In the "Battlestar Galactica " movie "Razor ," which airs Nov. 24 on American television, one scene will take fans of the acclaimed drama back to where it all began.
"You’ll see a glimpse of the first Cylon ," executive producer Ron Moore said in a recent interview.
"Razor" is a standalone, two-hour film that does not pick up where “Battlestar’s” third season left off.
But "questions and concerns" raised by "Razor" will be in the air when “Battlestar Galactica’s” fourth and final season begin in early 2008, according to Moore.
The film ...explores the experiences of those aboard the Battlestar Pegasus, which was the setting for a couple of memorable second-season episodes of the show. It also marks the return of Admiral Helena Cain , a fan favorite played by Michelle Forbes .
“We’ve been through [the Cylon attack on humanity] with one ship, with this group of characters” from the Galactica fleet, said Michael Taylor, who wrote “Razor.” The 2-hour movie will explore “a ship that had a very different experience and a very different captain.
“When we first started talking about the movie, somebody said ‘Pegasus,’ and everybody lit up,” Taylor continued. “I think it was the chance to tell the story from another perspective, which perhaps is less heroic in traditional terms. But [the actions of those aboard the Pegasus] may have been just as necessary a reaction, as necessary a way of dealing with such horrendous circumstances.
To tell the same story even more darkly was naturally very attractive to all of us.”
This worries me a bit--tho' maybe I'm too big a wimp. The episodes dealing with the "Peggy" were some of , if not the darkest as well as some of very best television ever coming from this genre in this form. Hopefully the "dark" comments were a slight exaggeration as BSG has been accused of being "too damn dark."
Some episodes of BSG could hold their own against the best of television drama--but BSG's better because it has Cylons-- killer cyborgs--"skinjobs" like the beautiful Caprica Six and standard-grade issue killer robots that look like killer robots...and the entire attack fleet are sentient spaceships--that resurrect.
Anyway. Oooh. Ensign Ro Laren, I mean Admiral Cain.
I first saw Michelle Forbes really get enough screen time to know she has acting chops back in The Next Phase , Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode 124.
Ensign Ro Laren" was the first Bajoran with an active role on the Enterprise (score!). She was really good--a former Maquis turned
resident Cardassian-hater (with good reason).
She left the show after one season and she was missed --but she's back in uniform again and she's a welcome addition to the Battlestar Galactica canon. Two great series --nearly twenty years apart--and Michelle Forbes made an indelible impression on both of them as a strong, smart, fearless and in BSG, ruthless leader.--Cyn
A pic from back in the day:
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...“Razor,” which also follows the first mission of Lee Adama (Jamie Bamber) aboard the Pegasus, promises to reveal some important information about the Cylons, who, as fans of the Sci Fi series know, have been relentless pursuing the 50,000 remaining humans in the Galactica fleet...
“There’s an element in [‘Razor’] – something in the deep past that young Bill Adama encounters,” Taylor said. “It comes back to haunt us, it’s something we have to deal with in the present. It tells us something new about the Cylons as well, it advances that mythology a little bit.”...
...All in all, “Razor” sounds very much like a film that explores how the past affects the present.
“There’s a sense of the sins and the evils of the past revisited upon us in the present, on both a character level and a story level” in “Razor,” Taylor added. “There should be some surprises in the movie, and they relate to the Cylons as well as some of our own characters.”
Speaking of Season 4 (and there's a little more on that here), at least two characters won’t make it all the way through the last year of “Battlestar Galactica.”
“It’s interesting, there have been a couple cast members where we’ve had to say, ‘Your character isn’t going to make it,’” Moore said. “But because it’s this year, as opposed to last year, it’s different. They kind of went, [in an upbeat tone], ‘Oh, I kind of wish I was going to make it to the end – but I’m in the last year!’”
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