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chaniSo I've seen BSG 2 hours episode called Razor ...
I have so much to say and I have already forgotten some thoughts that came to my mind when I was watching it!
Sometimes I wish I could be a computer able to receive, process and express in written at once, or at least without losing any data because everything would be archived and printed somewhere inside but perhaps thinking is necessarily something that takes time and needs to happen with a delay...
Anyway, I did enjoy Razor if only because it made me think. Okay I was disappointed by the absence of a certain tall character but I already knew we wouldn't see Helo in that one.
Firstly I'm surprised (and a bit annoyed) that Razor was somehow sold or seen as a prequel. It is not a prequel but a "lost plot" that could have occured before the end of season 2 but didn't so they made it up now before season 4 starts. The fact that it showed flashbacks doesn't make it a prequel. They were flashbacks in other episodes of the series ! The story takes place just after Lee is promoted as the new commander of The Pegasus, everything else is flashback. Most of the flashbacks are about what happened on The Pegasus from the attack of the colonies by the Cylons to The Ressurection Ship episodes from season 2 (and Gina last name was an echo of it). There's also a short flashback about young Bill Adama just before armistice was signed. To tell the truth the Adama flashback seemed a bit forced in it but it allowed to draw a parallel between the Cylons and Helena Cain so I guess it makes sense.
I have mixed feelings about the Pegasus flashbacks. Apart from the first scene between Helena Cain and her XO and another scene when Cain checked the bodies of her crew (and has tears in her eyes) everything is through Kendra's eyes or rather through her memories. I wish they would have chosen either Kendra's perspective only or an omniscient perspective. I understand why they couldn't only show things through Kendra's perspective because it wasn't really about her but the mixing bothers me.
At the beginning of the story, Lee is promoted and Kendra hearing the news on radio says "The more things change the more they stay the same". In the end, she's told something similar:"It happened before, it's happening and will happen again...again, again, again..".so says the first hybrid eventually.
I loved that moment, not the words because it was an old story, Leoben sang that song before the old hybrid. What I liked was the repetition of "again". That repetition sounds like the hybrid was a broken record, a machine just having a bug which pointed out that even though he looked like a human being he was still a machine, a Cylon. But the repetition was also the epitome of the episode, and to a certain extent of the series itself, an episode working on echoes.
As I said above, Gina's last name meant resurrection echoing episodes from season 2, and some of the events that happened in Razor had been hinted at in season 2 , and perhaps the radio stuff was also an echo of season 3 finale but there's much more.
There was an obvious echo from Cain to Kendra to Starbuck and even to Lee (but papa Adama prevented Lee from echoing Cain, leaving the sins to the women!). When Lee chose to sacrifice Kara, it wasn't that different from Helena's choice to shoot her XO. The context was different of course, even the deep hidden motives, but both were in charge of the Pegasus and ready to sacrifice someone they cared about. In both cases it seemed incomprehensible. We saw Helena joking with her XO and obviously being close to him and yet she shot him in cold blood. We knew that Lee was fond of Kara and yet he picked her instead of Kendra. I think that Helena and Lee precisely did what they did to their friends because they were their friends following some (twisted ?)logics according to which a leader has to choose a closed one to show he is above human weakness, to set an example and be respected. Cain told Kendra that they had to put aside feelings, and we have an echo of it with Lee's choice. He did accept Cain's legacy in a way but Daddy was there to set the things right and recall he was the role model there. Cain's behaviour reminds me of Messala explaining to Judas Ben Hur that he not only he wouldn't help him and his but had to punish his best friends and sacrifice Judas ' family in order to be respected and feared.
By the way Lee annoyed me a lot in Razor and I had to remind myself that he had some journey to happen yet to grow up a little bit.
But I was speaking of echoes....So Razor echoed season 2, and it also echoed the old school Battlestar Galactica (I squeed when I saw the three Cylons inside of the raider, the light on the Centurions' head, the sound of their voices!) and some characters echoes other characters.
