of Beer" based on the British song "Ten
Green Bottles".
When old-style Cylon Raiders suddenly appear on Pegasus'
scopes during Starbuck and Showboat's patrol, Lt. Hoshi reports
in CIC that the bogeys are "unknown configuration". But since
they are identical, or nearly so, to the Cylon Raiders of the
first Cylon War, shouldn't the configuration be known to a ship's
computers?
A Cylon communications relay station is seen at 38:45 on the
Blu-ray.
|
A Colonial industrial vehicle of some kind is seen in the
Pegasus
hangar bay at 39:32 on the Blu-ray.
Another view of this type of vehicle (plus a forklift
type vehicle) is seen at 59:04 on the Blu-ray (in
"Razor" Part 2). |
 |
 |
When an old-style Cylon Centurion is found in
the crashed Raider aboard the
Pegasus,
Colonel Tigh remarks it's been a long time since he's seen one
of these outside a museum. Of course, in the expanded timeline
of licensed stories, antebellum Centurions were seen (with a
similar mission)
by the fleet just months earlier
in the
Returners storyline of
the comic books published by Dynamite Entertainment.
Caprica-Valerii refers to the Centurions in the current
story as Guardians, almost legendary among the Cylons for
guarding the Hybrid, the prototype of the humanoid Cylons.
From 44:36-54:48 on the Blu-ray, the flashback story of a young Lt.
William Adama discovering a Cylon laboratory full of captured
humans is an abbreviated incorporation of the webisodes studied here on
PopApostle as
"The Lab".
