Razor is coming!!!

Jack, I want to transfer a detachment of marines to Galactica, and I want you to hand pick them. Completely reliable. Completely loyal. Razors.

Resurrection Ship, Pt. I.

It's going to be very nice to see Admiral Cain again. And with a name like Razor, with the meaning that the term carries, it's going to be one hell of a ride. Apparently the episodes/movie/telemovie/whatever is going to span a rather large timeframe, but it seems obvious that at least some of it will be dedicated to the story of the Pegasus before it met up with Galactica. The Pegasus crew was interesting, to say the least. On the outside, they had the look of a well-polished, well-disciplined, professional military machine. But when you got right down to it, they were more of a barbarian horde than a military unit, in the sense that we use the word. The fabric that held them together wasn't discipline, duty, or honor. It was fear, and rage. Cain nurtured that emotion, and then directed it to suit her purposes...or what she thought were humanity's purposes.

My prediction is that Cain and Adama aren't going to be as different as we think they are. Both of them had to face a situation where they thought they would lose control, and they knew the stakes were too high to allow that to happen. Both of them resorted to manipulating the emotions of the people to give themselves a fighting chance. Adama chose hope--and he had to lie to create it. Cain chose fear and rage. Two sides of the same coin, really. The difference is that control through fear gives you a lot more latitude with the measures you can take before your leadership is compromised, and using rage requires there to be outlets to prevent that rage from compromising your own control. Not everyone wants to go, or is even capable of going, that far. Adama wasn't. Roslin wasn't. Cain was.

And of course, there was a price to be paid for that style of leadership. It cost them their humanity. But it's not an answer to paint the world in black and white and condemn Cain and the Pegasus for that, because--and this is what I love about Ron Moore--there is no right answer. In spite of how distasteful Cain was, the fact of the matter was that the fleet really was safer with her than without her. There is no way in hell that there ever would have been an occupation under Cain--because there wouldn't have been any democracy. We've been raised to believe absolutely in democracy, but the truth is that democracy led to the wrong result, and the consequences of that mistake were staggering, and could have cost everything.

I think Razor is going to continue to challenge our values and assumptions, and once it has torn down that facade, it's going to tell a very different story about how people have stepped up to face the challenges of war, replete with great triumphs and terrible costs (some of which we already know about...the Scylla comes to mind).

Now I just have to wait until November....