Cylon History

For information on the Original Series Cylons, see Cylons (TOS).

Part of the series on The Cylons (Re-imagined Series)

History Culture & Religion Religion Models Humanoid Cylons Spacecraft Psychology Tactics

Over 52 years prior to the destruction of the Colonies, the humans of the Twelve Colonies reveled in their advanced technology, from which came their creation, the Cylons, a race of sentient machines. However, over 4,000 years ago, ancient Cylons have existed on Kobol.

Ancient Cylons

Some 4,000 years prior to the events depicted in the Miniseries, the Thirteenth Tribe, an early generation of humanoid Cylons that originated from Kobol colonized the Earth. With them there was also a distinct model of robotic Cylon, of which only the buried helmet has been seen. Roughly 2000 years later, Earth's civilization was wiped out by nuclear attacks from an unknown source. There were only five known survivors, who would come to be known as the Final Five. These survivors were researchers involved in the recent rediscovery of resurrection technology, who anticipated the attack and resurrected aboard a ship which they had prepared. They then began the approximately 2000 years long sublight journey to the Twelve Colonies in order to prevent the Cylon War.

First Cylons in the Twelve Colonies

The first Cylons in the Twelve Colonies were created by Daniel Graystone, a brilliant Caprican computer scientist .

Spoiler follows, highlight to read.

Graystone's daughter Zoe died in a suicide bombing. After learning that his daughter uploaded her personality into an online avatar before her death, Graystone decided to recreate Zoe as a robot, using technology stolen from his Tauron competitor, Tomas Vergis with the help of his wife Amanda and Joseph Adama, whose wife and daughter also died in the same explosion. Zoe-A, the holographic avatar, was downloaded into a robot brain, and thus became Zoe-R, the first cybernetic life-form node, or Cylon. Graystone also created a Cylon version of Tamara Adama, but her father was appalled by it, and decided to repent his actions.

Cylons were being constructed for the purpose of performing tasks no human desired to do. The Cylons were used in hazardous work, including wars between the colonies (before the Articles of Colonization, most or all colonies were sovereign states).

The Cylon War

Then the day came when the servants turned against their masters, and the Cylon War began. Humans responded by unifying their Colonies into a federal republic (with the Articles of Colonization) and building battlestars and military craft such as the one-manned Viper fighter (Miniseries) and the workhorse, multi-function craft called the Raptor to combat the Cylons (Razor Flashbacks). To date, no reason has been offered as to how or why the Cylons rebelled.

The war lasted twelve and a half years, with the Colonies, such as Tauron, close to a fall. However, an armistice was declared, resulting in the the Cylons' departure from the Colonial worlds in search of a home of their own.

The Transition

During the Cylon War, Cylons secretly made the first steps developing new models that were organic in nature and essentially identical to humans. The first step in their evolution from pure machines to organic beings was known as the "Hybrid." Other hybrids were later created to control baseships before the experiments were abandoned (Razor).

Before the Cylons were able to develop independent humanoid models, the Final Five arrived, offering both their assistance and resurrection technology in exchange for an end to the war against the colonies.

The first of these organic models was John, later known as Number One and Brother Cavil, patterned and named after Ellen's father. He assisted in the development of the other seven models. John, jealous over the attention Ellen paid to Daniel, the original Number Seven, contaminated the amniotic fluid in which the Number Seven copies were being grown and corrupted the model's genetic formula. The fate of Daniel prototype is unknown; Anders states simply that "Daniel died." Bitter over the limitations of his organic body and obsessed with vengeance against humanity, Cavil then killed the Final Five and boxed them, later resurrecting them with false memories and sending them to the twelve colonies. It can be inferred that he is responsible for programming the other six models to avoid thinking of the Final Five. (No Exit)

At some point, the Cylons revised the original Cylon robotic soldier, the sentient Cylon Centurion Model 0005, into a more agile and dangerous version. Unlike the original version, however, the new Centurion is mechanically inhibited from being fully self-aware, as the humanoid Cylons wanted to prevent these updated creations from forming an intra-Cylon uprising that mirrored their war with the humans (Exodus, Part I).

