Harbinger of Death – The Kara Thrace Story

Do you know how hard it is to find good TV nowadays? The throng of mediocre TV is enough to lead you to exclusively watch BBC America. However, every now and then you have a show come along that completely blows you away. You sit on the edge of your seat throughout and curse the network execs at the end due to the fact that you have at wait over a year for a new episode (damn you Sci-Fi). If the title didn’t give it away, I’m talking about Battlestar Galactica.

When if first hit the airwaves, I was less than enthused. This was due to my good friend’s less than pleased views of the re-imagined BSG. Of course this was due to his rose colored view of the cheesy BSG from the late 70’s. After the first season, he and multiple others told me I had to watch. That this was the best thing since sliced bread. Since I like my bread sliced, I decided I would give it a whirl and watch the first season on DVD. I went through the whole thing in three days. Minus a few hiccups in season 2 (cough*Black Market*cough), every show is a homerun. Three moments stick out in my mind as utterly mind blowing (I’m not including Sharon shooting Adama because I knew about that before it happened). The first was the “Adama Maneuver” from “Exodus Part 2”. This was when Adama jumped the Galactica into the atmosphere of New Caprica, dropped his Vipers, and then jumped back out. Back in space, he’s getting hammered by Basestars, his son arrives out of nowhere commanding the Battlestar Pegasus and flies right down the middle and absorbs the blasts and sacrifices his own ship for the Galactica. The second is the end of “Crossroads Part 2”, when we find out four of the final five Cylons and Starbuck, seemingly, comes back from the dead and tells Lee that she knows the way to Earth. Then we get the year long hiatus. The third was first appearance of Admiral Cain and the Battlestar Pegasus. This leads to the TV Movie “Razor”.

“Razor” is a flashback movie that deals with Lee Adama’s first mission as commander of the Pegasus as seen through the eyes of Kendra Shaw. She flashes back to her time on Pegasus when Admiral Cain was in charge. Basically, the movie gives fans of my third moment what they always wanted. We finally found out how Pegasus survived, we get to see how Fisk became Cain’s XO, and we get to see Gina’s role before her imprisonment. Most importantly, we get more Admiral Cain. My favorite part was probably Admiral Adama giving Cain a morality when talking about all the choices she had to make to survive. She didn’t have the same restrictions and support that Adama had, and he shutters to think about the choices he would have made in her position. The end, as referenced in my title, was only part of the lines spoken to Shaw by the hybrid, and speaks volumes about what we might see in the final season. When I heard about this movie, I was ho-hum, because we hadn’t seen a new episode since March. Slowly but surely, I found myself back at the edge of my seat, pissed when the credits rolled and cursing the network execs because I wouldn’t be seeing any new material until March of 2008. So, I speak for all fans of great TV when I say “Damn you Sci-Fi, damn you.”