For instance the XO (his names keeps eluding me) was obviously The Pegasus' Helo, he had a conscience and was ready to voice his disagreement and disobey because of his sense of right and wrong. Hell, from time to time the actor even kinda looks like Tahmoh Penikett ! He had to die then. Helena metaphorically killed her human soul by shooting him. She got rid of what "saved" Adama as his speech to Lee pointed it out. Helena was a self-destructive person even before the Cylon attack, it was obvious from the first scene. Her XO was the voice of reason, recommending that she's take a break but she didn't want to listen, and we saw her training even harder after he left. Later she said that they would fight instead of running (while Adama and the Galactica chose the run in the 33 minutes episode of season 1) but actually she did rush into the fight (no matter it was an obvious trap) which is just a way of fleeing. She embodied the expression "headlong flight" while Adama often chose to strategic withdrawal. She was seeking death not survival. Same with Kendra and Starbuck. The three women kept burning their ships, cutting their ties. In a way the revelation of Gina's betrayal helped Helena to follow her agenda. She wasn't devastated, hurt maybe, offended she got fooled probably, but not devastated. I would even go farther. I think that everything she inflicted on Gina was part of her self destructive venture...she indeed built the instrument of her own destruction, she "razored" herself and sharpened the Razor and Gina was denied the status of person (Helena kept calling her "it") to be turned into a mere lethal instrument, a weapon, so she was logically the one who killed Cain. In the episode Gina is Helena's double. Cain told the torturer to push Gina's limits which is exactly what she's doing to herself in the episode. An echo again. And there are echoes within echoes. Gina is also Helena's double because she is a Cylon. Helena became a war machine in the episode, not bothering with feelings and morality, what she did to the civilian ship is exactly what a Cylon could have done. And of course Gina ended up pretty messed-up and self destructive enough to seek true death (destruction without resurrection) and nuked herself out at the end of season 2 ! *
Meanwhile the Cylons wanted to become more human! Oh the irony of the episode. Enter Adama flashback, the missing link, the first hybrid and its guardians (and how cool it was to see the old school centurions!), the making of the skinjobs...The parallel in counterpoint with Helena deshumanizing herself is obvious but what I liked the most if the fact that both Cain and the Cylons were equally messed up and naive. The Cylons thought they could make themselves biological ( that is human vs toaster) by hurting people and cutting pieces in a Dr Frankestein kind of way. They were supposed to hate human but they wanted to look like them, to get closer to them so they actually despised their robotness. Cain hated the Cylons but became a razor which is even less sophisticated than a toaster machine-wise! I think that actually Helena and the Cylons shared the same self-contempt, carefully hidden under a façade of strength and arrogance. Same naivety too.
They had good reasons/excuse and both became the enemy. It happened before, it's happening and it will happen again...
The Cylons thought that becoming skinjob would be enough, that they could be the new humans and take the place of the old species that was somehow obsolete and deficient, just like old school centurions had been upgraded into new centurions. Helena told Kendra that they had to become razors but it could be possible to switch back, to be human again after the war. Did she really believe it?
I love that show because it keeps questioning the definition of what it means to be human.
Also the old hybrid that young Adama almost saw and that he actually heard said something interesting about religion, about the upcoming skinjobs that would worship "our God". I think it means that the Cylons' religion was introduced into the Cylon society along with the skinjobs like a virus that probably came from the biological bits the Cylons used in their experiments. Religion stuck. It would be part of the definition of humanity then. But why monotheism? Either there had been seeds of monotheism in humanity before the Cylons stole people to experiment on them (the making of skinjob would be just a catalysis then) or monotheism is really a "change" , anew thing that appeared in the process of making the skinjob.
Does it mean that monotheism is a sort of upgraded version of religion as well ? I do hope that it is not the message that R. More wants to convey but I fear it might be because it fits in the metaphor and it is often a way of thinking for people nowadays as if - when it comes to religions- humanity had progressed from polytheism and its mythologies to monotheism.
Also the fact that the first hybrid was a male is significant. However the episode prominently featured females. We had four Amazons: Helena, Gina, Kendra and Kara...
But was it a feminist episode? All those characters were self-destructive and if we are to believe the male hybrid Starbuck would lead humanity to its destruction...Also Adama appeared as the good leader once more, the man who's brave, strong, thoughtful but also has good instincts. He's quite well balanced compared to Lee or the 4 women in there (I don't count Roslin and Sharon who simply had cameos).
