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Samuel Anders

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Revision as of 09:27, 27 June 2008 by Catrope (talk | contribs) (→‎Revelation: linking, grammar)
Samuel Anders
Samuel Anders

Name

Samuel T. Anders
Age
Colony Picon
Birth place {{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name
Birth Date {{{birthdate}}}
Callsign Longshot
Nickname {{{nickname}}}
Introduced Resistance
Death
Parents
Siblings
Children
Marital Status Married to Kara Thrace
Family Tree View
Role Rook Viper pilot, former Caprica Resistance leader and professional pyramid player.
Rank Ensign
Serial Number {{{serial}}}
Portrayed by Michael Trucco
Samuel Anders is a Cylon
Samuel Anders is a Final Five Cylon
Samuel Anders is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Samuel Anders is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Samuel Anders]]

Samuel T. "Longshot" Anders is husband to Captain Kara Thrace, and a rook Viper pilot aboard Galactica.

He becomes aware of his true nature as one of the Cylon "Final Five", and suspects that his wife might be a Cylon, too.

Biography

Allegedly born on Picon, Anders attended Noyce Elementary School[1]. He was a player on the Caprica Buccaneers, leading his team in high-altitude training in the mountains outside of Delphi during the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. Being in a high-altitude rural area shielded them from the blasts of the nuclear attack and most of the radioactive fallout that followed. He and the Buccaneers become ad hoc resistance fighters from that point forward, raiding armories and collecting caches of weapons, anti-radiation medication, ammo and supplies in the hopes of staying alive and defending themselves against the Cylons.

Anders and Kara Thrace play Pyramid at the Caprica Resistance's HQ on Caprica in "Resistance".

Anders was able to rally upwards of 100 people, mostly hikers and survivalists, to his resistance against the Cylons and from the former Delphi Union High School he was able to strike back at the Cylons for nine months. Unlike Helo, the Caprica-based (and pregnant) Sharon Valerii, and Starbuck, Anders seems to be focused more on surviving on Caprica than he is with leaving the planet.

Anders and his resistance members encounter Starbuck and Helo two months after the initial Cylon attack (Resistance).

Anders' main focus for a time is keeping himself and his resistance movement alive long enough for Kara Thrace to return to Caprica once again with reinforcements from Galactica and evacuate them. Thrace gives him her Fleet ID tags as a promise that she would come back for him. While waiting for rescue, Anders plans to locate and destroy as many Cylon hybrid-producing "farms" as possible (The Farm).

Anders and the resistance movement conduct acts of terrorism against the Cylons after they appropriate Delphi for their own. His aim was to scare the Cylons into believing there is no safe place for them and to kill them in the most gruesome way possible so they remember when they are reborn what it is like to die violently, like in an explosion (Downloaded).

Following the Cylon's re-appropriation of Delphi, Anders and his fighters continue their insurgency, and carry out a series of attacks on the Cylons, the most notable of which was the destruction of a café which kill roughly 40 Cylons. After planting the bomb in a garage, Anders is trapped with the bomb after defending it from a Centurion. Hiding behind a car on the other side of the garage, Anders is mostly protected from the blast but buried under rubble. Later found by Boomer and Number Three. Anders is spared, as he would be a useful source of information. When Caprica-Six talks about genocide and God's love, Anders uses the opening to try and kill Number Three, but is stopped by Boomer. Three is more than willing to take revenge, but all were astonished when Caprica-Six kills Three. Heeding Six's orders to get out, Anders flees, still puzzled by what had transpired (Downloaded).

Rescue and join the Fleet

Anders survives an assault by the Cylons at the resistance's headquarters -- the same morning that the Caprica SAR team lands nearby. The Cylons assaulted the remnants of the Resistance as they head for the Raptors (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I), forcing them to go to higher ground. After the Cylons stop attacking them, Thrace (leading the rescue team) fears the worst. Anders and Thrace promise to kill each other so that the Cylons would be unable to put them in one of their farms. Miraculously, a mysterious man appears to tell the team that the Cylons had left the Colonies.