Returning Home

The Cylons, realizing that the Colonial forces would likely be too strong to engage in a direct military action, devised an elaborate plan to infiltrate the Colonial ships' operating system software, leaving a backdoor that could be exploited to disable any Colonial ship with its own programming. The plan was successful; the Colonial Fleet was destroyed, the Colonies themselves subjected to nuclear bombardment, and humanity was all but wiped out, except for a handful of survivors on the Colonies in outlying areas as well as caravan of space-dwelling humans that eventually escaped the Colonial star system.

The Cylons continued to pursue the remnants of the Colonies, believing that humans would always seek vengeance against them (Exodus, Part II).

The Faith and Reproduction

Main article: Cylon Religion

The Cylons followed the monotheistic religion of the Thirteenth Tribe, which was programmed into them by the Final Five (No Exit). Among other tenets, their faith calls for the Cylons to reproduce biologically as part of their mandate to replace humanity. However, as Cylon-Cylon reproduction was believed to be impossible, the Cylons occupied many of the devastated human worlds themselves, killing any surviving humans or pressing them into service in farms, centers that harvest genetic material and fertilize human women with Cylon DNA in the hopes of creating Cylon-human hybrid children. The farms, however, proved to be unsuccessful, so the Cylons attempted to emotionally bond a humanoid Cylon with a human, hoping that love would generate the desired result (The Farm).

The experiment was successful, but was soon out of the Cylons' control (for a time). The conception and birth of a Cylon-human hybrid, Hera Agathon, the child of a rebellious Number Eight and Karl Agathon, was born in the safety of the Colonial Fleet.

Mixed Successes

The Cylons almost succeeded in sending the Colonials into chaos when one agent nearly killed Commander William Adama (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II). For reasons unknown, the Cylons did not press their tactical advantage at Kobol, having underestimated Kobol's importance to the Colonials and their search for information on the path to Earth.

Cylon forces continued to track and attack the Colonials for months, keeping the few humanoid Cylons in the human fleet reinforced with a Resurrection Ship, used to resurrect the consciousnesses of killed agents, and gaining vital intelligence on the humans. Complicating the Cylons' plans, the Colonials gained sufficient water and fuel resources ("Water", "The Hand of God") and reunited with a second battlestar, Pegasus (which had conducted hit-and-run operations against Cylon installations and forces before discovering Galactica). The Cylons suffered a major setback when the Colonial battlestars combined for an offensive action that all but destroyed a Cylon fleet, including a Resurrection Ship. Without the Resurrection Ship, the Cylon battle tactic changed for a time to ambushes and traps ("Scar", "The Captain's Hand").

Benevolent Dictators

Two humanoid Cylons, both "Heroes of the Cylon" for their undercover work among the Colonials, but now influenced by their affection for humanity, convinced the Cylon majority that the genocide and occupation of the Colonies was wrong. With this change in philosophy, the Cylons abandoned the Colonies and went out in search of the Colonials.

The Colonials eluded the Cylons for over a year by finding a hidden habitable world and colonizing it. The planet was located inside a nebula that masked its presence, but a nuclear detonation within the Colonial fleet left a marker for the Cylons to follow. The Cylons eventually found New Caprica and, in overwhelming numbers, made themselves the "caretakers" of the trapped colonists, occupying the colony and forcing the humans to surrender under the threat of annihilation (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II).

