This post is full of spoilers about the 2003 reimagined series.
Throughout the series, a common trope is finding out that a character has secretly been a Cylon the entire time. Most of the time, these secret Cylons are not even aware that they are Cylons. They are under the impression that they are actually a human.
I would argue that every character we meet (except for the few “angels”) are actually Cylons. We literally never meet a real human in this series.
The rough chain of events were as follows:
- Humans created Cylons
- Humans/Cylons did not get along
- Cylons moved away
- Cylons developed their own culture in isolation
- Cylons forgot that they were robots and began to view themselves as true biological human beings
- Cylons (who believed themselves to actually be humans) created Cylons
And thus becomes a cycle. In each iteration of this loop, these “humans” create Cylons, and from their own perspective, they are inventing the concept of Cylons for the first time. But in reality, each of these loops is just the previous generation of Cylons creating the next generation of Cylons.
We spend the entire series following a group of individuals who we assume are humans. And these individuals themselves even assume they are humans as well. But unbeknownst to them, they are actually Cylons who have just spent so long in isolation that they started to believe they were the true human race.
But true humans are a thing of the past. They are likely living in peace in some distant galaxy after the first generation of Cylons had fled. We never see a real human.
Robot Chicken taught me that everyone is a Cylon!
I assume that is referencing this clip (from 1:10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzH6GVBSXSk
And this clip (from 2:10)
I like the overall thing, but, how do you explain the loss of cultural memory?
I guess at some point, the false humans could/would program their “global” firmwares to forget, but, at that point they are completely at the mercy of the technology’s ability to self-perpetuate; if it develops problems, they will not even know that it exists (so presumably nanotech) and therefore not know how to fix.
One could posit some group of hidden technologists of indeterminate size, who maintain the systems. Perhaps they are even AI nanomachines that walk around with the very sophisticated automatons.
Biggest question/doubt on my part is, why the hell would any being so advanced as to build a Cylon, ever want to be human?
To keep their humanity?
So, how do they do in case of birth or surgery? Are doctors and surgeon a caste ‘in the know’?
Humanoid Cylons are physiologically indistinguishable from humans. Remember how much time/effort was put into developing the “Cylon detector” blood test, and how they ended up determining that the technology wasn’t effective and that it was impossible to tell them apart? I take it that a surgeon could operate on a humanoid Cylon without knowing it was not human at all.
Baltar’s Cylon detector did actually work through, so there is some difference.
Did it though?
Or was he bullshitting the whole time? Did it catch Colonel Tigh or Chief Tyrol? (Any of the cylons discovered toward the end of the series).
Out of all the dozen or so individuals who were confirmed to be Cylons by the end of the series, the only individual who was detected by the Cylon detector was Boomer. That is a pretty awful accuracy rate, and could possibly have just mistakenly flagged the wrong sample as a Cylon. It may have been a total fluke that the one sample that it detected was someone who did turn out to actually be a Cylon.
It did get abandoned early in the series if I recall (been a while) and from what I recall he did tweak the results after Boomer so that more or less only he could tell so maybe it did work, the first “results” before her were totally fudged so who even knows. I had also forgotten that
Tap for spoiler
Ellen was tested on screen as well, we just never know what the actual results were. I need to to do a rewatch but I honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised if it did work for the final five and he just kept that to himself.
Wait, if that’s the case then why does anybody even care?
That’s the fundamental flaw in the show.
If there’s no difference, then who the fuck cares.
Also, you can program deep sleeper agents to activate and sabotage the ships
But also cylons aren’t bad guys, they can help the humans.
Also, cylons have super powers and can break solid steel.
Also, cylons are immortal and can resurrect.
Also, there’s absolutely no hardware for any of this.
The whole show makes no sense if you look at it too close.
The whole show makes no sense if you look at it too close.
100%. Just like the show “Lost”, they didn’t really know what the end was going to be when they started the show. Admittedly, Lost was much worse, often the writers had no idea what would happen 3 episodes ahead. I think on Galactic they at least had season outlines (but no idea what would happen in the next season).
Narrator: They did not have a plan.
Interesting. I wonder if we could fit the angels into this. Perhaps they are from a more advanced iteration? As in, maybe the conflict we are following is between the first and second set of cylons. Perhaps there are third or father sets too. Maybe they send out some emissaries to aid the other iterations. A bit like the istari in lotr
Running with this idea and the mythology of the Thirteenth Tribe. Perhaps it does, or did exist after a split or exodus in the time of the first and second sets of cylons. What we’re presented is a bottled (at a universal scale) experiment of the remaining ‘angels’. The last of the early cylons working from the long dead memories of humanity, still driven by an extermination directive long forgotten by ‘modern’ cylon iterations.
