Galen Tyrol

Galen Tyrol
[[Image:|200px|Galen Tyrol]]
Name
Age
Colony	Gemenon
Birth place	{{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name	Galen Tyrol
Birth Date	{{{birthdate}}}
Callsign	"Chief" (nickname)
Nickname	{{{nickname}}}
Introduced	[[{{{seen}}}]]
Death
Parents	An unnamed Oracle (mother) and a Priest (father).
Siblings
Children	One unborn child with Cally
Marital Status	Married to Cally
Family Tree	View
Role	Union Organizer, New Caprica; former Senior NCO, Deck Crew 5, Battlestar Galactica
Rank	Chief Petty Officer
Serial Number	{{{serial}}}
Portrayed by	Aaron Douglas
Galen Tyrol is a Cylon
Galen Tyrol is a Final Five Cylon
Galen Tyrol is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Galen Tyrol is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
		@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Galen Tyrol]]

Biography

Background

Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol is a much-admired NCO aboard the Galactica. He served aboard battlestars from the age of eighteen, including the battlestars Columbia, Atlantia, and Pegasus (Resistance). He has served under William Adama for a number of years, and has considerable respect for the Commander - a feeling that is reciprocated. Indeed, he admires Adama to such a degree that he has modelled his own style of leadership on that of Adama: firm, fair, and willing to go to the fullest degree in support of his crew.

However, when people under his responsibility are injured, threatened or killed, Tyrol becomes rather irrational, angry, and reckless in his actions, to the point of further endangering his people or his reputation with senior officers. Prime examples of his lack of emotional control includes the scenes before the ship venting after the nuke hit and cursing Tigh in front of Commander Adama for the vent and loss of 85 of his people (Miniseries), and saving a mortally-wounded crewmate while leaving himself and Cally highly vulnerable in "Scattered". Tyrol's tryst with Sharon Valerii and a subsequent cover-up attempt in "Litmus" resulted in the jailing of Specialist Socinus, who was trying to protect Tyrol.

Originally leading Deck Crew 5, a team of 15 deckhands and specialists, since the Cylon Attack he has become the most senior and experienced NCO on the Galactica.

Cylon Attack

At the time of the Cylon Attack, as well as leading his deck crew, Tyrol is overseeing the refurbishment and restoration of Viper Mark II N7242C - the Viper originally flown by William Adama at the time of the Cylon War (Miniseries).

Following the attack, with the Galactica undermanned, Tyrol also performs the function of senior Damage Control officer (Miniseries / Water), a role that brings him into conflict with Colonel Tigh after the Galactica is struck by a Cylon nuclear warhead.

Relationship with Sharon Valerii

For several months prior to the Cylon attack, and in its aftermath, Tyrol has been engaged in an affair with Lieutenant (JG) Sharon Valerii, a Raptor pilot aboard the Galactica. Despite the fact the relationship breaks military protocol, senior officers on the ship turn a blind eye to it, while Tyrol's own crew treat it with fond amusement.

When the water supplies on the Galactica are sabotaged, Tyrol is placed in an awkward position: by her own admmission, Valerii knows explosives were missing from a small-arms locker - potentially making her a suspect - and he is the principal DC investigator into the cause of the explosions which wreck the water tanks. Torn between love and duty, the situation prompts him to hide evidence and allow a theory that the walls of the tanks simply collapsed from fatigue resulting from damage the Galactica received from a nuclear warhead in the Cylon attack (Water / Miniseries).

Following the sabotage attempt, Valerii is ordered to end her relationship with Tyrol (Bastille Day) as a part of a general tightening-up of security and discipline on ship, only to have Tyrol's deck crew help the two of them to continue to meet in greater secret (Litmus).

Tyrol's world is thrown further into turmoil when both he and Valerii become the prime suspects in an investigation into how a Cylon agent (a copy of Aaron Doral) managed to get aboard the Galactica, kill a guard, steal explosives and them blow himself up in a ship's corridor, almost killing Adama and Tigh (Litmus). When one of his own Specialists is thrown in the brig for dereliction of duty which may have enabled the Cylon to access a weapons locker and steal the explosives, Tyrol is shocked into re-thinking his relationship with Valerii, and ends it himself.

While they continue to encounter one another professionallly - their work means they can hardly avoid one another - Tyrol and Valerii now have an uneasy distance between each other, and Valerii's actions around a captured Cylon Raider have begun to disturb Tyrol.

