Boxing

This article is concerned with the Cylon process of boxing. Boxing, a sport and martial art, took place in the episode "Unfinished Business".

Cylon cold storage unit.

To box a Cylon is to download a particular humanoid Cylon's consciousness from his or her body into cold storage indefinitely (analogous to a computer core dump), presumably in an inert state. To a Cylon, boxing is in effect equivalent to true, permanent death.

Boxing is carried out during the Cylon resurrection process. A small metal box on the side of the tank, the storage unit, is removed by an attending Cylon once the consciousness has been downloaded into it, and the Cylon body in the tank deactivates. The body is then moved to storage in a Resurrection Ship. The attendant may as a courtesy allow the condemned Cylon to resurrect long enough to inform him or her of the boxing before carrying it out.

A Cylon is boxed when he or she has been found dangerously unstable, such as when a humanoid Cylon's memories appear "corrupted" by extended or intense human contact, or when a sleeper agent become psychologically maladjusted from denying his or her Cylon nature.

The resurrected Cylons Caprica-Six (the Number Six who died protecting Gaius Baltar when his house is destroyed in the Miniseries) and Sharon "Boomer" Valerii are threatened with boxing by a Number Three shortly after their return. Their "Hero of the Cylon" status and extended human associations threaten the Cylon status quo because the two became individuals, their personalities diverging from their fellow models (Downloaded).

A Cavil boxes Number Three.

After the incident at the Temple of Five, where the same Number Three who threatened to box Caprica-Six and Boomer goes against the will of the other Cylons, the decision is made to box not just her, but all Number Three models (Rapture).

As revealed in the podcast for "Rapture", the boxing of the Threes is the first model-wide boxing in Cylon history, which left 11 Cylon models active.

All boxed Cylons are stored at the Resurrection Hub, a central facility which coordinates all resurrections. When the Hub is destroyed by an alliance of humans and renegade Cylons, all but one unboxed Number Three, D'Anna Biers, are permanently killed. With the Hub gone, all Cylons lose their ability to resurrect and thus be boxed (The Hub).