Even though I enjoy Battlestar Galactica: Razor. I don't think it's necessary viewing for casual viewers of the series. It's really only going to benefit die-hard fans that want even more content. The story itself wasn't new as it goes back to revisit a major arc from before. It was looking at Pegasus' version of the events that happen immediately after the Cylon war starts. If you have seen any of Season 2, especially the 2 part Episodes centered on Pegasus, then you will be familiar of the stories that were told in passing from crew member to crew member. We never see anything, but you feel like you know it well because the characters paint a good picture of the events. Razor is basically a movie made up entirely of flashbacks and it's quite illuminating to finally see what we have only heard about. Now we see the depths of Admiral Cain's hatred of No. 6. We see the slaughter of the Civilian Fleet and a host of other moments. But we also get to see some new stuff that wasn't even mentioned and the biggest and best was seeing Husker / Adama during the first Cylon war 41 years earlier, which also gave us a nice fan-service moment of the original series with the original Cylon's and their Raiders.

As I said, I enjoy Razor, but I think they also failed in one aspect, which I think was their primary objective of the film. The movie is basically meant to humanize Cain and to justify her actions. She's just not a likable character at all and I don't think any amount of back story will ever change that perception of her. Her character was doomed from the start the moment she took control of the fleet away from Adama. All BSG fans are protective of the core group of characters and once she did that, she crossed the line with us. So say we all! With that said, I think there actually wasn't enough of her story being told as Kendra Shaw (Stephanie Jacobsen) was the primary character that we are meant to follow. Worth a Rent for causal viewers. The Special FX look amazing and there are more aerial space dog fights to be had.

I loved seeing the old school Cylons in this.

I agree with you that humanizing Cain seems to be a mistake.  You know, when you meet them they seem normal but then we find out how screwed up they are beneath that, and it's shocking because they strayed so far from where Galactica was at the start and where they are now.  You just get the sense that the crew made compromise after compromise and slowly lost their humanity. 

There's one moment from the series where you find out they have Tricia Helfer chained up in a room and the crew just indiscriminately has their way with her, and in my head that was the end result of a long sequence of events: finding her, questioning her, slowly stripping away her humanity until there's nothing less, real Zero Dark Thirty type sh*t, then at the end she's just like an empty shell, one of her guards decides to do an unspeakable thing, and no one gives a d*mn.  That's really horrifying.  In Razor, the idea is just a throwaway line... and it seems to happen really quickly.

It's one of those stories that doesn't really need to be told, because what's in your head is far worse than what they could tell you in the span of a movie, and it's sort of satisfying not knowing.

It's one of those stories that doesn't really need to be told, because what's in your head is far worse than what they could tell you in the span of a movie, and it's sort of satisfying not knowing.

Agreed.