Thrace and Anders' relationship picks up where it left off, forcing a rift to occur between Thrace and Lee Adama.

A year later, now married to Thrace on New Caprica, Anders develops pneumonia, forcing Thrace to beg Lee Adama to release some antibiotics reserved for Pegasus' pilots.

Ill Anders playing pyramid with his teammates, moments before being tackled from behind (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II)

After the Cylons occupy New Caprica, Anders is visited by a copy of Leoben Conoy who inquires on Kara Thrace's whereabouts (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II). Since the Cylons had forced Pegasus and the defense fleet away from New Caprica, the antibiotics are no longer avaliable to help Anders.

Anders recovers from his sickness and is a leader of the New Caprica Resistance, along with Saul Tigh and Galen Tyrol. Thrace was taken from him sometime after the occupation, and he is unsure if she is still alive (Occupation).

Four months into the occupation, contact is made with a Raptor and a rescue plan is put in motion. Anders meets Galactica's liaison officer Sharon Agathon in Breeders Canyon, and the group is ambushed by Cylon Centurions (Precipice).

After the Centurions are neutralized, a map is found on a dead 'skinjob'. Anders realizes that the map is the one given to Ellen Tigh to destroy in a heating fire. Tigh is then suspected of collaborating with the Cylons.

Later, Anders is charged by Laura Roslin with protecting Maya and the Cylon-human hybrid baby Hera (Exodus, Part I).

Anders then tells Saul Tigh about his wife's betrayal. He tells Tigh that if he doesn't "take care" of the problem, someone else will. After Galactica jumps into orbit, Anders and a group of resistance fighters set off multiple bombs around New Caprica City. They then retrieve a cache of weapons hidden under the Pyramid court in order storm the New Caprica Detention Center and free the humans imprisoned within. Inside the detention center, Anders and a team of Marines find an unconscious Kara Thrace in her apartment style prison cell. Anders begins to carry Thrace out of the center but is interrupted after Thrace regains consciousness and runs back to retrieve her daughter, Kacey. Anders finds Thrace and Kacey back at the apartment, and leads both out of the detention center (Exodus, Part II).

Shortly following the Fleet's abandonment of New Caprica, Anders is brought into the Circle, a secret council assembled by President Tom Zarek for the purpose of judging and executing those who had collaborated with the Cylons during the occupation. Anders soon becomes uncomfortable with the Circle's actions and leaves the group. Thrace accepts the Circle's invitation to replace Anders, an act her husband sees as a personal betrayal. He hands back Thrace's ID tag, saying he doesn't want it anymore. Thrace and Anders are still husband and wife, but the combination of Thrace's joining the Circle and her feelings for Lee Adama has heavily strains their marriage. He eventually moves off Galactica to the Salpica (Unfinished Business (Extended Version)), which limits their contact to occasional visits per shuttle or participation in critical missions ("The Eye of Jupiter", "Rapture").

The death of his wife (Maelstrom) weighs heavily on Anders. Two weeks later he is found drunk on the hangar deck, standing atop of a Viper and playing with a cubit. When Lee Adama is tries to get Anders to come down, he slips, falls and breaks one of his legs. Later, Anders joins Adama at the memorial wall where Adama has put up Kara Thrace's picture (The Son Also Rises). Shortly after this, Anders decides to follow in his wife's footsteps by obtaining a commission and joining the Fleet as a pilot trainee (Crossroads, Part I), initially flying Raptors before transitioning to Vipers.

Revelation

Not long after he begins a relationship with Tory Foster, he realizes that the pair of them are experiencing hearing something unusual. Later on, he discovers that Tyrol hears the strange sounds as well, but does not get the opportunity to discuss it with him. When Anders, along with Tyrol, Foster and Saul Tigh find themselves drawn to a room shortly after the Fleet arrives at the Ionian nebula, they instinctively realized that they are four of the Final Five Cylons. However, both he and Tigh agree that their lives up until that point were not in vain, and the four wordlessly agree to continue their allegiance to the Colonies (Crossroads, Part II).

