Razor

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Overview

A tale centered around the new Pegasus officer Kendra Shaw, following her entire tenure on the battlestar from the Fall of the Twelve Colonies under Admiral Cain, to Lee Adama's command and a frightful rescue mission to save crew members who have been captured by the Cylons.

Summary

Four separate, but related stories are documented:

William Adama's mission at the end of the first Cylon War.
Helena Cain's loss of her family at the same time.
The events on Pegasus during and shortly after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
The events surrounding the Battle of the Guardian basestar, set in the time period between "The Captain's Hand" and "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I".

In the episode these stories are largely told in parallel, flashing between the different time periods. Below the different story lines are listed chronologically.

Analysis

Story

According to Admiral Cain, a razor is someone who can set aside all fear, hesitation, revulsion and natural inhibition in battle (see noteworthy dialogue).
- When Cain recruits Jack Fisk to assassinate Commander Adama, she tells him that he needs to pick Marines who are "completely reliable. Completely loyal. Razors." (Resurrection Ship, Part I).
- This bears a passing semblance to a poem by Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: "I am still the sword/Of my Emperor/I will not be sheathed/Until I die." Admiral Yamamoto knew about America, Americans and their potential from his time as a student at Harvard and as a naval attaché in Washington, DC. Despite misgivings about declaring war on America, he served his Emperor and planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.
- A razor is a physically present symbol throughout the episode in the form of a folding knife, which Cain found as child when her home colony was attacked by the Cylons. She used it to overcome her fear of a Centurion and kept it over the decades. After Cain's death, the blade passes to Kendra Shaw and eventually to Kara Thrace. It appears several times in the episode, and is used by Cain to explain the concept of becoming a razor to Shaw.
The woman shot by Shaw could have been Peter Laird's wife, given the pan shot from his expression as he looks at the bodies, to the dead woman's face. His evasiveness when asked about the rumors circulating about the Scylla in the episode "Pegasus" would support this. His reaction to the woman's execution, however, can be taken one of two ways. He was either a man in complete shock of witnessing his wife's death or a man who was horrified from what he didn't believe was possible of Colonial military. Laird never mentions a wife explicitly, but Fisk implies he had family aboard the Scylla (Pegasus).

Characters

In stark contrast to her demeanor by the time of the rendezvous with Galactica, Helena Cain is visibly more relaxed with her crew: She is stern when necessary, but also enjoys several moments of levity with subordinates and cultivates personable relations with her staff. She regards Jurgen Belzen as a personal friend (as described later by Fisk to Tigh); she initiates Shaw to Pegasus by chewing her out in the CIC and shares a humored look with her XO afterwards; the atmosphere at the dinner is very informal. She briefly talks to and comforts crewmen in the corridors, and expresses strong emotions and sheds tears as she surveys the ship's casualties. All these point to the war and especially Gina's betrayal as reasons for her push over the edge to become a "razor" and the narrowing of her perspective to pure vengeance.
Although she may have sacrificed herself in atonement, Kendra Shaw ended her life as a razor, casting aside fear and self-preservation to stay behind and die to complete her mission, echoing Admiral Cain's observation that "sometimes we have to leave people behind so that we can go on, so that we can continue to fight. Sometimes you have do things that we never thought we were capable of ..." When she arrives on Pegasus, she is regarded as an opportunist, but in the end she is quite the opposite.
Kendra Shaw's death marks the final transition from Cain's legacy to Admiral Adama's. Shaw was the last of Cain's inner circle. She was one of the officers who had Cain's utmost respect and trust. Her death signifies the complete replacement of Pegasus's original leadership and opens up the merging of the two battlestar crews.
Admiral Cain suggests that Kendra Shaw used her mother's connections to secure an upwardly-mobile assignment on Pegasus — an ironic criticism, since then-Commander William Adama mentions to President Roslin how well-connected Cain is, helping her jump over half the commanders list for promotion to admiral (Pegasus).
Both Shaw and Thrace have been noticed and mentored by Admiral Cain. In this respect, the friction between the two takes on aspects of sibling rivalry.
Based on the restored scenes on the "Razor" DVD, Admiral Cain's past plays a huge role in how she approached the second Cylon War. As a child, Cain abandoned her little sister in order to hide from Centurions. Though this scene of a young Cain is mixed in Cain's speech of the need to leave some behind in order to go on fighting, it implies a sense of guilt on Cain's part for having abandoned her sister to the Cylons. Her entire rationale in actively fighting the Cylons and not running portrays a need for her to take a stand and fight. She had a need to stop running.
Also in the DVD version, the knife that Cain carries is revealed to have a deeper meaning to Cain than simply a weapon. The knife was an impromptu weapon Cain discovered while she was attempting to hide from the Centurions. When she is finally discovered, she makes her last stand with this same knife. In the end, it becomes the only object that she still carried, and what she eventually became, a last resort weapon.
The actions of the younger Cain and Adama during the final events of the first Cylon War both contrast and parallel. Adama continued to pursue and attack the Cylons; Cain was told to run and hide from the Cylons, but when she was cornered by a Centurion, she picked up the knife and made as best a last stand as she could. Adama witnessed the escape of the First Hybrid's ship, feeling the responsibility of the lost lives that he could not save; Cain witnessed the withdrawal of Centurion forces, anguished by her responsibility for leaving her little sister behind.
This film casts Cain's death in "Resurrection Ship Part II" in a new light. In that episode, Gina shot her to avenge her treatment in custody. "Razor" adds several new dimensions to the scene. First, it parallels what Cain did to her XO. Second, it reveals the relationship Cain had with Gina, which deepens the personal motivations Gina had in shooting Cain. Gina's response to Cain's defiant "Frak You!" in that episode was "You're not my type." Considering their relationship, that line now takes on the context of a Cylon taunting Cain for having used her when Gina had no interest in her personally.