For approximately 138 days, the Colonials were subject to Cylon rule. The Cylons ostensibly wanted to cooperate with the humans and even help them in some areas such as agriculture, medicine and power generation. However, they also severely restricted many freedoms, which leds to a human resistance movement that struck back violently. The Cylons in turn increased their oppression, arresting, torturing and killing hundreds of people. Eventually Galactica and Pegasus, which escaped New Caprica as the Cylon fleet arrived, managed to rescue the approximately 38,000 humans on New Caprica, but at great cost. This ended the experiment in human/Cylon relations, with some models are more determined than ever to deal with mankind once and for all (Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance through "Exodus, Part II")

The Race to Earth

Main article: Earth (RDM)

The Cylons abandoned New Caprica as well, retrieving the Cylon-hybrid baby from the planet by happenstance, and turned their attention to the same objective as the Colonials: finding Earth. Using the research of Gaius Baltar (who resided with the Cylon fleet at the time), the Cylons located the Lion's Head Nebula. A scouting basestar found an ancient beacon in the area, verifying that the Thirteenth Tribe did pass through the area on their way to Earth. But the Cylon scout ship met with disaster; the probe was contaminated with a pathogen that, while benign to humans, infects, deactivates or kills all Cylons, their ships, and their entities (Torn).

The Cylon fleet, which also includes a second Resurrection Ship, abandoned the scouts and cut off further communication, believing that the virus could replicate through their resurrection process. The Cylon scout ship eventually self-destructed and the Cylons managed to prevent the infection from spreading, although, unknown to the Cylons, the Colonials gained a critical biological warfare option (A Measure of Salvation).

The Number Three units exhibited strange behavior in attempting to ascertain the identities of the Final Five Cylon models, as they had seen in visions prior to a model being resurrected. At the algae planet, while the Cylon majority attempted to gain information on the location of Earth by way of the Eye of Jupiter, the Threes' ulterior motive to seek knowledge of the Final Five disturbed the collective status quo and command consensus of the Cylon majority to the point where all Three models were boxed for their aberrant behavior (Rapture)

The Final Five

Main article: Final Five

Unknown to either the Cylon or Colonial commanders and leaders, four Colonials exhibited strange behavior that ultimately brought them to come to the discovery that they are Cylons. Saul Tigh, Galen Tyrol, Samuel Anders and Tory Foster were the only crewmembers that could hear a strange melody that drew them to meet each other in a room on Galactica, shortly after the Fleet arrived at the Ionian nebula. The nature of these particular Cylon models, especially given Saul Tigh's existence as a decorated veteran of the Cylon War, was unclear and likely fundamentally different from other humanoid Cylons.

During the ensuing battle, one Raider identified Anders as a Cylon, which caused all Raiders to break off the battle and forced the Cylon fleet to retreat. Because of this, a Number One decided to lobotomize the Raiders to prevent such insubordination in the future. This decision was opposed by a faction, led by Natalie, who advocated the search for the Final Five and who desired to unbox Number Three to learn what she found at the Temple of Five. The disagreement between these factions led to a violent conflict between the humanoid models.

The Parent Trap

In the Re-imagined Series, an Oedipus theme exists between the creations (Cylons) turning on their creators (Colonials). The humanoid Cylons themselves draw the analogy of children murdering their parents:

"But parents have to die. It's the only way children come into their own."

• Number Six: "Humanity's children are returning home... today." (Miniseries)
• Number Five: "But parents have to die. It's the only way children come into their own." (Bastille Day)

Oedipus is the tragic character of Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex. Without realizing it until much later, Oedipus murdered his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, with whom he had several children, just as the Cylons had tried to do in the farms.

A Six once refers to Sharon Valerii as "little sister" and Cavils are sometimes called "brother" by each other and by Number Three, implying that all humanoid Cylons see each other as siblings.

Notes

• The retaliatory nature of sentient machines against humanity is a popular theme in science fiction.
• On September 20, 2007, Battlestar Galactica writer and producer Bradley Thompson revealed that Ron D. Moore's script for the pilot of Caprica has a character coin the term "Cylon," saying, "A Cybernetic Life-Form Node, a CYLON." As Caprica has yet to go into production, there is yet no "official" definition.

Re-imagined Series definition: in military parlance, directive to continue the attack; otherwise used to refer to journalists ^{(TRS: "Maelstrom")}