Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashback Part 2—The Hanger

BOSTON—Well we’ve been busy doing the day job thing at a conference in Boston Taxachusetts—with a brief exception about a year ago, it’s our first time back since Mr. & MRS FanBoyWonder escaped to live (just) below the Mason-Dixon line following the turn of the millennium.

But as our newsgathering meetings and event reporting at the big housing conference winds down, we’ve still had the most recent installment of the Battlestar Galactica Razor Flashbacks on the brain and now we finally have time to post our impressions of the mini-sode for our faithful reader.

As an aside, this is our first on-location blog posting—hence the dateline. Without further ado…..

The Upshot from the Sci-Fi Channel: A moment in Galactica’s hanger rattles young “Billy” Adama’s/Husker’s nerves before his first combat flight.

Part 2 continues on board Galactica on Day 4,571 of the first Cylon War. This “mini-sode” opens with Husker (Nico Cortez) heading to his Viper when he comes across a combat-damaged Raptor and sees the medics tending to a badly wounded Lt. Jaycie McGavin (Allison Warniyca).

The console on Jaycie’s Raptor exploded in front of her during air-to-air combat with the Cylons, hideously burning the entire left side of her face and body. Young Adama is visibly shaken seeing his sister pilot and not-so-secret lover so badly wounded—perhaps mortally???

Husker tries to comfort her, lying (badly) that she’ll be all right but he has to leave her to himself fly into combat. As Husker waits in the cockpit of his Mark 2 Viper, he watches the medics carry Jaycie away by stretcher.

Before he’s fired his first shot or even launched out of the tube, young “Billy” Adama has gotten his first taste of battle and innocence has been lost.

As the camera angle zooms fully onto his helmeted face, we watch wordlessly as Adama’s fear and trepidation shifts to rage and determination. Husker is more than ready to launch into combat and kill some “toasters.”

To be continued…..

With existing set pieces and a skilled integration of stock Viper launch footage from the mini-series (the only time we’ve seen Vipers clean with fresh paint), the storytellers continue to so far skillfully craft a compelling mini-sode while clearly on a budget.

However, it was the attention to the little details and clever touches that we loved. For instance, Husker and the other Viper pilots wore vests over their flight suits reminiscent of the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica, while the flight crew wore a different style of fatigues.

These flashbacks take place some 40 years before the time of Apollo, Starbuck and the Cylon attack of the 12 colonies that we first saw during the BSG mini-series., so it makes sense that fashions—even military garb—would be similar but different as a subtle way to indicate another, earlier era.

It’s also striking to see everything in the story so clean and new—it reminds the viewer that Galactica at the time of these flashbacks was a state-of-the-art battlestar, not the old “bucket” whose survival from the Cylon sneak attack with nukes and a nasty computer virus was due to the ship’s very obsolescence.

Look for the remaining six Flashbacks to air Friday nights during Flash Gordon through November 16 on Sci-Fi Channel’s website www.scifi.com/battlestar/razor with FanBoyWonder commentary throughout before the premier of the new BSG movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor on Saturday, November 24. So Say We All!