Are we supposed to see Cain as a flawed but sympathetic human being? Because I can’t. Major Shaw? Yes, a sympathetic character — young, inexperienced, dead mom, led astray by a powerful force. But not Cain. The transition was too sudden, the decisions too rash and single-minded, the act of CIC brutality too disturbing, and the justifications too feeble for me to see her as a sympathetic character. I choose to ignore the coda and disbelieve the notion that Adama could have taken her place. But I could see Kara in Shaw’s place. Wasn’t she, after all, a surrogate Shaw to Cain in the time prior to Shaw appearing whole cloth in Razor?
Look back at Resurrection Ship. Look at how Cain was then: her strength, her will, her intelligence, her sensibility. She was measured. She was cold. Very often, she was right. Look at Kara’s eulogy. Do you feel like maybe Shaw should have delivered it?
So we get Shaw, and we get Kara, and they fight with each other, because they’re so similar, and we get Lee, and okay, he’s not a bad commander, and we get the rest of the people, and they’re all props, and we get flashbacks, and it’s all filler. It is all things we already know. There is nothing, nothing new here. Why bring it all back, why go to all the trouble, without making something new? If you’re doing a story about Shaw, do a story about Shaw, whoever the frack she is. But don’t do a rehash of Cain.
My opinion of Battlestar Galactica: Razor? Mediocre. A missed opportunity. There was so much potential here. I’d have loved to see a four hour mini-series called Battlestar Pegasus. Instead we get more of the same, ever since they left New Caprica, ever since the show lost its way.
Gene reminded me of something I had forgotten, that in many ways the coda is correct — Adama asks whether he, in the same position, would have done the same. Well, didn’t he try? If not for Roslin, if not for Lee, if not for Dualla and Billy flirting on the bridge, he would have taken Galactica into that fight, much as Cain did, because there was nothing left to do. Because of Roslin, because of Lee, and Dualla, and Billy, he chose to stick with and protect the civilian fleet, and to run. So maybe I’m wrong on that one, and maybe the pathetic attempt to justify Cain’s new actions (as I saw it) was really far more true than I realized.
But then again, Cain had someone to tell her no: her trusted and respected first officer. She didn’t even take a moment to consider what he said to her. He gave her is sidearm with only the barest hesitation, because he put his faith and trust in her, but she, cold and alone, could not do the same. She forced him to mutiny so that she could justify her brutal murder. Would Adama have done the same? With Tigh, perhaps, or with Callie during the strike? I suppose he might have. I don’t know.