Miscellaneous

Given the overall survivor count and the tally of 49,579 during the credits, "Razor" takes place between "The Captain's Hand" and "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I". Captions also place the flashback portions 10 months prior to the present events. However this timespan is closer to 9 months.
- This is also the only time during Lee Adama's command of Pegasus that the episode can fit, since Starbuck leaves for Caprica in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I". See also Timeline - Season 2 (RDM)
- Adama's selection of Shaw as his XO likely takes place very shortly after him taking command of Pegasus, but other parts of the episode might take place slightly later.
- Sharon Agathon's appearance may indicate that this episode takes place before "Downloaded", however this cannot be confirmed by any visual evidence as her appearance is brief and all camera shots are seemingly aimed to avoid shooting her belly. However, it can be reasonably surmised that because she is still cooperating with the Colonials that Hera's birth and her subsequent faked death haven't occurred yet.
- The survivor count of 49,579 is the same as the episodes "Downloaded" and the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I," which means the death of Shaw, the Raptor crew and the SAR marine are never counted.
- "Razor" establishes the destruction of the colonies happening 10 months earlier, although "Downloaded," which presumably takes place shortly after, places the destruction at 9 months prior. "The Plan" establishes the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens" as 280 days after the fall.
Regarding the casualties suffered by Pegasus during the Battle of the Communications Relay, Shaw's report that Pegasus suffered over 800 dead likely refers to the total casualty rate since the Cylon attack. Since Pegasus already suffered over 700 losses fleeing the Scorpion shipyards, adding 800 to this figure would mean that almost half the crew were killed. Considering that Pegasus's crew is approximately 1,750 when she encounters Galactica, such a high death rate seems unlikely.
- The numbers are consistent, however, with casualty figures reported during "Pegasus," which established that 700 were killed during the attack on the shipyard, and 800 were killed during the attempt to board the ship.
Given that an evac Raptor successfully retrieves the assault team by docking or at least flying close to the Guardian basestar without incident, it seems that the Guardian basestar itself appears to be unarmed and totally reliant on its Raiders for defense, unlike the standard Cylon basestar.
A curious technical gaffe appears to occur as the smoke from the various fires in the shipyard travel upward. Unless the flames (which would appear as a globular "blossom" shape without gravity) jet upward, the smoke, with the lack of convection (heat rising upward as lighter gases against gravity), would expand in all directions opposite the flames or venting, not "up" relative to the battlestar or flames.
The Galactica-type battlestar at the shipyard appears to be the same size, if not larger than Pegasus. This is a contradiction of Admiral Cain's statement, that Pegasus is twice the size of Galactica. While she does not refer to the ship's length, this seems to be a scaling error in the visual effects.