Let's go back to his speech to Lee. He said that unlike Cain he had people around him, people he had to face, people he trusted or whom didn't want to disappoint (Lee, Tigh, Roslin etc) which helped him staying human. He almost admitted that getting close to the people around was a good thing then....which totally contradicts the speech he gave at the end of the boxing episode of season 3!
Anyway this speech made me think of BTVS. It reminded me of Spike being surprised to meet a slayer with friends in season or later in "Fool For Love" telling Buffy that she had lasted because she had ties (family and friends) and those bonds were stronger than her death wish. It could be seen as a bad thing if the Slayer was supposed to be a killing machine, but in Whedon's mind it wasn't a bad thing and Buffy turned out to be a true Hero thanks to her humanity and ability to love and share (her powers included). Even in her worst moments, even if she slipped in from time to time (When She Was Bad, or during season 6 and 7) and could have moments of weakness she had never been as screwed-up and harmful as the 4 Amazons of Razor (Starbuck wasn't too messed up and harmful in the episode but we, viewers, know her storyline, her past and what happened afterwards).
For now I can't decide whether BSG is a feminist show or not, I guess season 4 and Kara's destiny will tell, but Razor was not. Adama is still Zeus, the role model and the closest-to-a-hero we have aboard. Yes he made mistakes, season 3 pointed it out, but he's still a protector and he's good at protecting his people.
And since I mentioned Amazons I want to draw another connection to Greeks...
The idea of a recurring pattern a bloody legacy, of "what happened is happening and will happen again"...it's like the story of the Atridae !
It's a curse, crime leading to crime, the sins being passed from Atreus through generations, again, again, again...until Orestes got to be forgiven by the gods ( through the Areopagus). Kendra sought forgiveness too if not redemption.
Adama said that he relied on History rather than on higher beings (of course the Historian in me jumped and wanted to scream "No it isn't the goal of History to judge damnit" !) which is a sort of evasive reply (Roslin used the same at the end of A Mesure of Salvation!) but I still liked the fact he busied himself with writing down his stuff in the logs in the end. The old series always ended with Lorne Green's voice as Adama was writing in his log book. A nice final echo.
That's it, I'm done, I shall be quiet now...Can you tell I missed my show?
*ETA: As usual Cylons are used as a reflection to talk about humanity.
Sometimes I wish I could be a computer able to receive, process and express in written at once, or at least without losing any data because everything would be archived and printed somewhere inside but perhaps thinking is necessarily something that takes time and needs to happen with a delay...
Anyway, I did enjoy Razor if only because it made me think. Okay I was disappointed by the absence of a certain tall character but I already knew we wouldn't see Helo in that one.
Firstly I'm surprised (and a bit annoyed) that Razor was somehow sold or seen as a prequel. It is not a prequel but a "lost plot" that could have occured before the end of season 2 but didn't so they made it up now before season 4 starts. The fact that it showed flashbacks doesn't make it a prequel. They were flashbacks in other episodes of the series ! The story takes place just after Lee is promoted as the new commander of The Pegasus, everything else is flashback. Most of the flashbacks are about what happened on The Pegasus from the attack of the colonies by the Cylons to The Ressurection Ship episodes from season 2 (and Gina last name was an echo of it). There's also a short flashback about young Bill Adama just before armistice was signed. To tell the truth the Adama flashback seemed a bit forced in it but it allowed to draw a parallel between the Cylons and Helena Cain so I guess it makes sense.
I have mixed feelings about the Pegasus flashbacks. Apart from the first scene between Helena Cain and her XO and another scene when Cain checked the bodies of her crew (and has tears in her eyes) everything is through Kendra's eyes or rather through her memories. I wish they would have chosen either Kendra's perspective only or an omniscient perspective. I understand why they couldn't only show things through Kendra's perspective because it wasn't really about her but the mixing bothers me.
At the beginning of the story, Lee is promoted and Kendra hearing the news on radio says "The more things change the more they stay the same". In the end, she's told something similar:"It happened before, it's happening and will happen again...again, again, again..".so says the first hybrid eventually.
I loved that moment, not the words because it was an old story, Leoben sang that song before the old hybrid. What I liked was the repetition of "again". That repetition sounds like the hybrid was a broken record, a machine just having a bug which pointed out that even though he looked like a human being he was still a machine, a Cylon. But the repetition was also the epitome of the episode, and to a certain extent of the series itself, an episode working on echoes.
