No, this isn't an attempt to create some Facebook survey like are you a pirate or a ninja. I just love Battlestar Galactica, okay? And I don't think people talk about it as much as they should anymore since it was cancelled a few years ago.
I'm rewatching the series now, which is every bit as rewarding as it was when I first saw it. This is, without a doubt, one of the best television shows ever created. Lost, Dallas, Seinfeld can all go to hell. Battlestar Gallactica is the greatest of all time.
Galactica wasn't just a show about space. It was about survival after the apocalypse. It was about rebuilding a devastated society and either adapting or abandoning those policies and quirks and prejudices that we take for granted in our "normal" existence. It also had the greatest enemy of all time, the Cylons.
The Cylons were cybernetic organisms created by humanity for use as slave labor. Eventually, as it usually happens in any of these situations, the Cylons rebelled and a prolonged and bloody conflict ensued. After the First Cylon War, they Cylons vanished for 40 years, before launching an all out attack on the 12 Colonies of Kobol and leaving humanity with roughly 40,000 survivors out of several billion.
The Cylons were able to do this by adapting to human organic appearance. As it was so often uttered in the show by human characters, "The Cylons look like us now." So, the giant walking toasters still existed, but the real brains and leadership behind the evolved Cylons were the "skinjobs," the Cylons that looked like us.
In creating these models, the Cylons bottled the main aspects of human nature into each model, and I think it would be fun to analyze this now. To be exact, I am only going to cover the Significant Seven models and not the Final Five, because the Final Five were pretty lame and led to the watering down of the best show ever made. Seriously, watch this show and when the Final Five are revealed at the end of the 3rd season, you will see the show plummet in quality. Also, I'm only going to briefly cover Model No. 7 as he's barely even mentioned in the show.
So, anyway, here are the Significant "Seven."
Number One, alias Brother John Cavil
First of all, Cavil was played by Dean Stockwell. The guy was already in
Quantum Leap, so c'mon, he's a badass.
We meet Cavil in the series as a priest that appears to also be an atheist. Shortly revealed afterwards to be a Cylon, Cavil embodies all of the cynicism and nihilism inherent in humanity. Constantly at odds with Number 6, Cavil embraced his identity as a machine while Six seemed almost desperate to be human.
Cavil is sarcastic, condescending, and also a freaking genius. A master manipulator, he breaks the Cylons in half with his machine vs. man ideology. He also nails Ellen Tigh (his mother/daughter when you think about it...gross), and pulls out Sol Tigh's eyeball with his bare hands.
The most telling moment of Cavil's outlook on life in the show comes during a discussion he's having with Ellen Tigh onboard a Cylon basestar. The dialogue is as follows:
Brother Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova?
Ellen Tigh: No.
Brother Cavil: No? Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.
Ellen Tigh: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.
Brother Cavil: I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!
Kind of an angry dude, huh? That section wraps him up better than I ever could, so we'll move on to Number 2.
Number 2, alias Leoben Conoy
I don't want to play favorites, but Leoben is by far my favorite Cylon. Not only is he played by Canadian kick ass actor, Callum Keith Rennie, but he is the most mystical of the group.
Leoben can easily be described as a zealot, holding a firm and almost unshakeable faith in the Cylon God and his plan for the "chosen" people. Leoben is also a prophet, consistently and accurately predicting events in the lives of both the humans and Cylons.
We meet Leoben in the miniseries, passing himself off as an arms dealer at the Ragnar Anchorage base. After being trapped by an explosion and cave-in with Commander Adama, his identity is revealed. To most of the remaining humans, with the exception of Dr. Baltar, Leoben is the first indication that the Cylons have taken on human form. Even in his weakened state due to the radiation storms hurling around Anchorage, he whoops Commander Adama's ass before being taken out by the hero.
Leoben also has an unhealthy fixation on Kara Thrace, a.k.a. Starbuck, constantly reminding her that she has a destiny and higher purpose that will reveal itself in time. Even Starbuck, the bruising, wisecracking Viper pilot, finds herself drawn to Leoben's visions of greatness for her.
As opposed to the Cavil or Number Four models, Leoben is a feeler and not a thinker. He bases his decisions on his own visions and instincts and often finds himself siding with the Sixes and Eights.
Leoben is both an angel and a demon, as Commander Adama alludes to in this quote:
Adama: Manipulative. Cunning. The only problem with Leoben isn't that he lies - that would be too easy - it's that he mixes lies with truth.
Number 3, alias D'Anna Biers
Alright, let's just get this out of the way right from the top: D'Anna was played by Lucy Lawless, who played Xena. Yes, I know Xena was hot. Here is a picture of Xena:
Now let's move on from there please.
D'Anna (we're gonna call her 3 from here on because I don't want to keep typing D'Anna, and most people call her 3 on the show anyway), was another Cylon stowed away on Galactica, posing as a reporter. Soon afterwards, she's revealed to be a skinjob.
3 is a nice, smooth blend of Leoben and Cavil, possessing Leoben's gifts for prophecy and delusions of grandeur, mixed with Cavil's brutality and gift of deception. 3's obsession with the identities of the Final Five, a fact that Cylons are forbidden to discuss openly or even think about, shows us the first truly fatal flaw in the design of the humanoid Cylons. They are not perfect after all, and can blow off their own programming due to a very un-Cylon trait: curiosity. Maybe that is 3's human characteristic, not only a curiosity but an all-out obsession to discover the identities of the Final Five Cylon models. She begins to have visions of the Final Five during the periods between her deaths and downloads into new bodies, turning her into the Cylon's first ritualistic suicide case. She kills herself again and again and again so she can try to get a clear glimpse of the faces of the Final Five, but to no avail.
This obsession leads to the first major Cylon act of rebellion, when she deliberately ignores a majority decision among the skinjobs, and for this, her line is boxed (put into cold storage and deactivated).
Also, she played Xena, and threw around that disk thing that was also in Krull.
Number 4, alias Simon O'Neill
Simon is, unfortunately, not as thoroughly explored as the other Cylon models. He makes a very large appearance in the episode "The Farm," and from that point on plays a largely quiet and supporting role in the rest of the series. As I said, this is unfortunate as I find Simon to be a great example of the Cylon's views of humanity. By that, I mean how Cylons see us and how they have modeled themselves as almost a mockery of these characteristics.
Simon is the most logical of the skinjobs, and in the aforementioned episode he plays a doctor posing as a human. Throughout the rest of the show, he seems to be the medical expert of all the Cylons. When he does speak after his main episode, he is cold, calculating, devoid of any emotion, and far less religious than some of his Cylon brethren. In a way, this seems to point out the stereotype existent in our own society labeling scientists as unfeeling and uncaring, or nothing more than a "biped brain" as Dennis Miles would say.
More Cylons to come! This was the easy group!
I received this mug 2.5 years ago when I started working at WB. It has not moved from this spot. It has never been filled with coffee or water or tea or human blood or anything. It's not that I don't like the mug, I just forget, and now it's at the point where the mug is filled with dust and probably some microbes, and it just doesn't sound appetizing to me anymore.
