{"id":685,"date":"2011-10-25T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=685"},"modified":"2011-10-25T13:05:34","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T20:05:34","slug":"mark-watches-razor-flashbacks-webisodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2011\/10\/mark-watches-razor-flashbacks-webisodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Razor Flashbacks’ Webisodes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Razor Flashbacks<\/em> webisodes, we get to see William Adama as a young man, and these are FRIGHTENINGLY GOOD WEBISODES. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Battlestar Galactica<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well, holy shit. That was a lot better than I expected from a set of webisodes. Not only do they make me SUPER EXCITED for Razor<\/em>, but I realized that my entire theory of what the Cylons are up to is completely wrong.<\/p>\n

(For the sake of this review, I’ll be treating the twenty minutes of webisode time as one single episode.)<\/p>\n

I was worried about the entire idea of watching Admiral Adama back when he was just a viper pilot, but Nico Cortez, who plays Billy Adama in these webisodes, not only looks like Lee Adama, but he’s able to mimic the way that Edward James Olmos talks when he’s in character as William Adama. Of course, seeing Adama in bed with anyone who is not Laura Roslin, even in the past when he hasn’t met her yet, sends me into an irrational rage. YOU’RE WITH THE WRONG WOMAN<\/em> GOSH<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, though, I never expected to see anything of the First Cylon War. These webisodes are surprisingly familiar, too; it’s clear that this is just in the past, but the humans are facing the same enemy. It’s weird to think about fighting the Cylons in the Twelve Colonies because I’m so used to it happening at random, spread out across the vastness of space. But there are similar things happening here during the First Cylon War: the same sense of eternal futility bleeds out into the crew. There seems to be no end at sight, and I’m sure I’d think the same thing after having been at war for twelve years<\/em>. The present-time fleet has been fleeing for\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6maybe a year and a half? Something like that? There aren’t any dates, now that I think about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Regardless, the first episode of the Razor Flashbacks<\/em> establishes this reality as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

And this all distinctly Battlestar Galactica<\/em> as well. The second episode reminds us how brutal this show can be when Adama discovers that the woman he was just having sex with earlier in the day has returned from her mission badly injured. See, I didn’t expect this<\/em> in a webisode. I have to commend whomever on the crew did Jaycie McGavin’s makeup for her face wound because SWEET CHRIST THAT IS DISGUSTING<\/strong>. But this is war<\/em> against an enemy that is seemingly endless and invincible. The casualties at this point are nowhere near what they’d be during the human genocide 40 years later, but I also think it’s easy to imagine just how horrific this must be after so many years of being at war. And I also get the sense that Adama, quick to be furious here, hasn’t had that much experience in the war itself, or at least not twelve years worth of it.<\/p>\n

It’s so clear after the third episode exactly why<\/em> Adama always gravitated towards Starbuck. His Viper piloting is remarkably similar to her techniques: it’s controlled recklessness. On top of that, after the battlestar Columbia<\/em> is shockingly destroyed, it sets Adama off just<\/em> like it would if this were Starbuck. We’ve seen over three seasons how Starbuck (usually successfully) keeps her emotions close at hand, taking chances whenever she feels the need to react strongly or in an unorthodox manner. Here, we watch Adama, angered by the destruction of the Columbia<\/em>, follow after two Cylon Raiders into the ice planet’s atmosphere. His sense of dedication overpowers his orders to ignore the ship and, very much like Starbuck in “Act of Contrition,” it causes him to collide with another Raider and have to eject down to the ground.<\/p>\n

And this all good and entertaining, and I was rather enjoying these webisodes. Right? It’s neat to see Obama<\/del>\u00c2\u00a0LOL ADAMA forty-one years in the past, to get these chunks of his history and get a new perspective on the man we see in the present. I like when characters get a full backstory, too! Plus, who doesn’t want to see William Adama fall to an ice planet while wrestling with a Cylon Centurion? NOBODY<\/em>. And it’s even extra fantastic that we get to see the early model of a Centurion, too!<\/p>\n

AND THEN ADAMA HAS A PIPE AND HE IS BEATING A CYLON AND HE IS NOT STOPPING AND THERE IS OIL ALL OVER HIS FACE AND THIS IS A LOT LIKE THAT SCENE IN THE MINISERIES AND JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST WHAT IS GOING ON<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Oh, I thought these would just be small scenes to prepare me for Razor?<\/em> YEAH. I WAS UNPREPARED FOR ALL OF THESE. Oh god, does that mean Razor<\/em> is even worse<\/em> than this?<\/p>\n