As I said above, Gina's last name meant resurrection echoing episodes from season 2, and some of the events that happened in Razor had been hinted at in season 2 , and perhaps the radio stuff was also an echo of season 3 finale but there's much more.
There was an obvious echo from Cain to Kendra to Starbuck and even to Lee (but papa Adama prevented Lee from echoing Cain, leaving the sins to the women!). When Lee chose to sacrifice Kara, it wasn't that different from Helena's choice to shoot her XO. The context was different of course, even the deep hidden motives, but both were in charge of the Pegasus and ready to sacrifice someone they cared about. In both cases it seemed incomprehensible. We saw Helena joking with her XO and obviously being close to him and yet she shot him in cold blood. We knew that Lee was fond of Kara and yet he picked her instead of Kendra. I think that Helena and Lee precisely did what they did to their friends because they were their friends following some (twisted ?)logics according to which a leader has to choose a closed one to show he is above human weakness, to set an example and be respected. Cain told Kendra that they had to put aside feelings, and we have an echo of it with Lee's choice. He did accept Cain's legacy in a way but Daddy was there to set the things right and recall he was the role model there. Cain's behaviour reminds me of Messala explaining to Judas Ben Hur that he not only he wouldn't help him and his but had to punish his best friends and sacrifice Judas ' family in order to be respected and feared.
By the way Lee annoyed me a lot in Razor and I had to remind myself that he had some journey to happen yet to grow up a little bit.
But I was speaking of echoes....So Razor echoed season 2, and it also echoed the old school Battlestar Galactica (I squeed when I saw the three Cylons inside of the raider, the light on the Centurions' head, the sound of their voices!) and some characters echoes other characters.
For instance the XO (his names keeps eluding me) was obviously The Pegasus' Helo, he had a conscience and was ready to voice his disagreement and disobey because of his sense of right and wrong. Hell, from time to time the actor even kinda looks like Tahmoh Penikett ! He had to die then. Helena metaphorically killed her human soul by shooting him. She got rid of what "saved" Adama as his speech to Lee pointed it out. Helena was a self-destructive person even before the Cylon attack, it was obvious from the first scene. Her XO was the voice of reason, recommending that she's take a break but she didn't want to listen, and we saw her training even harder after he left. Later she said that they would fight instead of running (while Adama and the Galactica chose the run in the 33 minutes episode of season 1) but actually she did rush into the fight (no matter it was an obvious trap) which is just a way of fleeing. She embodied the expression "headlong flight" while Adama often chose to strategic withdrawal. She was seeking death not survival. Same with Kendra and Starbuck. The three women kept burning their ships, cutting their ties. In a way the revelation of Gina's betrayal helped Helena to follow her agenda. She wasn't devastated, hurt maybe, offended she got fooled probably, but not devastated. I would even go farther. I think that everything she inflicted on Gina was part of her self destructive venture...she indeed built the instrument of her own destruction, she "razored" herself and sharpened the Razor and Gina was denied the status of person (Helena kept calling her "it") to be turned into a mere lethal instrument, a weapon, so she was logically the one who killed Cain. In the episode Gina is Helena's double. Cain told the torturer to push Gina's limits which is exactly what she's doing to herself in the episode. An echo again. And there are echoes within echoes. Gina is also Helena's double because she is a Cylon. Helena became a war machine in the episode, not bothering with feelings and morality, what she did to the civilian ship is exactly what a Cylon could have done. And of course Gina ended up pretty messed-up and self destructive enough to seek true death (destruction without resurrection) and nuked herself out at the end of season 2 ! *
Meanwhile the Cylons wanted to become more human! Oh the irony of the episode. Enter Adama flashback, the missing link, the first hybrid and its guardians (and how cool it was to see the old school centurions!), the making of the skinjobs...The parallel in counterpoint with Helena deshumanizing herself is obvious but what I liked the most if the fact that both Cain and the Cylons were equally messed up and naive. The Cylons thought they could make themselves biological ( that is human vs toaster) by hurting people and cutting pieces in a Dr Frankestein kind of way. They were supposed to hate human but they wanted to look like them, to get closer to them so they actually despised their robotness. Cain hated the Cylons but became a razor which is even less sophisticated than a toaster machine-wise! I think that actually Helena and the Cylons shared the same self-contempt, carefully hidden under a façade of strength and arrogance. Same naivety too.