Anders's "red eye" moment.

He participates in the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, finding himself face to face with a Cylon Raider that he fails to destroy because his weapon safeties are enabled. The fortuitous act results in the Raider scanning Anders, whose eye flickers red. The Raider determines that he is a Cylon and as a result the Raiders abruptly abort their attack on the Fleet, forcing the whole Cylon fleet to retreat. After the battle, he recalls his experience with the Cylon Raider to the others, and wonders whether he just made a "nugget mistake" or if he was physically incapable of firing. Anders, along with the others, agree to kill themselves before they betray the humans (He That Believeth In Me).

Anders joins the Demetrius's crew on its mission to find Earth. Three weeks into the mission, he questions her command style, forcing her to open up more about her mission with her crew (The Ties That Bind). A week later they encounter a damaged Heavy Raider with a copy of Leoben Conoy aboard. Thrace allows him aboard against the crew's wishes, because she wants his help in finding Earth. When Anders sees how physically close the two are, he attacks him until Marines separate them. Later, Anders asks Conoy what he wants from Thrace. Conoy replies that he seeks to understand Thrace's unexplained destiny, which Anders doesn't consider good enough. Conoy says otherwise and that Anders might have his own destiny, beyond his relatively inconsequential life as a professional Pyramid player (The Road Less Traveled).

During the mutiny aboard the Demetrius Anders sides with Thrace, going as far as to shoot Felix Gaeta in the knee to prevent him from jumping back to Galactica. After accompanying Thrace to a disabled Cylon basestar, Anders involves himself in an execution of a Number Six model who had moments before murdered Jean Barolay. The idea of Natalie assisting to pull the trigger on another of her models disturbs him. Later into the mission, however, he consoles a dying Number Eight when Sharon Agathon fails to. He then becomes visibly worried when Thrace, Natalie and Sharon deduce that the Final Five have come from and know the way back to Earth, and propose a resurrection of the Number Three model to reveal the Five's identities (Faith). Back on Galactica, Anders is distraught over the loss of Gaeta's leg, talking of how Gaeta sings all the time to cope with his pain, but can't bring himself to talk to Gaeta about it (Guess What's Coming to Dinner?).

During a confrontation with their erstwhile Cylon allies — now lead by the unboxed D'Anna Biers — interim President Lee Adama forcefully persuades Colonel Tigh to give up the identities of the remaining Cylon Final Five about 'Galactica', the safety of the fleet hanging on it. Anders is arrested along with Tyrol, and they join Tigh in the airlock, under threat of being spaced in the showdown. Just as Adama is about to follow through on his threat, Thrace averts the execution with news that the three Cylons have given them the way to Earth. Anders and his fellow Cylons unexpectedly receive a full amnesty by President Adama, and is part of the landing party that finds Earth in a post-apocalyptic state (Revelations).

Notes

  • "Ander" is derived from a Greek term meaning "Man" (a well known example would be that "Anderson" means "Son of Andrew/Andreas/etc", the name being a descendant of Greek andreios ‘manly’, from aner ‘man’, ‘male’, genitive andros). Fitting, given that Anders is leading the last free humans alive on Caprica in a resistance against the Cylons: it's literally a fight of "Man" versus Machines. The revelation of Anders as a Cylon makes this ironic.
  • The tattoo that Anders has on his right arm in Season 3 is his "wedding band". He got it after he married Kara Thrace, who also has a similar tattoo, but it is on her left arm. They match up to form one set of wings and the circles overlap when they're facing each other. Both of them have half of the constellation of Capricorn (a reference to Caprica obviously) and a small symbol of the planet as well.

References

  1. His recent revelation as a Final Five Cylon makes this questionable.