Daniel Graystone

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Daniel Graystone
Daniel Graystone

Name

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Age
Colony Caprica
Birth place {{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name {{{birthname}}}
Birth Date {{{birthdate}}}
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Nickname {{{nickname}}}
Introduced Caprica pilot
Death
Parents
Siblings
Children Zoe Graystone
Marital Status Married to Amanda Graystone
Family Tree View
Role Computer engineer
Founder and CEO of Graystone Industries
Owner of the Caprica Buccaneers
Creator of the Cylons.
Rank
Serial Number {{{serial}}}
Portrayed by Eric Stoltz
Daniel Graystone is a Cylon
Daniel Graystone is a Final Five Cylon
Daniel Graystone is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Daniel Graystone is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Daniel Graystone]]

Dr. Daniel Graystone is a brilliant and wealthy Caprican computer engineer, and creator of the Cylons. He is also the founder and CEO of Graystone Industries, inventor of the holoband, and owner of the Caprica Buccaneers pyramid team franchise 58 years before The Fall.

Early Life[edit]

Not much is known about Daniel's childhood. At a young age, he began technological experiments in his parent's garage and dreamed of owning the Caprica Buccaneers. He graduated from Apollo University with a PhD in Computer Science.[1] He met Amanda, his future wife, at a time in her life when she was recovering from serious psychological trauma. Daniel proved to be an important source of emotional stability (CAP: "End of Line"). With Amanda, Daniel had a daughter, Zoe. Daniel's first years of family life were financially and professionally difficult, and were marred by a fire that destroyed the family's first home. Eventually, Daniel would secure a contract with the Microcap company, beginning the upward climb of his career (CAP: "There Is Another Sky," "Ghosts in the Machine").

Corporate Success[edit]

Building on these early successes, Daniel founded a Caprica-based corporation that pioneered the development of the holoband, a user interface technology that allows for seemingly fully immersive virtual reality. The success of the technology made Daniel a celebrity scientist, frequently appearing on television. At the same time, his company began contracting with the Caprican government to develop technologies for military application, the most prominent of which was the U-87 Cyber Combat Unit. This project aimed at replacing human soldiers with cybernetic units installed with artificial intelligence.

While the development of the cybernetic body was successful, Daniel had considerably more difficulty with the programming of a true artificial intelligence and its related hardware. The project had originally been planned to take five years, but the increasing number of prototype failures led to the program falling five years behind schedule and five hundred million cubits over budget. Frustrated with Daniel's failures, the Caprican government threatened to cancel its contract with the company and take the project to the Vergis Corporation, Graystone Industries' Tauron competitor, which had announced the successful development of a meta-cognitive processor that could serve as an artificial intelligence.

Personal Tragedy[edit]

Daniel suffered a personal loss when his daughter Zoe was killed in a suicide bombing aboard the Lev in Caprica City. However, he later discovered that before her death, Zoe had developed a method of uploading personal data onto the holoband that resulted in the creation of a holographic avatar of herself. Daniel believed it would be possible to use the U-87 prototype's body, combined with the processor developed by Vergis, to upload Zoe's avatar and allow her to live in the real world.

As a result, Daniel contacted Joseph Adama, a lawyer whose daughter and wife had also been killed in the terrorist bombing. Daniel asked Adama to use his ties to the Ha'la'tha crime syndicate on Tauron to steal the Vergis processor; in exchange, Daniel would reconstruct the personalities of Adama's daughter and possibly his wife. While Adama acquired the processor and handed it over to Daniel, he later became disgusted with the idea of resurrecting the personalities of the dead, leaving Daniel to pursue the matter himself.

Undaunted, Daniel tried to recreate Zoe as a robot, implanting Zoe's avatar in a U-87 unit. While the experiment initially seemed to work, with the robot calling Daniel "daddy" and taking a few steps forward, the avatar's data quickly became corrupted and the robot collapsed. Despite Daniel's efforts to recover his daughter's avatar, the program appeared to be irretrievable.

Creation of the Cylons[edit]

Despite his failure to bring back his daughter, Graystone uses the stolen processor to perfect the military prototype for the government project. Dubbing the unit a Cybernetic Life-form Node (CYLON), Graystone presents the completed unit to an impressed group of government officials. Graystone Industries was officially awarded a contract for the production of one hundred thousand U-87s (CAP: Caprica pilot).