Kobol

When the Fleet discovers the planet believed to be Kobol, Tyrol arranges for Socinus' release and later berates the specialist for lying to cover for him. Thereafter, Tyrol is part of the team assembled on the ill-fated recon Kobol on the Raptor 1, which then crashlands near the ruins of the Tomb of Athena. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I, Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II)

While Tyrol was the more experienced leader, his non-commissioned status left Lt. Crashdown in charge of the survivors. When Crashdown blamed Tarn for leaving a needed med kit behind -- Socinus was injured during the crash and a drug called serisone was needed to help him breathe -- Tyrol stepped in, recommending that he and Cally accompany Tarn. After successfully retrieving the kit from the Raptor crash site and heading back to the party, the trio was ambushed and Tarn was the only one killed. (Scattered) Eventually, he and Cally make it back to the party, only to find out that it is too late. With no other alternative, Tyrol euthanized Socinus with an overdose of morpha from both medkits. (Valley of Darkness)

Upon discovering that the Cylons are setting up an anti-aircraft missle battery, Crashdown plans a strike to take the unit (and its accompanying DRADIS dish) out of operation. While the others of his party, notably Baltar and Cally, attempt to voice their indignation of such a plan, Tyrol firmly reminds them that Crashdown is in charge. Despite Tyrol's own misgivings of how the plan is to be executed, they follow through to the point right before the attack.

When it became clear that there were five Cylons at the battery, Cally refused to act as a distraction. Tyrol attempted to diffuse the situation by trying to state that the DRADIS dish was undefended; all that needed to be done was to destroy that, and the turret could not automatically target any incoming SAR operation. Crashdown has a breakdown and irrationally threatens to kill Cally, prompting Baltar to kill Crashdown.

As the command officer, per se, Tyrol later destroyed the DRADIS dish as the Cylons pursued them towards it. Tyrol then made a stand against the Cylons, screaming and firing his pistol at them. The Cylons were all killed; a surprised Tyrol turned around and saw that a Raptor, preserved by Tyrol's destruction of the dish, had destroyed the Centurions. (Fragged).

After Kobol

Tyrol was arrested and interrogated by Colonel Tigh, due to his relationship with Commander Adama's would-be assassin. Tigh accused him of being part of the plot to kill Adama, throwing him in the same cell as Valerii. In order to extract information from Valerii, Baltar injected a drug that induced a systemic shutdown of Tyrol's organs. (This was during an alleged attempt to draw blood from Tyrol for Baltar's Cylon detector.) After extracting the number of Cylons in the Fleet from Valerii's subconscious, Tyrol was spared a painful death -- and was eventually proven to be a bona-fide human.

Tyrol was present when his own deckhand, Cally, killed Valerii, as Tyrol accompanied the security escort to Valerii's testing cell (Resistance). This act caused Tyrol to withdraw more from interaction with his own staff, many of which were already treating him coldly from his interaction with the now-confirmed Cylon copy of Valerii.

As with many on Galactica, the stress of working without relief in sight or with little hope began to take its toll on Tyrol. For him, the challenge of keeping the old Vipers running with very few spare parts and sometimes extensive damage became too much to manage. Under pressure from CAG Lee Adama to keep his Vipers flying, and mostly because he had little else to do, he scribbled out a design for a new fighter and began to assemble it from basic metals and parts (Flight of the Phoenix). Initially, his flight crews were skeptical that the Chief's project was anything but a pipe dream. But word soon spread as the fuselage formed and Tyrol's dream became reality. While Colonel Tigh was visibly against the project at first, Commander Adama noticed that the project, for whatever outcome it might yield, gave the crew something to strive for, something to hope for, and tacitly allowed off-duty crew to work on the project. Many, including Anastasia Dualla from the CIC, and Kara Thrace, lent a hand.

Tyrol's group was stuck when trying to place a skin on the new fighter, since spare parts were reserved for the Vipers. But Helo suggested carbon composite materials as an alternative to cover the ship. This solved the covering but added a significant new ability: Stealth. The carbon composites would make the new fighter practically invisible to DRADIS detection.

After the ship's Logic bomb crisis, the new fighter, named the Blackbird, was given a trial flight by Kara Thrace, with very good results. In a ceremony, President Roslin christened the fighter, and Tyrol revealed the nickname of the fighter in honor of the President: Laura.

Helo's Return

After the return of Karl Agathon and another version of Sharon Valerii, who happens to be pregnant with Agathon's child, the two attempt to reconcile their feelings for the biological creation. Helo and Tyrol eventually have a fistfight with lots of namecalling over what the Sharons were, but in reality, both were upset over the fact that the two Cylon copies were real people that they loved despite the reality of what they were (Flight of the Phoenix), leading them to what amounted to an uneasy truce.

