On Nov. 24, Sci Fi debuts a two-hour television movie, Razor, set during the second season of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. (Battlestar Galactica is currently between its third and fourth seasons, making Razor a prequel of sorts.) It goes where few science fiction television shows or films have gone before by making a same-sex relationship between two female characters a crucial part of the story.
Note: This article contains some spoilers for Razor, as well as analysis of Battlestar Galactica episodes that aired in Season 2, but no spoilers related to the upcoming Season 4.Although other science fiction series, including Firefly and Torchwood, have included lesbian or bisexual story lines, they have largely been one-episode encounters. Razor is different: A central character in the movie, Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes) is revealed to have had an intimate relationship with Gina, aka Cylon model Number Six (Tricia Helfer), a regular character on the series.
That relationship ends tragically, and on the surface their story has all the hallmarks of a typically negative depiction of lesbianism. Admiral Cain engages in a same-sex relationship, only to be betrayed by her lover and ultimately killed by her. But though the character of Cain is yet another lesbian who dies on-screen, there is more to this tale than meets the eye.
Written by Michael Taylor and directed by Felix Alcala, Razor tells the story of Admiral Cain and her ship, Pegasus, which survives a surprise attack by the Cylons (a race of machines first created by humans) by fleeing blindly, leaving Cain and her crew to believe they may be the only human survivors left in the universe.
The movie is split in two interconnected story lines, one beginning right before these attacks, and one beginning 10 months later when Lee “Apollo” Adama, the son of Galactica’s Commander William Adama, is appointed the Pegasus’ new commander.
At the beginning of Razor, just before the Cylons attack, Kendra Shaw (Stephanie Jacobsen) begins a new job as Admiral Cain’s aide. Much of Razor proceeds from her point of view, giving viewers new to Battlestar Galactica an easy entrypoint into the series.
In the aftermath of the attacks, which leaves one quarter of the Pegasus crew dead, Cain rallies her troops by delivering a galvanizing speech:
I imagine you’re all asking yourselves the same question I am: What do we do now? Do we run? Do we hide? I think those are the easy choices. A philosopher once said, “When faced with untenable alternatives, you should consider your imperative.” Look around you. Our imperative is right here, in our bulkheads, in our planes, in our guns and in ourselves. War is our imperative.This speech is one of the earliest and boldest indicators of how Cain feels about choice. She follows a somewhat Kantian point of view: Her “imperative” commands her to behave in a certain way. She values rationality above emotion. And she believes her imperative is militaristic: to defeat the enemy.
Cain’s relationship with Gina, who is stationed on the Pegasus as a civilian technician, is revealed quite subtly when Cain holds a dinner for her chief officers, including Kendra Shaw. When Gina arrives, she and Cain kiss each other on the cheek, the only sign of their intimate relationship a lingering touch of Gina’s hand on the admiral’s shoulder. But Kendra sees this, and later on when she is working with Gina to repair the ship’s computer, she alludes to it by suggesting that if Gina needs higher security clearance to finish their task, they could ask Cain. Gina quickly acknowledges Kendra’s unspoken question:
Gina: Here I thought we were being so discreet. I guess that’s hard when you truly care for someone. To satisfy your curiosity, we met a few months ago when I presented the plans for the retrofit. Spent a lot of time together working out the details, and I guess one thing led to the other. You seem so surprised. Kendra: It’s just that Cain seems so self-sufficient. Gina: She has needs, just like the rest of us. No one can survive entirely on their own. Trust me, Lieutenant, in the end we’re all just human.Kendra and Gina’s conversation reveals two significant points. First, Gina’s statement that “in the end we’re all just human” speaks to her character’s consistent fascination with being human. Another copy of Number Six, known as Caprica Six, has a longstanding and complicated love relationship with human scientist Gaius Baltar. Though Caprica Six is different from Gina, both copies demonstrate great desire to understand humans and to claim human emotions for themselves.
Second, Kendra’s surprise at Cain’s relationship with Gina is because of Cain’s “self-sufficient” persona; it has nothing to do with the fact that it is a same-sex relationship.
