First of all, it made me miss BSG as a series. It also pissed me off - at Sci Fi, for delaying the last season into April, and for splitting it to make us wait until '09 until the conclusion. And it scared me, because the WGA strike might even mean that we NEVER get to see the '09 episodes, since they haven't been written or shot yet, and the showrunners are already warning fans that the cast's schedules might make the full progression unlikely.

So was it good - even great TV? Fuck yeah. It was median grade BSG - which places it heads and shoulders over almost everything else.

And it just wasn't enough.

I struggle to find anything about Razor that enhanced the Battlestar Galactica story. In fact, I think it hindered the story by depicting events we had already been told about (much more effectively, I might add), strung together by a character in whom we had no emotional investment. Storytelling like this is normally the province of fanboys and George Lucas. The only compelling part to me was the retroactive continuity-birthed relationship between Gina and Cain (which I suspect has a lot to do with the consistently brilliant Tricia Helfer), but even then it was only a point of interest, as both characters are long dead by now anyway. Even the maybe-it-is-maybe-it-isn't revelation about Starbuck at the end added nothing. Were we not already suspicious about Starbuck after she mysteriously came back from the dead? Overall, Razor struck me as a very expensive fan fiction. (How else do you explain the appearance of the jarringly anachronistic 1978 Cylon Centurions?)

Thanks for the reflection and validation, big time.

I thought the next season started in March? Not that I'd be surprised if it were pushed back; seems par for the course.

And thanks -- sort of -- for the heads up about about the season being split but, again, par for the course. Remember season 2.5?

One thing about the meshuga scheduling though, it provides a reason to keep on ...

Not brilliant. A nice fix during a long hiatus, and it also managed to tie up some loose ends and figure into the upcoming season. All of the things one likes about the show were in evidence, though it did seem to be missing that sense of urgency, which the usual episodes keep up so nicely.

Probably not surprising, given the way the episode had to be constructed.

But definitely not fluff, and the universe feels a little less cold and lonely now that we know the Pegasus story.

It was at best so-so, and I've really liked the show in the past, but briefly:

There were about four stories being told in Razor, and at least two of them had NO need to be told because they were already told in dialogue prior to this. We KNEW what happened to the Pegasus, how it survived the initial attack, how Cain shot her original XO, how they pillaged and conscripted off of some civilian ships, et cetera.

Retelling this visually was mildly cool but added absolutely nothing to the mythos or really to the movie itself, nor did it make Cain seem more sympathetic in retrospect. At one point I was expecting some good BSG style commentary on torture in the way they've commented on the current administration and Iraq, but they just left that dangling. WEAK.

IMO you could have completely dropped the "Kendra Shaw" AND the "Pegasus origin" stories in favor of some expansion to the "Young Adama" and the "Hybrid" stories, and you'd have been left with a much better piece overall.

Also, as previously noted by HH, the concept of broadcasting supplemental material over the web and then expecting the viewers of the TV show to have it in mind is lame.

I managed to catch a couple of the "Razor Flashbacks" at scifi.com; if I hadn't done that the Young Adama scenes would have made no sense at all--and they didn't make much anyway. Apparently they'll be included on the "uncut" DVD next week.

Call me old fashioned, but I think media should be self-contained in most respects. I shouldn't have to read a prequel book to grasp a movie story, or watch webisodes for a TV show to make sense, et cetera. In some cases the "multimedia" concept is legit, but in most, if the thing doesn't stand alone, it's weak.

I liked BSG:Razor all right, mainly because I'm a fan of Michelle Forbes and I like the series' storytelling methods. I disagree that it didn't add to the story: I watched it twice, and the second time I pondered the enigmatic hybrid's words, "All this has happened before, and it will happen again".

Was he implying that the human race itself is the end product of a previous Cylon-type race that made itself wholly organic, forgot its origins, then built its own Cylons and repeated the cycle? That may be the revelation the producers are saving for the final season (if it ever does get made).

It seemed really great at the outset, but then it became the usual hyper-stylized BSG stuff from the past season that had me missing half that season without feeling I'd missed a thing after the first four episodes. As an s-f writer myself, I am wondering why everyone says the series is so great, because it has fallen apart (at least to me) after the second season.

The wife and I both thought Razor did the job of giving us our much-needed BSG fix, though BSG's embrace of dimly lit authoritarianism is getting a little disturbing. Question: if you were the young Adama, would you stick your hand in a big tub of murky goo?

Anyway, what we thought was ridiculous were those awful Quiznos ads that told us in a breathtaking way what we had just seen a few minutes earlier. For example, you've just learned that I thought Razor did the job of giving me a much-needed BSG fix!

Essentially Razor is a timely reminder of the dangers of blindly following anyone who is in denial of reality. Adama is right about having a touchstone to reality that Cain didn't have. She clearly was driven mad with fear and grief over the end of her world, because the role of leader and the image that was needed (in Cain's mind) wouldn't allow for her reaching out to fellow officers for advice.