First off: if, like me, you don't have cable and have been enjoying BSG through its DVD releases, make sure you watch this AFTER watching season 3, even though its time frame is within season 2. Things are referred to that won't make sense until you've seen season 3, and could possibly be spoilerish.



"Razor" has its great moments, and any episode of the new "Battlestar Galactica" is worth seeing, but this one falls down in three major ways. Firstly, it relies too much on flashbacks from too many different characters, and there's even at least one flashback within a flashback. Structurally, it just becomes too much of a hard slog.



Secondly, I'm afraid I found the performance from the lead actress to be rather dull.



And third, characters do things that are way out of character. It's not as well written as other episodes, and some events seem more than a little contrived. For example, Apollo makes a crucial decision that his character would never have made, only to be opposed by his father, whose character is actually much more likely to have adopted Apollo's decision in the first place!



It's worth seeing, and if you're a completist - buy it. But I wish I'd just rented it.