Later on, after the appearance of Admiral Helena Cain and the advanced Mercury-class Pegasus, he and Agathon stop Lt. Alistair Thorne from raping Sharon and Tyrol accidentally kills Thorne in the process. Tyrol and Agathon are summarily arrested and transfered to Pegasus for court martial, against Commander Adama's objections. However, Admiral Cain's "court martial" is over before Adama even knew it began, and she sentenced both to be executed for murder and treason. This prompted Adama to launch Vipers and a Raptor loaded with a marine strike team to recover them both (Pegasus).

Helo and Tyrol receive a stay of execution through the efforts of Laura Roslin while the two battlestar commanders prepare to destroy the Resurrection Ship and its Cylon attack fleet that has followed Galactica. Tyrol admits to his difficulty with dealing with the existence of the second Sharon, and tells Helo that he's got to "let it go", an idea that Helo supports, both understanding each other's take on the situation.

The two prisoners are seen receiving two sets of visitors, one welcome, one not. First, Lieutenant Adama visits them to tell them how close Galactica came to a shooting war with Pegasus (Resurrection Ship, Part I), asking the two, "Just how many kinds of stupid are you?" A day or so later, Specialists Vireem and Gage bind and beat the two prisoners in retaliation for the death of Lieutenant Thorne. Executive officer Jack Fisk comes to break up the beating, but refuses the prisoners' thanks as he was fond of Thorne himself.

After the escaped Cylon agent Gina escapes and shoots Admiral Cain, killing her, Tyrol and Helo are released and return to Galactica. Both Tyrol and Helo visit Sharon Valerii at her specialized cell. She happily greets Helo, but completely ignores Tyrol. He gets the hint and soon leaves the room, still unable to recover from the memory of the Sharon he knew as "Boomer."

Depression and Suicidal Yearnings

Tyrol also begins to experience a recurring nightmare in which he jumps from the upper portion of the flight deck to his death. Cally finds him asleep but twitching on the Galactica deck, but when she attempts to wake him, he attacks her in a frenzied rage, beating her savagely.

Deeply distressed by what he had done, Tyrol requested counselling with a priest, and was assigned Brother Cavil. After some time with Tyrol, Cavil identifies the source of Tyrol's anxiety as arising from fear that he is a Cylon sleeper agent, much like Sharon Valerii was. Tyrol points out that Sharon was totally convinced by her programming that she was human; Tyrol is haunted by the fear that it was impossible to truly know if you were a Cylon or not. Cavil assures him that he was not, quipping that he knew "because I'm a Cylon and I've never seen you at any of the meetings.".

Cavil tells him to get back to work, which is where his real family is, and argues that they, the deck crew, love him, "even Cally, especially Cally" (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I). Tyrol was subsequently responsible for exposing Cavil as a Cylon agent when he recognized him as one of the returnees from the rescue mission to Caprica. Upon realizing this, Tyrol tackled Cavil, called for security, and stated 'Code Blue.'

Tyrol as Union President (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II)

Union President

A year later, Tyrol lived in New Caprica City and was the president of the Worker's Union, a vocal opponent of President Baltar's administration. By this point, he appeared to have married Cally, who was pregnant 380 days after settling on the planet. Tyrol and Cally witnessed the arrival of the Cylons on the planet, and went to Kara Thrace for guidance. She tells him to "fight them until we can't." (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II)

Note

• Galen is the name of a famed Greek doctor, who was first to argue that the mind was in the brain not the heart. This may be construed as irony, given Tyrol's part in the ongoing story.
• Tyrol's first name, Galen, was first revealed in Ron D. Moore's Podcast during Season 1, but it was not mentioned on screen until the Season 2 episode "Resistance".
• Tyrol (or Tirol) is the name of a region divided between western Austria and northern Italy.
• Ron D. Moore stated in an interview with Now Playing Magazine on 16 Sept, 2005 that Chief Tyrol is a Gemenon. This is in keeping with previously established facts about him: Gemenons are very religious, and Tyrol's father was a priest and his mother was an oracle.
• Ron Moore explains in the DVD commentary for the Miniseries that Chief Tyrol was originally supposed to be a fairly small role, and in the first script of the Miniseries he only had about 15 lines. However, Aaron Douglas was so good at ad libbing new lines for scenes as production moved foward that Moore kept writing him into a bigger character. Going into season 1, Tyrol would originally have been defined by his relationship to Boomer, with suspicion that she might be a Cylon only coming out towards the end of the season. However, instead of this Boomer and Tyrol's relationship became strained and ended early in season 1, and Tyrol was expanded as a character not simply defined by Boomer.