They had good reasons/excuse and both became the enemy. It happened before, it's happening and it will happen again...
The Cylons thought that becoming skinjob would be enough, that they could be the new humans and take the place of the old species that was somehow obsolete and deficient, just like old school centurions had been upgraded into new centurions. Helena told Kendra that they had to become razors but it could be possible to switch back, to be human again after the war. Did she really believe it?
I love that show because it keeps questioning the definition of what it means to be human.
Also the old hybrid that young Adama almost saw and that he actually heard said something interesting about religion, about the upcoming skinjobs that would worship "our God". I think it means that the Cylons' religion was introduced into the Cylon society along with the skinjobs like a virus that probably came from the biological bits the Cylons used in their experiments. Religion stuck. It would be part of the definition of humanity then. But why monotheism? Either there had been seeds of monotheism in humanity before the Cylons stole people to experiment on them (the making of skinjob would be just a catalysis then) or monotheism is really a "change" , anew thing that appeared in the process of making the skinjob.
Does it mean that monotheism is a sort of upgraded version of religion as well ? I do hope that it is not the message that R. More wants to convey but I fear it might be because it fits in the metaphor and it is often a way of thinking for people nowadays as if - when it comes to religions- humanity had progressed from polytheism and its mythologies to monotheism.
Also the fact that the first hybrid was a male is significant. However the episode prominently featured females. We had four Amazons: Helena, Gina, Kendra and Kara...
But was it a feminist episode? All those characters were self-destructive and if we are to believe the male hybrid Starbuck would lead humanity to its destruction...Also Adama appeared as the good leader once more, the man who's brave, strong, thoughtful but also has good instincts. He's quite well balanced compared to Lee or the 4 women in there (I don't count Roslin and Sharon who simply had cameos).
Let's go back to his speech to Lee. He said that unlike Cain he had people around him, people he had to face, people he trusted or whom didn't want to disappoint (Lee, Tigh, Roslin etc) which helped him staying human. He almost admitted that getting close to the people around was a good thing then....which totally contradicts the speech he gave at the end of the boxing episode of season 3!
Anyway this speech made me think of BTVS. It reminded me of Spike being surprised to meet a slayer with friends in season or later in "Fool For Love" telling Buffy that she had lasted because she had ties (family and friends) and those bonds were stronger than her death wish. It could be seen as a bad thing if the Slayer was supposed to be a killing machine, but in Whedon's mind it wasn't a bad thing and Buffy turned out to be a true Hero thanks to her humanity and ability to love and share (her powers included). Even in her worst moments, even if she slipped in from time to time (When She Was Bad, or during season 6 and 7) and could have moments of weakness she had never been as screwed-up and harmful as the 4 Amazons of Razor (Starbuck wasn't too messed up and harmful in the episode but we, viewers, know her storyline, her past and what happened afterwards).
For now I can't decide whether BSG is a feminist show or not, I guess season 4 and Kara's destiny will tell, but Razor was not. Adama is still Zeus, the role model and the closest-to-a-hero we have aboard. Yes he made mistakes, season 3 pointed it out, but he's still a protector and he's good at protecting his people.
And since I mentioned Amazons I want to draw another connection to Greeks...
The idea of a recurring pattern a bloody legacy, of "what happened is happening and will happen again"...it's like the story of the Atridae !
It's a curse, crime leading to crime, the sins being passed from Atreus through generations, again, again, again...until Orestes got to be forgiven by the gods ( through the Areopagus). Kendra sought forgiveness too if not redemption.
Adama said that he relied on History rather than on higher beings (of course the Historian in me jumped and wanted to scream "No it isn't the goal of History to judge damnit" !) which is a sort of evasive reply (Roslin used the same at the end of A Mesure of Salvation!) but I still liked the fact he busied himself with writing down his stuff in the logs in the end. The old series always ended with Lorne Green's voice as Adama was writing in his log book. A nice final echo.
That's it, I'm done, I shall be quiet now...Can you tell I missed my show?
*ETA: As usual Cylons are used as a reflection to talk about humanity.
