Battlestar Galactica: Razor

[SoulReaver]

not sure if any1 has mentioned this yet but i just spotted a major goof... when the cylon board and kendra realises that gina is a cylon , they just they all the toasters on the ship didn't even mentioned how they were defeated

come again ?

[Skydiver]

i think what he means is....when kendra shoots and outs gina, we see at least one toaster walking in front of six and there is no mention of the crew killing all the boarders

[Matt G]

1. "So say we all" was very freaky.

2. Even I got the TOS references given that I liked the original movie as a kid!

3. Cain was very fracked in the head, Adama has a point in that it took Roslyn to keep him sane in the early days. Still, yes I can understand stuff like that early raid and shooting the XO. Back then they thought they were the last remnant of humanity. To screw over the civilians like that though? What the hell did Cain think she was fighting for? Did she honestly think she could take on the Cylons with only one Battlestar?

4. Kendra was an interesting player generally. I reckon it took that chat with Starbuck to realise that she's screwed up.

5. Who played young Will Adama? Didn't see anything in the credits. Jamie Bamber with a slightly different accent?

6. Interesting deal with Starbuck, Cylon mind games?

[Skydiver]

as to messing with the civilians....i don't think cain was thinking of much beyond immediate survival and revenge

practicality and the survival of the human race as a whole...amongst the crew of her ship is too small of a genetic pool for the humans to survive for long. the civilians would have been a large dose of new dna

of course, i don't think cain ever planned to survive. I think she planned to 'go out fighting' and take a basestar or three with her.

In that way, she mirrors the original cain, who was last seen making a suicide run at a basestar or two

I think her quest for revenge blinded her to everything but anything that woudl help her. and 'helpless' civilians would be a hinderance, not a help

[ori soldier]

i think what he means is....when kendra shoots and outs gina, we see at least one toaster walking in front of six and there is no mention of the crew killing all the boarders

thats what i meant

[escyos]

The old-school cylons did have swords on their belts and it is pulled out at least once.
Also the original cylons werent built by man..i remember theres a scene in one old episode where apollo is talking to Boxey and tells him the cylons were made by a reptilian race called the cylons and that they had died out many "yaherns ago" (years ago)

[Evil_Genius_McKay]

1. "So say we all" was very freaky.

2. Even I got the TOS references given that I liked the original movie as a kid!

3. Cain was very fracked in the head, Adama has a point in that it took Roslyn to keep him sane in the early days. Still, yes I can understand stuff like that early raid and shooting the XO. Back then they thought they were the last remnant of humanity. To screw over the civilians like that though? What the hell did Cain think she was fighting for? Did she honestly think she could take on the Cylons with only one Battlestar?

4. Kendra was an interesting player generally. I reckon it took that chat with Starbuck to realise that she's screwed up.

5. Who played young Will Adama? Didn't see anything in the credits. Jamie Bamber with a slightly different accent?

6. Interesting deal with Starbuck, Cylon mind games?

Cain was messed up seriously. Her decision of how to deal with the civilians made no tactical sense. The military exists to protect the civilian populace. Without them there is no need for the military. It was her battle mistakes(sending everyone she had at the cylons in a unwinnable situation) that put the Pegasus in a bad position anyways. If she hadn't squandered their resources and men and ships fighting the cylons they wouldn't have had to strong-arm the civilians. She was a very poor commander and a tyrant IMO. The only hard decision she made I agreed with was to make the blind jump which was their only option when they did it.

[Skydiver]

i have to disagree. It made perfect tactial sense. Make the most of your resources by limiting the number of people you have using them.

She went over the manifests, only absorbed those that coudl be of use to the crew or fill in the gaps of those killed in the original attack.

It ws morally reprehensible. It made no sense at all for the long term survival of the crew (from a genetic reproduction stand point)

but for the short term, immediate survival of her crew, it made perfect sense

[Mefusta]

i have to disagree. It made perfect tactial sense. Make the most of your resources by limiting the number of people you have using them.

She went over the manifests, only absorbed those that coudl be of use to the crew or fill in the gaps of those killed in the original attack.

It ws morally reprehensible. It made no sense at all for the long term survival of the crew (from a genetic reproduction stand point)

but for the short term, immediate survival of her crew, it made perfect sense

Exactly. Considering that, unlike Adama, Cain didn't have a game plan to perpetuate the human species, it makes perfect sense from a tactical point of view.

It's a war that humanity has lost. For all intents and purposes, mankind is already extinct. Cain simply believed that they shouldn't give up and accept their destruction, but rather go out in a blaze of glory, raging against the storm. When she found the civilians, she was so set in her mindset that there was simply no chance for any meaningful survival that she didn't see the fleet as people, just resources be exploited in their fight against the Cylons. In a truly final war, her looting of the Scylla's fleet was completely justified both morally and tactically.

[Evil_Genius_McKay]

Exactly. Considering that, unlike Adama, Cain didn't have a game plan to perpetuate the human species, it makes perfect sense from a tactical point of view.

It's a war that humanity has lost. For all intents and purposes, mankind is already extinct. Cain simply believed that they shouldn't give up and accept their destruction, but rather go out in a blaze of glory, raging against the storm. When she found the civilians, she was so set in her mindset that there was simply no chance for any meaningful survival that she didn't see the fleet as people, just resources be exploited in their fight against the Cylons. In a truly final war, her looting of the Scylla's fleet was completely justified both morally and tactically.

