DPP: Razor
Mar. 16th, 2010 06:54 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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no_takebacksHey guys,
First, a HUGE thank you for the fantastic Kara/Lee picspam yesterday. It made me so happy to see everyone aglow with shipper love. Yes, I am sappy that way. :P
And now, for today’s infusion of pilot!goodness, I bring you pics, thoughts, and questions from Razor. I’m not sure if we are watching tonight or not…TPTB will tell us soon I’m sure…but I think it’s next in line. Even though pilot interaction is somewhat secondary to Cain and Kendra’s journeys, Razor still brings out some interesting pilot-related themes. So here goes with pics first and questions to follow. (I feel all English teacherish with the questions. Feel free to talk about anything you want; the questions are just topics bouncing around in my head.)
Kara picks on Lee but she so has his back. Only Starbuck is allowed to pick on Apollo.
Kara and Lee with Kendra. I figured she deserved to be in the picspam.
Resigned pilots put the mission before their love in razor-like fashion.
I’m so transferring back to Galactica before you kill me. AKA let’s celebrate because we are both still alive to fight and frak another day!
- Kendra starts Razor with these words…”You're born, you live and you die. There are no do-overs. No second chances to make things right if you frak them up the first time. Not in this life anyway.” How does her view of life fit with the hybrid’s “all of this has happened before and will happen again” cyclic logic?
- Cain states that they must “be razors, as being human is a luxury”. How do our pilots (and Adama/Cain/Kendra/etc) accept/reject her philosophy? How does it guide their thoughts?
- How does the passage of the razor from Cain to Kendra to Kara influence Kara? Is she a razor? Are Cain/Kendra better foils for Kara than other pilots like Kat or Racetrack?
- Razor shows how we are all shaped by what we learn from the past. Adama, Cain, Lee, Kara, and Kendra base much of their life philosophies on events from their pasts. How do they/how do you decide which parts of the past to hold onto and what deserves to be let go?
- What’s your take on the hybrid’s comments about humanity riding “on wings of an angel, not to an end but to a beginning” vs. his comment that Kara is the “harbinger of death and must not be followed”?
- Do you think Lee fits as commander of a battlestar or is he just doing his perceived duty to live up to expectations?
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Date: 2010-03-16 01:30 pm (UTC)1) I don't know if Kendra was very religious. I tend to think she was aetheist actually and thus didn't believe in the cycles or the gods. (The "all that happens will happen again" was a religious belief right? Leoben brings it up in Flesh & Blood I know...)
2) Kara is not a full-blown razor. I thnk she tries to be but her feelings for Bill and Lee keep her from being one. Lee very much does not believe in being a Razor. ;) His trust speech and what humans need to survive comes to mind. He thinks being a Razor = being a cylon, a machine, an object of cold, cutting destruction.
3) Oops see above. I think Cain/Kendra are far, far more interesting as foils for Kara, because they're very different from her. Kat and Racetrack were formed out of the Starbuck mold pretty much (Racetrack's package says "Now with more whining!" and Kat's says "All of the sass, but none of the charm!") The Kara/Kendra relationship in Razor is pretty much the Kat/Kara dynamic in Scar, y/y? But so much more interesting.
4) Kara has a line about how her mother used to say "Fear gets you killed, Anger keeps you alive." But she says that she believes you need to let go of both. (Which is kind of funny, because she doesn't practice what she preaches.) Actually it's an interesting and important exchange because it's at the heart of these questions about the various women and their razor-ness.
5) Well the first one seems pretty clear-cut. She's an angel and she brings them to a new beginning on Earth. The second-line...in retrospect and knowing Kendra was supposed to/going to pass the words on directly to Lee....what if it was a warning specifically for him? That he wasn't supposed to follow her into the maelstrom? That's kind of interesting huh? I've never seen that theorized before, but I kind of like it. Makes pilots the center of the universe at any rate, as we all know they are. ;)
6) Lee doesn't feel like he fits in the service at all (secretly, inwardly) but he is a leader and he will step up to do his duty. Other people think he's well-suited for the job but he doesn't feel like he is. He has other dreams...
OH RAZOR! I remember being so excited when I got to it, because I had the idea that fandom didn't like it and it baffled me because it's ALL ABOUT PILOTS!! Hee. Well a lot anyway. (In some regards, this was the show I wanted to see. Lee and Kara running things mostly on their own with some guidance from Dad.)
I love the pilots' interaction so much in Razor. That beginning kills me everytime.
I love protective Kara giving "Lee's XO" grief in the kitchen and I love pitbull Kendra giving it right back to "Lee's favorite pilot."
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the whole hangar deck scene from Kara's fancy flying and headshake when that cylon ship lands on her in the launch tube, to where he tries to calm her down and it doesn't work and she throws his hands off and stalks down the deck to give Kendra the evil eye.
And I love the fact that Lee gives the order and Kara just says "Understood" no hesitation. They are such soldiers; it's a good kind of angst.
The very end scene is a little bit off between the dialogue and the way they play it (Lee did you really just jokingly tell Kara she deserves to die? LELAND?), but I like the vibe of it even if it doesn't match up to what they are actually saying.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 01:50 pm (UTC)I should have some fic recs up later this afternoon/evening as well so that we can further bask in our love for it. :)
For now, though, let's do a --RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW--about when/what time to watch Razor, shall we? Bee, Tara, and I were going back and forth on this, so we knew we wanted to let the majority rule.