Although the only other same-sex relationship on Battlestar Galactica to date has been between two female Cylons, Number Six and Number Three (Lucy Lawless), in the context of a threesome also involving a man, there is nothing to suggest that same-sex relationships are not accepted in the Battlestar Galactica universe. None of Cain’s officers blink an eye about her relationship with Gina, though it is possible that they do not know about it.
Also, Battlestar Galactica has been more progressive than most television shows in the way its female characters are treated. Many of the series’ most powerful characters, including President Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) – who was a man in the original version of the series – are women. Cain’s sexuality is simply a part of her character; what is astonishing is not that she is a lesbian, but that she makes room for human needs in her highly disciplined military life.
Her humanity, however, is soon tested as the events of war build a sense of desperation in her. When her executive officer refuses to order their soldiers to carry out what he believes is a suicidal mission, Cain executes him in full view of the other officers. Though she had assured her officers that she would “never risk lives or resources in some mad quest for revenge,” it quickly becomes apparent that Cain’s imperative – war – leaves little room for mercy.
When the Pegasus is boarded by enemy Cylons, Kendra sees a woman who looks just like Gina. It is one of the many copies of Number Six, and Kendra realizes that Gina too is a Cylon. Kendra shoots Number Six and rushes to the bridge, where Gina has fled for safety during the attack.
Kendra tells Cain that Gina is a Cylon, and as soon as Cain sees the security camera image of a dead Number Six, she orders Gina to be taken into custody, declaring in shock and disgust, “My gods – get that thing off my bridge.” Gina is taken to a holding cell where Cain brings Lt. Thorne, her interrogator, to view the Cylon prisoner. She admits – with a palpable sense of revulsion – that she gave “it” her trust. “This thing really knows how to manipulate human emotion,” Cain says to Thorne, “preys on it. And since it’s so adept at mimicking human feeling, I’m assuming that its software is vulnerable to them as well.”
Instructing Thorne on how to interrogate Gina, Cain says: “Pain, yes of course. Degradation. Fear. Shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel you need to be.”
Thorne proceeds to torture and rape Gina – all with the full consent of Admiral Cain. She has moved Gina from the category of “human” to the category of “machine.” The imperative of war forces her to deal with her enemy ruthlessly.
When the Pegasus encounters a human civilian fleet, Cain orders her crew to strip the civilians of their resources and shoot those who disobey. Kendra is the first to shoot, and Cain later promotes her, praising her for setting aside “every natural inhibition that during battle can mean the difference between life and death.” War, for Cain, means losing those natural inhibitions – her humanity. To punish a machine, Cain must become one.
Taken on its own, Razor presents a tragic picture of a lesbian betrayed. Once the lesbian character is betrayed, she loses her humanity and becomes psychopathic. It can be read as a sci-fi version of the tired old morality tale warning against homosexuality: Don’t do it, or else.
But Razor is more complex than that, and the many layers to the story emerge only when considering the movie as part of the Season 2 story line about Cain, Pegasus and Gina, which begins in Episode 2.10, “Pegasus,” and continues through the two-part “Resurrection Ship” (2.11 and 2.12) and “Lay Down Your Burdens” (2.19). When these episodes first aired, Cain and Gina’s relationship was not clearly intimate; with the addition of Razor, those episodes take on new meaning.
Shortly after Gina is tortured, Pegasus encounters another human fleet, this time accompanied by the battlestar Galactica, led by Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos). The Galactica has also recently acquired a Cylon prisoner, Sharon (Grace Park), who is pregnant with a child fathered by a human man, Helo.
Though Sharon is also imprisoned, she has not been tortured. Cain sends Thorne to the Galactica to interrogate Sharon, and he quickly proceeds to assault her and even begins to undress in order to rape her. Sharon is saved by Helo and Chief Tyrol (who also had a relationship with Sharon when he thought she was a human), who accidentally kills Thorne while pulling him off her.
