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Callandra Tyrol

From Battlestar Wiki, the free, open content Battlestar Galactica encyclopedia and episode guide
Revision as of 14:05, 5 September 2006 by Quig (talk | contribs)
Callandra Tyrol
Callandra Tyrol

Name

Age
Colony
Birth place {{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name Cally Henderson
Birth Date {{{birthdate}}}
Callsign
Nickname {{{nickname}}}
Introduced Miniseries
Death
Parents
Siblings
Children One son
Marital Status Married to Galen Tyrol
Family Tree View
Role Union organizer, Formerly Deckhand, Deck Crew 5, Battlestar Galactica
Rank Specialist
Serial Number {{{serial}}}
Portrayed by Nicki Clyne
Callandra Tyrol is a Cylon
Callandra Tyrol is a Final Five Cylon
Callandra Tyrol is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Callandra Tyrol is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Callandra Tyrol]]


Specialist Cally Henderson is a deckhand aboard battlestar Galactica assigned to Chief Galen Tyrol. At the time of the Cylon Attack on the Twelve Colonies, she is attached to Deck Crew 5 and responsible for Viper and Raptor maintenance (Miniseries). She is particularly adept at finding ways around the lack of replacement parts aboard Galactica, seen in her jury-rigging of several Vipers and Raptors.

Cally only joined the Colonial Fleet as a means to pay for dental school (Fragged).

According to Ronald D. Moore's blog, Cally's term of required service ended at the same time that Galactica was to be decomissioned, and she was about to be honorably discharged and return to civilian life when the Cylons attacked, ending those plans.

Biography

Cally is part of a Galactica team sent to the Astral Queen in order to enlist the help of convicts in ice mining operations (Bastille Day). Taken captive by the escaped immates, she is nearly raped by prisoner Mason, who shoots her after she bites his ear off in defense. Cally is returned to Galactica's sickbay for treatment, where she is given the nickname "Specialist Lazy" in jest by her comrades.

Cally is not fond of Jumps (Miniseries), possibly because she suffers nausea during them (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I).

Less than a week later, Cally returns to duty. When it was revealed that Cylons can take human form she argues against Jammer's paranoia-mongering, pointing out that such derision is exactly what the Cylons want. Along with the rest of the deck crew, she lies under oath to protect the Chief during a tribunal on a Cylon infiltration and attack (Litmus). For the next several weeks, Cally assists Chief Tyrol in examining the captured Cylon Raider brought aboard Galactica (Six Degrees of Separation). Cally later celebrates with the rest of the crew on the flight deck when the Viper squadrons return from their sucessful mission against a Cylon refinery base, to secure more tylium supplies for the Fleet (The Hand of God).

Cally is later selected to join a Raptor Scout team bound for Kobol (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I). Her Raptor is attacked upon emerging from a Jump, resulting in a crash on Kobol. As one of the few that was relatively unhurt, she is charged with caring for the injured crewmen. Cally later returns to the crash site with Chief Tyrol and Tarn, and barely makes it back alive with a medkit for Socinus (Scattered). However, it is too late to save Socinus and Tyrol administers Morpha to aid him in a painless death, which greatly saddens Cally (Valley of Darkness).

Cally seems as prone to anger after a terrible event as Chief Tyrol, but unlike him, she tends to take direct action as a result, rather than becoming immobile or overly irrational.

While stranded, Crashdown attempts to lead a hopeless attack on a Cylon Centurion anti-aircraft emplacement, and gives Cally an assuredly suicidal order to draw the Centurions' fire. Cally is so terrified at carrying out the impossible order that she freezes in place instead of advancing. Losing control and showing his imcompetence in leadership, Crashdown points a gun at Cally's head and threatens to shoot her if she does not obey. Just before Crashdown counts to three to shoot Cally, Dr. Gaius Baltar shoots him in the back, killing Crashdown instantly. The group fights a running battle with the Centurions to reach and destroy the Dradis dish supporting the Cylon gun emplacement. Seelix is shot, but Cally saves her life by carrying her further ahead. A rescue team of Raptors arrives, and Cally returns to Galactica with the survivors (Fragged).

Cally's anger transfers to Baltar when Tyrol is arrested and accused of being a Cylon himself due to his past relationship with Boomer, and threatens to reveal Baltar's part in Crashdown's death if Baltar does not act to clear Tyrol's name. Outraged by Tyrol's plight and Boomer's involvement, Cally later shoots and kills the Galactica copy of Sharon Valerii (Resistance). Cally is imprisoned in the brig but, at Tyrol's request, Commander Adama gives Cally a lenient sentence of 30 days for "discharging a firearm without permission" (The Farm).

Various crew members throw a party for Cally's return to normal service.

After her 30 day sentence is finished, Cally is released from the brig, and a welcome back party is thrown for her on the hangar deck by the deck crew. Chief Tyrol is still upset with her for killing Boomer, although Cally is grateful to the Chief for putting in a good word for her with Adama. She aids Tyrol in the construction of the Blackbird. By the time they finish construction, Tyrol reconciles with her (Flight of the Phoenix).