Thinking two feet in front of you is NOT an acceptable plan. Especially for an officer who has the rank of admiral. That is extreme shortsidedness on her part. I don't care if she thought her ship and her people were last humans in existence. You then have to be even more cautious in engaging the enemy, perhaps even hiding out for years until you increase your numbers. There is winning a battle and winning a war. Winning the war is always the ultimate goal.

I understand her motivation for doing what she did. I'm just saying her mental and moral compass was all frakked up.

[Skydiver]

cain was messed up. her family had been murdered. she was commanding a beaten up ship, struggling to survive, overwhelmed by the whole mess of survival... and i can't recall, what this pre or post gina? Had gina already been outed?

If she hadn't been outed, for all we know, gina manipulated her into killing the humans.

If she had already been outed, then here was the admiral, who's been banging a toaster. who'd been so stupid and blind that she'd allowed a toaster access to the 'inner sanctum' of her ship.

she was traumatized by her own decisions and questioning her emotional attachment that made her weak and silly.

she was in over her head, but there was no one around to call her on it and toss her a life preserver

[Wyrminarrd]

I found Razor on the whole to be a let down. The movie had way to little narrative focus and the constant jumping back and forth between so many different stories meant that none of them had much of an impact.

About the only good things about it were the classic Cylons and their leader. One wonders if he was trying to hurt the human race by claiming that Starbuck will lead it to ruin or if he was trying to save it. Considering that hte warning didn´t reach the fleet I´m assuming that he was telling the truth as he knew it.

[SoulReaver]

Cain was messed up seriously. Her decision of how to deal with the civilians made no tactical sense. The military exists to protect the civilian populace. Without them there is no need for the military. It was her battle mistakes(sending everyone she had at the cylons in a unwinnable situation) that put the Pegasus in a bad position anyways. If she hadn't squandered their resources and men and ships fighting the cylons they wouldn't have had to strong-arm the civilians. She was a very poor commander and a tyrant IMO. The only hard decision she made I agreed with was to make the blind jump which was their only option when they did it.

she & her minions were evil all right, but tactics are irrelevant to morality (or even lawfulness for that matter)

I dunno, here's another example : imagine you're homeless, in deep s***, and now toss morality right & wrong etc. out the windows and imagine you're "tactically sane" (duh)
so you decide to rob a house & steal the food & supplies within, thinking the house is empty, only to be caught red-handed by the occupants whom you woke up, turns out they were sleeping upstairs. well you don't want to run the risk of being caught eh ? so you shoot them, and aw crap, now the gunfire woke up their kids as well, so you take 'em out too
horrible isn't it ? but hell, you're only doing what you must to survive & not go to jail - by robbing a house for its resources & eliminating potentially troublesome witnesses
so tactically it's perfectly ok !



that said however, in this case I'm not sure it was even a tactically wise move - if the guy's forced to leave his family (especially leave them to their certain deaths since they've been rendered basically defenseless by the same people who want to kidnap him) then he's got 2 choices
- either fight back & try to disarm & kill a soldier or two if he can (10 to 1 he's a goner but then again he's got nothing to lose has he ? either way his family's dead, so he might as well try & kill few troopers, he might get *very* lucky)
- or comply, and conspire to sabotage the ship from within (the Pegasus in this case) - he's still dead but at least he can take out the entire battleship & its crew with him

thus from a tactical point of view Cain should've taken the families along with the draftees (assuming some of the draftees did have families) so at least they would have no reason to seek revenge & compromise the ship later on

[Skydiver]

true, if cain wanted pliant replacements, she should have taken the families as well...or at least maintained the 'they're gonna be okay' subtrefuge.

by murdering them, she's bringing over some mighty resentful people

[Evil_Genius_McKay]

I found Razor on the whole to be a let down. The movie had way to little narrative focus and the constant jumping back and forth between so many different stories meant that none of them had much of an impact.

About the only good things about it were the classic Cylons and their leader. One wonders if he was trying to hurt the human race by claiming that Starbuck will lead it to ruin or if he was trying to save it. Considering that hte warning didn´t reach the fleet I´m assuming that he was telling the truth as he knew it.

I don't feel it was a let down. I was bothered like you of the constant jumping back and forth. It is really annoying when they did that. My dad said it ruined it for him, but I don't think I would go that far.

thus from a tactical point of view Cain should've taken the families along with the draftees (assuming some of the draftees did have families) so at least they would have no reason to seek revenge & compromise the ship later on

Cain should have explained the situation to the civilians and reasoned with them that they both needed each other. The civies needed her battlestar for protection and she needed their assistance in labor, supplies and any other output they could produce. Not to mention they need to start makin babies sometime!

In essence we saw an alternate version of what could have happened to the Galactica and Adama. Adama had the same decision to make as Cain did and they touched on this at the end. He just wasn't screwed up in the head yet like Cain.

I don't buy that she had no one to turn to for guidance though. Her first officer whom she murdered seemed to have the moral compas and even tried to reach out to her in two parts in the show. Everyone is different so I think it was a combination of her personality plus the horrible events that happened to her that led her to take the actions she did.