This success was short-lived, when it quickly became apparent that only the original U-87 prototype would function sufficiently; as described by Dr. Cyrus Xander, Daniel's assistant, attempts to produce copies or to transplant the stolen MCP into other robot bodies produced "morons" (CAP: "Rebirth"). For long weeks, Daniel and his company would struggle in vain to find an explanation for the problem. He briefly (and correctly) suspected that Zoe's avatar was still in the robot, but attempts meant to force Zoe to identify herself failed (CAP: "Ghosts in the Machine"). Faced with the plummeting price of Graystone Industries stock, a dwindling supply of cash, and an accelerated production schedule forced onto him by a suspicious military, Daniel decided to purge any anomalies from the MCP and to start with "clean" MCPs. The Cylon, however, killed a Graystone Industries employee and escaped from its laboratory before the procedure could be performed (CAP: "End of Line").

Public and Personal Crises[edit]

Although Daniel and Amanda were arguably the highest profile relatives of the Lev bombing victims, the public attention given to them did not greatly exceed that of other survivors. All of this changed abruptly at a memorial service one month after the bombing, during which Amanda announced that Zoe was responsible for the bombing. Daniel was forced to wisk his wife away from an angry crowd (CAP: "Rebirth"). Almost instantly, attitudes on Caprica and across the Twelve Colonies turned against Daniel, his family, and Graystone Industries. Daniel himself was abducted and beaten by Sam Adama and compelled by a changed Joseph Adama to bring back the avatar of his daughter--a demand which Daniel could not meet (CAP: "The Reins of a Waterfall"). Public opinion continued to sour, and Daniel reluctantly decided to make a more active PR response by appearing on the Backtalk with Baxter Sarno late night talk show (CAP: "The Reins of a Waterfall"). Despite coaching and high expectations for the interview, Daniel's attempts to defend himself and to present Zoe as a "troubled" teenager floundered, until he was unexpectedly joined on stage by Amanda. Together, the two of them created a more compelling narrative, of Zoe being yet another young victim of the dangers of life on the holoband--and continuing in the spirit of that narrative, Daniel spontaneously announced the creation of a fund for young holoband addicts and the end of the holoband as a profit-making enterprise for Graystone Industries (CAP: "Gravedancing").

Stunned by the instant elimination of sixty percent of the corporation's revenue, the board of directors of Graystone Industries quickly maneuvered to remove Daniel from the board. Daniel countered with a dramatic presentation to the board, arguing that the holoband could not be sustained as a source of profit in any case, and that the future of the company lay in a new technology that would even more radically change the face of Colonial society: the Cylons. Daniel's position as CEO was saved (CAP: "There Is Another Sky").

Daniel's successes were threatened by the appearance on Caprica of his personal rival, Tomas Vergis, who revealed that not only did he know that Daniel was responsible for ordering the theft of the MCP, but also for the murder of two close friends during the theft. Rather than taking Daniel to court, Vergis promised to systematically take or destroy everything that was dear to him (CAP: "Know Thy Enemy"). Vergis' first target was the Caprica Buccaneers. Starved for funds to sustain the U-87 project, Daniel capitulated and made plans to sell the team. Even more damaging was Vergis' brief conversation with Amanda about Daniel's role in the theft and murders. Confronted by Amanda with the claim, Daniel could only respond that the situation was "complicated." Amanda had nothing else to say to him, leaving Daniel to face the loss of the U-87, the military contract, and potentially his company by himself, as well as the very real possibility of his wife's suicide (CAP: "Ghosts in the Machine," "End of Line").

Ultimately, Daniel Graystone revives from this crisis with his personal resourcefulness, his wife, and the help of the Ha'la'tha. By promising the Ha'la'tha partial ownership of Greystone Industries, he blackmails the board into reinstating him as CEO and removing Thomas Vergis. Amanda Greystone's involvement with the GDD surveillance of Clarice Willow alienates her from Willow and forces her to reconcile with her husband and seek his protection. With her help, Daniel Greystone rediscovers his daughter's avatar in V-World and pursuades her to reconcile with her parents. He eventually manages to procure a lifelike mechanical body with which she can inhabit the real world. Finally, Daniel prevents the Gautrau from assasinating him and forms a firmer friendship with the Adamas and the rest of the Ha'la'tha's new leadership. Daniel and Amanda's thwarting of the STO terrorist attack do much to restore their public image and the fortunes of Greystone Industries. Apotheosis

References[edit]

  1. Ann Royall (Ianuarius 12, YR42). Graystone Computer Science Wing Coming to AU (backup available on Archive.org) (in ). The Caprican. Retrieved on 16 October 2010.