Along with the rest of the crew, Cally is jubilant when the long-thought destroyed battlestar Pegasus finds Galactica. However, she is disgusted when several drunken Pegasus crewmen brag about repeatedly raping the captured Cylon agent known as Gina, a reaction probably made stronger for her because Cally herself survived an attempted rape. Chief Tyrol and Lt. Karl "Helo" Agathon are arrested and taken aboard Pegasus for causing the accidental death of Pegasus' Lt. Alistair Thorne after they stop him from raping the Caprica copy of Sharon Valerii. Cally pleads with Commander Adama to do something about the incident when Adama learns that Admiral Helena Cain intends to execute Tyrol and Helo. Adama dismisses her with quiet purpose ("You have work to do") as he prepares the battlestar to engage the militant admiral's command with his older Viper squadrons (Pegasus).

The standoff with Pegasus is averted when attacking the large Cylon fleet detected nearby becomes the Fleet's first priority. Tyrol and Helo's executions were put on hold. Cally assists the newly assigned Pegasus deck chief, Peter Laird, in readying all of Galactica's Vipers for the upcoming battle. After Commander Adama comes down to the hangar deck to confer with Laird on the status of the preparations, Adama takes Cally aside and questions her about Laird. Cally reveals that Laird was a civilian, and that it is rumored that Pegasus had its own civilian refugee fleet in the past, but something happened to them. This lead later aids Adama in making a startling revelation about the behavior of Admiral Helena Cain.

Cally and Chief Tyrol later discover that the Vipers' ammunition was sabotaged by the Cylon-sympathizer Demand Peace movement (Epiphanies). Later, the two uncover a storage crate with a stowaway inside (The Captain's Hand).

Two weeks before the presidential election, Cally finds Tyrol sleeping tumultuously on the hangar deck while it was empty. She wakes him up while he was in the midst of a suicidal nightmare, and the delusional Tyrol gives Cally a savage beating, quickly pummeling her into a bloody mess and knocking her unconscious. After a moment, Tyrol came to his senses, shocked by what he had just done, and takes Cally to sickbay carrying her in his arms (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I).

Cally's jaw is wired shut to heal, but she forgives Tyrol and says she always cared about him. Interestingly, her feelings for Tyrol were apparently known to Cavil prior to his exposure as a Cylon agent (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I).

A year later on New Caprica, Cally is married to Tyrol and pregnant with his child (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II).

Notes

  • In the DVD commentary for "Bastille Day", David Eick and Ron D. Moore elaborate on the increased role of Cally as the series progressed from the Miniseries through season 2:
Eick: Nicki Clyne, who you see here playing Cally, was somebody who in the Miniseries, I remember Michael (Rymer) and I cast just on the basis of her look, 'cause we thought she was really cute, she kind of reminded us of a young Shelley Duvall. [...] she turned out to be so good that we— in launching the series we started talking about ways to involve her and I'm very proud of a moment coming up where she does something rather nasty, that...
RDM: Well she almost died! She was gonna die in the intial drafts of this.
Eick: That's right! He kills her! He rapes and kills her! And they're telling us we're too dark this year.
RDM: Oh, I know. The second season is so much darker. And I don't think they even care. Yeah, Cally, Nicki, I hate to tell ya, but the bullseye was on Nicki here. And I can't even tell you why we decided it was, no I take that back I think it was your note; you said you wanted Cally to fight back and really show some balls in this scene. She bit his ear off...
Eick: I said, "She bites his frakking ear off" and I was totally being...you know, just illustrative! I didn't really mean it!
RDM: And I wrote, "she bites his ear off"!
Eick: "And I got the draft, and she bites his ear off! I was like "that's great!"
RDM: And from that moment on, I think, she really became part of the show. In a real sense, once she had gone through that and survived, and you know Tyrol and the gang come in and see her in the hospital at the end you kind of felt like she is one of the family.
Eick: Yeah, and she's taken on, in season 2 actually, a much, much, much more prominent role. You have no idea how prominent a role.
RDM: Which is really illustrative of the rise and fall of characters. I mean Boxey we thought going in was just going to be part of the show, and we just never really got our feet underneath us in terms of his storyline and really how it fit into it, and Cally who's just this 'other mechanic' at the beginning, who's just hanging around with Tyrol becomes a key element and part of the fabric of the show itself.
  • In the DVD commentary for "Bastille Day", RDM revealed how he came up with names for deckhands Cally, Socinus, and Prosna: "They were all names I pulled out of an 'ancient names internet site'. I literally, I found something on the internet that would give me like 'ancient names', I went through it and found those names. It was like ancient Greek and Roman...somethings. They might be, for all I know they're names for utensils, or something like that..."
    • "Calli" is Ancient Greek for "beautiful".
  • The Miniseries novelization gives her full name as "Jane Cally." However this was made up without the input of the BSG writing team, who later decided that Cally was actually her first name.
  • Cally's full name was not known during the first 2 seasons of the series (even though she is a character that has appeared since the opening minutes of the Miniseries), and during this entire time was known simply as "Cally". It was even unknown if "Cally" was her given name or her surname; many assumed it was her surname and referred to her as "Specialist Cally" (in "The Farm", Chief Tyrol referred to her as "Specialist Cally"). However, actress Nicki Clyne, who plays Cally, has said she always thought of it as her character's given name. Her full maiden name, "Cally Henderson", won't appear until Season 3, when labeled on props such as her locker, etc. She took on Chief Galen Tyrol's surname after marrying him.
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