charlie griefer

just the perfect amount of cowbell

a couple of weeks ago, the folks behind the re-imaged battlestar galactica announced that they were going to hold advance pre-screenings of their upcoming made-for-tv battlestar galactica: razor movie in select cities.  as luck would have it, the san francisco area was in the mix, and i registered my wife and myself for a showing in walnut creek (about 20 minutes north of us here in the east bay).

last night was the showing, and it was pretty frickin' amazing.

i got into BSG relatively late.  caught some of the early eps when they first aired, but i wasn't able to get into it.  might have been expectations... i was expecting more of the old show... "traditional" sci-fi.  but this new show leaned towards being more drama than sci-fi.  while there were action sequences, they were few and far between, and i thought the pacing of the show was a bit slow.  so i didn't stick with it.

after a few seasons, the show was still around, and had garnered a lot of acclaim (both from critics and fans), so my curiosity was piqued.  i picked up the old episodes from the first miniseries thru the end of season 3.  this time, i was watching with a different set of expectations.  i knew it wasn't going to be a fast paced action show.  and this time i got sucked in.  we'd watch episodes back-to-back (to-back-to-back).  sleep was for the weak.  we burned thru all of the episodes in a couple of weeks. 

then the well went dry.

the new season (season 4) isn't scheduled to air until 2008 (and i've heard the current writer's strike may impact that and push it back further).  i needed a fix.

luckily, i wouldn't have to wait until 2008.  "razor" was announced a couple of months ago as a movie that would air in november.  it's the story of the pegasus (another battlestar) told in flashback mode that fills in some gaps between seasons 2 and 3.  last nite i got my fix.

we arrived at the theater 90 minutes early (we were told registration didn't guarantee a seat, so come early).  i was somewhat surprised that there weren't more people (maybe the san fran theaters got the brunt of the crowd?).  the theater was mostly full, but there were empty seats.  i'll get this out of the way and say that i was disappointed with the quality of the showing.  the movie is set to air on TV in less than 2 weeks.  i could have waited.  but i thought it would be special to see it in a theater.  big screen, surround sound, etc.  and it did have those things... but the quality of the picture was sorely lacking.  it looked like somebody hooked a VCR up to the projector, and popped in a VHS copy (a bad VHS copy) of the movie.  so as far as that goes... i'm still looking forward to seeing this when it airs on tv.

the movie itself?  as i succinctly stated above, pretty frickin' amazing.  without spoiling anything, it fills in a LOT of gaps (some of which i wasn't even aware of until they were filled in and i found myself going "oooohhhh... yeah") in the storyline between seasons 2 and 3.  we see the pegasus survive the initial cylon invasion.  we learn that admiral kane was always somewhat of a hardass, but we see some things that she felt she had to do in a time of war and are appalled.  in the series, we know that the pegasus had a prisoner cylon (a 'six').  in razor, we learn a bit more about that particular cylon and how she came to be a prisoner. 

while a lot of the pegasus backstory is covered, we also get to see the galactica folks pretty prominently.  a significant portion of the movie deals with the pegasus under lee adama's command.  so there's plenty of starbuck, apollo, and commander adama (look for a flashback sequence with a young commander adama that serves as a key moment in not just the movie... but the entire series).

yeah, overall... amazing drama (some moments of heart-stopping "oh my god i can't believe what i just saw") mixed with some pretty incredible action sequences (particularly a search and rescue mission towards the end).  i left wanting more, but satisfied with what i'd been given.  which is exactly what i've come to expect from BSG. 

if you've not yet seen razor (either at one of the prescreenings or via... um... 'alternate' methods), definitely tune in to the sci-fi channel on saturday, 24 nov.  it will not let you down.

additionally, razor will be released on dvd in an 'unrated extended' edition on december 4.  'unrated extended' and lesbians in space means this could be worth buying.

one slightly spoilerish bit of info (but if you've got internet access (which i suspect you do if you're reading this), you've likely heard this already)...