Helo and Tyrol are court martialed by Cain, and she quickly orders them executed for killing an officer. President Roslin steps in, calling a meeting with both Adama and Cain to stop the execution. In a telling display of personality differences, Cain sits with her legs spread – masculine, dominating – while Commander Adama, the junior officer in this case, folds himself inward, his legs and arms crossed defensively.
“We are at war, and we don’t have the luxury of academic debate over these issues,” Cain angrily says to President Roslin in “Resurrection Ship, Part 1,” insisting that her military command supercedes Roslin’s civilian one. Cain is once again following her imperative, but this time it has come face to face with a different one: the survival of the human race.
This other imperative is what has driven Adama, due in no small part to President Roslin, who keeps a tally of the remaining human survivors in her office. That number hovers around the 50,000 mark – small enough to remind them how important it is to keep each other alive.
Adama is also reminded of his humanity by his son. As he says to him at the end of Razor: “Now, you don’t have any children, so you might not understand this, but you see yourself reflected in their eyes. And there are some things that I’ve thought of doing, with this fleet, but I stopped myself because I knew that I’d have to face you the following day.”
With an imperative of survival – of maintaining life rather than inflicting death – Adama is forced to retain his own humanity. Every morning, Adama has the possibility of seeing his son, a flesh-and-bone reminder of being human.
Cain, on the other hand, has no such reminder. Instead, she carries a pocket knife with her, and in one scene toward the end of Razor, she shows Kendra the knife and explains: “When you can be this for as long as you have to be, then you’re a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors, because if we don’t, we don’t survive. And then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.”
Cain is determined to sharpen herself until only a blade remains; she must hone away all the human emotions that prevent her from following her imperative. There is no room, in Cain’s world, for the pain that comes from being betrayed by someone she cares for. There is only room for anger.
When Baltar comes to the Pegasus to talk to Gina, he gives her food and water to revive her, and Cain says derisively: “I see that you got it to eat. Can you get it to roll over? Beg?”
In “Resurrection Ship, Part 2,” Baltar – who is in love with Caprica Six and sees her in Gina – helps Gina escape. Though she wants to commit suicide, he tells her that she needs justice, and he gives her a gun. Gina goes to find Admiral Cain and demands:
Gina: Tell me, Admiral, can you roll over? Beg? Cain: Frak you. Gina: You’re not my type.And then Gina pulls the trigger, killing the woman who both cared for her and authorized her torture.
The character of Gina then disappears for several episodes, until she resurfaces as part of a peace movement. She is clearly traumatized from the sexual assault she experienced during her imprisonment. During “Lay Down Your Burdens,” Baltar gives her a nuclear device that she detonates, successfully killing herself and leaving a nuclear trace that enables the Cylons to find the humans a year later. Gina is a Cylon agent to the end.
Often when same-sex relationships are included in science fiction, one or both halves of the couple are alien – clearly marking homosexuality as not human, not normal.
For example, in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Rejoined,” the two female characters who become involved with each other (Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn) are both members of the Trill, an alien race in which a symbiont inhabits the humanoid body of a host. Though Dax and Kahn resemble humans, they clearly are aliens.
In Torchwood, one female same-sex relationship involves a woman whose body is possessed by a sex-starved alien who kills her partners after having sex with them (“Day One”). Another story line involves a 19th-century prostitute who was taken over by an alien and feeds on humans (“Greeks Bearing Gifts”). Both of these episodes mark homosexuality as alien, unnatural, shameful and manipulative.
The case of the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica is different. Because they were initially created by humans themselves, they occupy a middle ground between human and not-human. Though it may not seem to be, this is a sign of progress.
The murkiness surrounding the Cylons’ humanity is a telling mirror for the humans’ own conceptions of right and wrong, love and hate. The series is most complex and interesting when humans intersect with the machines they created in intimate and unexpected ways.
Razor is a pivotal point in a greater story about what makes someone human. Cain’s relationship with Gina, who walks the line between human and machine, is the prism through which Cain’s struggles are refracted.
It is the intimacy of their relationship that renders Cain’s horrific actions more understandable – more human.
