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**SPOILERS**
On the whole, it's an effective time-waster until the new season starts, but the only thing that will blow the minds of fanboys are the beautiful FX battle sequences, and the use of the original Cylon Centurions (yeah, they've got the original ships, still sit three to a cockpit, and they do say "By Your Command").
Essentially, this extended episode takes place sometime just after "Epiphanies" and "The Captain's Hand", and sees newly-minted Pegasus Commander Lee Adama hiring a woman named Kendra Shaw to be his new XO, and her skills are put to the test (in the present) when a Raptor survey team goes missing on a research misson. The Pegasus goes out to look for it, eventually encountering the original Cylons, who happen to be harboring the first "Hybrid", a product of the first Cylon War.
Through Kendra's eyes, we see a series of flashbacks, showing what transpired aboard the Pegasus over the past few months. Starting with Kendra's transfer to the ship, we see the initial attack on the Scorpion Fleet Yards, the boarding of the ship by the Cylons (that also exposes "Gina", a Number 6 model), and the massacre aboard a civilian fleet vessel.
What's good? Kendra is ten times more badass than most of the supporting cast, and is a real "go-get-shit-done" kind of person. We get some insight into what happened during the First Cylon War (explained through a flashback by Admiral Adama where he infiltrates a Cylon experiment site), and we get a couple interesting developments in the overall storyline (how Kara Thrace is supposed to bring the apocalypse, what the first Hybrid looks like), and the FX shots are AMAZING. There's also a very neat parallel in regards to a knife owned by Cain, Kendra and Kara. Since this is a sole Pegasus story, the Galactica is barely seen, and the increased screentime for the Pegasus is welcomed.
What's bad: Kendra's flashbacks, with the exception of a few notable moments, weren't really needed. Trying to rewrite continuity so that there's a bad-ass Captain who's never appeared in any previous episode (or any episode after this) doesn't help either. In fact, the story was more effective when Colonel Fisk told the story to Tigh in the "Pegasus" episode, forcing viewers to create their own perception of the madness of Cain. In this episode, most of the Pegasus flashbacks have already been explained sufficiently in the series. It's great that Gina is a lesbian, but does it advance the story in any way? Not really. In addition, the episode keeps throwing casualty reports at us via Kendra, but when there are supposedly hundreds of dead crew members on the ship, but only a handful of corpses seen in later sequences, it loses a lot of it's dramatic impact.
I also have to ask: What happened to Laird after the events in the initial Pegasus arc? I mean, he's got a big role in this film, but I have no idea where he went afterwards. Also, what kind of plan involves a team of experienced officers sacrificing another Raptor and then carting a nuke with them onboard a Cylon basestar? The Pegasus had nukes loaded and ready, so why didn't they FTL jump past the old Cylon fleet once the team accomplished their extraction mission and nuke the Basestar? Did Kendra really have to sacrifice herself? I digress.
Overall, though, it's good enough to act as a bridge to the upcoming season, and it wipes away some of the bad taste left by the first half of season 3, which I am still personally trying to forget. The acting is solid, the effects are great, and it's a fine way to waste an evening.
I give Battlestar Galactica: Razor a 7.5 out of 10.