So:
Option 1: We watch tonight, but start earlier. Say...9:30 EDT? Or pitch us another time.
Option 2: We watch another night? If this option works for you, please weigh in on which night and at what time you prefer.
Option 3: We watch tonight AND have an encore on another night, day and time to be determined.
What say you all? Have I covered all the bases? Let me know!
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 01:56 pm (UTC)Whoa. That is REALLY interesting, actually! I do like anything that makes it all about them, as you said. <3333 (I still hate her destiny, though. Death was so not necessary for her to lead them home.)
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Date: 2010-03-16 02:23 pm (UTC)Oh sing it, sister! I had a little mini-rant yesterday about how her epic destiny being half remembering a song from her youth and turning it into a math problem and randomly hoping the coordinates worked was so much fail for me. I never could've expected her "destiny" to stem from such random/small potatoes. Sigh.
Remember that fic idea I told you about a few months back--about Lee not believing in the other side and thus following her? This made me think of that. Someday there might be another story in me about how Kara was some sort of guardian angel/grim reaper combo of Lee's soul.
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Date: 2010-03-16 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 02:53 pm (UTC)(Yes, this post moved - had commented in the wrong place *facepalm*)
Hot pissed-off shoulder grabbing!
So, the XO is human, too!
Katee is so cute and adorable here. Loves her!
I can't believe I have to give this order! No Leland, don't do it!!!
What the frak are you doing? Mwah-ha-ha...
You are stuck with me until the end. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 03:08 pm (UTC)ETA: Can some lovely shipper reply to this comment later with the final result (esp if tonight's time is earlier). I'm internetless all day and can only check email through my phone. *mwuh*
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Date: 2010-03-16 03:27 pm (UTC)Either way I'm not even sure I own Razor... or at least I don't have it with me now.
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Date: 2010-03-16 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 04:51 pm (UTC)Someday there might be another story in me about how Kara was some sort of guardian angel/grim reaper combo of Lee's soul.
Oooh, yes. Sounds good! You know I really dug that interpretation anyway in your fic Kara's Terrible, Horrible. Um, but would this still involve him following her? Because I would really love to read that too...I don't think anyone's actually written that, right?
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Date: 2010-03-16 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 05:50 pm (UTC)Ugh I agree so much. I don't think I'll be ragey unless other people are, but the fact that free will and real agency (i.e. people making decisions and bold moves and sacrifices that mattered to stop the bad patterns of the past) were totally devoid of the finale really bothered me.
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Date: 2010-03-16 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 05:57 pm (UTC)I love the Pilots interaction in Razor, and I really adore Kara's seeming revelation re: fear and anger being two sides of the same coin. She totally didn't live by it (if she had, she'd have STAYED WITH LEE on New Caprica, but whatever), but I really liked hearing her say it. She was on her way toward healing, at least.
They could have done so much more with the prophesy. So much. I've changed it for Echoes, so I need to go back and find the actual text and think about what it maybe means, but I remember it was an intriguing twist at the time.
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Date: 2010-03-16 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 06:27 pm (UTC)Ah, yeah, right. Unless that's the end of the story? Or close to it? Well, anyway, yeah. Let me know if you ever wanna brainstorm about that. :)
Yes! Exactly. I'm so sad that the ultimate message wasn't closer to that of Terminator's, that there's no fate, no future but what we make for ourselves. I always thought it would be.
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Date: 2010-03-16 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 07:25 pm (UTC)The whole prophecy bit was a great introduction had they followed through with it in the later seasons. A great trailer but a horrible film so to speak. In a sense the hybrid was right, they did arrive on Earth on Kara’s shoulder. She carried that burden alone since she came back. I never thought that Kara was ‘harbinger of death’ for the human race. But she did bring down the cylons, so may she was their harbinger.
I think initially when Lee does anything relating to the military he is doing is out of expectations of him. Unfortunately for him, he is good at what he does; he may not think he is good enough but he excels at the task. I think he took the Pegasus Commander job because there was no one else but he changed the way people were on that ship. No fear, he carved his own niche.
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Date: 2010-03-16 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 09:29 pm (UTC)i can do any night, but i'd love to do friday night so i don't have to worry about work the next morning....
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Date: 2010-03-16 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 01:35 am (UTC)XOXOX
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Date: 2010-03-17 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-17 02:58 am (UTC)(see icon)
I will just comment on #6: I actually serving as commander showed Lee that for the first time, maybe this wasn't what he wanted after all: it was just the only thing he knew how to do. And as is turns out, he's not as great at it as he thought he was. He's a leader, but a commander? Maybe not so much. There's something different about leading something but still leaving the really tough calls (and responsibility) to someone else.
*shrugs* I think he really tried his best, but I think this is what led him to think that maybe this wasn't the life that he wanted (which they hint at with the flashbacks).
cheers.
--Lex
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Date: 2010-03-17 02:16 pm (UTC)You are right! He is a warrior in every sense of the word, not only does he fight the cylons but he fights for those who can't fight for themselves. He is natural born leader but his insecurities about his father, he questions that sometimes.