A treat for fans of 'Galactica'

November 23, 2007|Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff

A show like "Battlestar Galactica" is hard on its fans: Between bouts of intense love and feverish speculation, you mainly have to wait. The last season ended in March. The next one won't start until April, at least. Slowly, the hours tick by.

So the two-hour movie "Battlestar Galactica: Razor," which premieres on SciFi tomorrow night at 9, functions mainly as a fortified snack, to tide over the viewing faithful until the show's fourth and final season begins. It's also an unapologetically insider affair: A casual viewer would probably be lost in the eddies of backstory and mythology. (For the most intense fans, SciFi offered a series of preview screenings in movie theaters around the country earlier this month. And of course, "Razor" will soon be available on DVD.)

For the benefit of the masses, here's as quick a "Battlestar" background lesson as I can muster: Somewhere far away and possibly long ago, a race of renegade robots called Cylons launched a sneak attack on human civilization. All that remained was a smattering of civilians and two military "battlestars." One, Galactica, was led by a grumpy father figure named Bill Adama, played in the series by Edward James Olmos. The other, Pegasus, was helmed by a paranoid megalomaniac named Helena Cain. Michelle Forbes plays her deftly as a dragon lady with occasional bouts of regret.

The story of the Pegasus played out in the series' second season, and - like most of "Battlestar" - was rife with allegory. Adama represented the messy, democratic approach to life in a state of war, Cain the cruel efficiency of military dictatorship. In the end, the humanists won, and Cain was killed by a Cylon that her crew had tortured.

So "Razor," which is about Cain and her legacy, plays out as an extended flashback, sometimes filling in background about her command, sometimes shifting forward to the days just after her death. Though most of the regular "Galactica" cast is represented - including Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck, alive and well - the plot centers largely on Kendra Shaw (Stephanie Jacobsen), a character we've never seen before. She's a young, tough officer who becomes Cain's protegee but later regrets some of the more dastardly orders she's followed. She has the trademark look of female crew members on this show: steely gaze, sullen pout.