But y’all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.episode five. I CAN’T. I JUST CAN’T. Oh my god, the humans were wrong. I WAS WRONG. Adama finds evidence of human torture, of machines that look a lot like resurrection tanks. THEY WERE MAKING THESE FORTY YEARS BEFORE<\/em> THE SECOND CYLON WAR????? WHAT THE HOLY FUCK. Oh my god, this explains more than I can even handle. Does this fill in the gap for the Final Five Cylons? Is this the critical piece of information to explain how<\/em> it is at all possible for those four characters to have been Cylons this entire time?<\/p>\n

Things are made even more<\/em> bewildering when that voice out of NOWHERE says, “All this has happened before and will happen again.” OH GODDAMN IT, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Is this a literal statement? I mean, I have to take it as truth because every bit of Pythian prophecy has come true of the last three seasons, so now I want to know how<\/em> this is all so cyclical. When the fleet finds Earth (I AM ASSUMING THEY ARE), how is this going to repeat?<\/p>\n

THEN WHAT THE FUCK THERE ARE PEOPLE STILL LEFT BEHIND.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em> oh my god these webisodes are so fucked up. The Cylons kidnapped humans over forty years ago and began to experiment on them in order to create the hybrid humans we’ve seen in the current timeline. I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6christ, I can’t ignore the irony of this, either. The Cylons want to be as far from humanity as possible in design, yet they are using human bodies to do so. I just cannot imagine what they are doing to people, and what they’ve already done<\/em> at this point. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS RUSHING THROUGH ME. Does this mean that people like Tyrol, Tigh, and Anders were all planted from birth? Or from a certain age? That they really have<\/em> been Cylons this whole time, long before the genocide of the human race occurred?<\/p>\n

I cannot deal with this.<\/p>\n

It’s all made worse when Adama is unable to save the people trapped inside the chamber in the laboratory. Even this far back in his past, Adama has guilt about leaving people behind. HELLO CHARACTER CONTINUITY. I love when this happens! It’s not only important as a character point, though. I’d forgotten just how terrible<\/em> the Cylons were to humans, especially since it’s been quite a few episodes since we’ve even seen<\/em> them at all. They show up at the end of season three, but are they on the offensive? Are they going to attack the fleet, or do they have something else in mind?<\/p>\n

The final episode of the webisode series helps to put this all in perspective and hint at a horrifying explanation for the armistice with the humans. Adama gets out of the laboratory in time to see a new model basestar ascend into the atmosphere, but then quickly learns that the war is over<\/em>. Of course, there’s no way for Adama to know the full context of this very moment, but it all made sense to me: the Cylons agreed to an armistice as a trick<\/em>. Or, at the very least, <\/em>it was partially a long con. Why would they abandon their experiments on the ice planet unless they’d discovered something crucial? Why else would they destroy the place after leaving? I think the Cylons made some sort of breakthrough in human-Cylon hybrids, and decided to hide out for forty years to take advantage of time in order to catch humanity off-guard.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of comments from Cavil just prior to the exodus on New Caprica, and later during “The Eye of Jupiter.” He suggested nuking everything, and in the latter case, stated that they were machines<\/em>. Waiting out for years was entirely possible because their concept of time is not the same as humans. They don’t age, or at least not in the same way humans do. So whose to say that they didn’t agree to the armistice specifically to wait things out?<\/p>\n

The story is brought full-circle when we see Commander Adama, right before the start of the Second Cylon War, standing in Galactica’s<\/em> museum. He has no idea that the man who tells him about his son’s role in the decommissioning ceremony is a Cylon. And that’s the irony here: Adama was so close to the truth that might have saved humanity from genocide. Why didn’t the human pursue whatever Adama found in that lab? Was it all destroyed? Was it just ignored because no one understood it? Either way, these Razor Flashback<\/em> webisodes provide a numbing context to where our characters are in the present. They have no idea how history has been leading up to this point.<\/p>\n

The real question, though, is how this is all repeating. Again<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Goddamn you, Battlestar Galactica<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Razor Flashbacks webisodes, we get to see William Adama as a young man, and these are FRIGHTENINGLY GOOD WEBISODES. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Battlestar Galactica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[112,9,110,142,143],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battlestar-galactica","tag-edward-james-olmos","tag-mark-watches","tag-mark-watches-battlestar-galactica","tag-nico-cortez","tag-webisodes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}