Throwing a nice, meaty bone to Battlestar Galactica fans, the “Razor” movie is a great way to keep up interest in a show that’s taking its sweet time coming back for the final season. The movie will screen for free in select theaters around the country on November 12 (Only LA, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Seattle have open registration slots at the moment) and premieres on the Sci Fi Channel on the 24th.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead.

The movie alternates between flashbacks to Lee Adama’s first mission as a real boy commanding the Pegasus, and flashbacks to the Cylon attack and immediate aftermath from the point of view of the original Pegasus crew. And while it’s great to be back in the world of Battlestar Galactica, everything feels a little redundant. We already know how things are going to end up on the Pegasus. We know when Belzen questions Admiral Cain’s orders that she’s going shoot him in the head. We know Number 6 is on board and bad things are going to happen to her. We know they’re going to rob civilian ships and leave them to die. It’s often compelling to see how they actually played out, but the major story points have already been revealed. It’s an unfortunate problem that seems to be the nature of prequels. Everything is pre-ordained, which drains the suspense.

I’m sure the writers understood that limitation, which is why they combine that story with a mission involving most of our favorite characters (with the notable exceptions of Gaius, Chief Tyrol, Helo, and a few others) that somehow never came up in conversation during the third season. It turns out at the very end of the First Cylon War Bill Adama stumbled across a horrific human/Cylon hybridization experiment that escaped just as the armistice was being signed and was never heard from again by humans or Cylons. According to Cylon lore (referred to hilariously as “our databases”) the hybrid is a kind of dead-end evolutionary path that never worked out, like Neanderthals. The hybrid (accompanied by Cylons from the original series) has captured some of the Battlestar’s crew and Lee has to get them back and blow up the hybrid.

The connection between the two stories is Kendra Shaw, a tough young lady who doesn’t play nice. Kendra joins the Pegasus on the same day as the Cylon attack and lives through some really bad stuff. Lee makes her the XO when he takes over the ship, and she has to confront her many demons from the past while she deals with the hybrid. To nobody’s surprise, she doesn’t play so well with Starbuck.

Interestingly, despite feeling mostly unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the movie feels too short. The two stories jostling for screen time mean that each one doesn’t get developed as fully as they would if they had to carry a movie on their own. Kendra never really gets as interesting as the other characters, mainly because she was created as a useful plot device rather than a character we would grow to love/hate over multiple episodes. There are some very nice touches though, many of them related to fleshing out Admiral Cain’s character, like her lesbian relationship with the undercover Number 6, her dislike of chairs, and the possibility that she wasn’t just a crazy psychopath.

By far the best thing about the movie is one key revelation that left everyone at TiFaux Central with their jaws on the floor begging for the 4th season to start. You won’t hear it from me though. You’ll just have to wait to see it yourself.