Word Salad: The History of the Cylon Race Comes Tumbling Out on "Battlestar Galactica"

"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre

It's hardly a coincidence that this week's episode of Battlestar Galactica ("No Exit"), written by Ryan Mottesheard, shares its title with one of Sartre's best known works, a play about three people trapped in a room with no escape, forced to argue for all eternity. Yes, hell is other people and Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon) discovers that when she's imprisoned aboard a base ship with only John Cavil and Boomer as her companions and captors.

It's in that room that Ellen regains her memories of her true life, one lived on Earth and as the creator of the so-called Cylon skinjobs, eight humanoid models that were gifted (or is it cursed?) with bodies comprised of flesh instead of metal and programmed with the Centurions' belief in one true God.

Wait? Eight humanoid models? Yep, you read that correctly. So strap on your Viper gear and let's discuss the history of the Cylon race, Daniel, the Colony, and Kara Thrace.

Confused about the secret history of the "Old Cylon" race? Let's see if we can work it all out from what Battlestar Galactica has told us thus far.

The Thirteenth Tribe. Just as there seemed to be a link between the fact that the humans have twelve colonies and the Cylons had twelve models, so too is there some analogy to be gained by the fact that the Cylons now seem to number thirteen... and the Final Five are the last descendants of the fabled Thirteenth Tribe of humanity, an offshoot that fled Kobol with the humans but rather than settle on one of twelve planets flew across the stars to Earth and settled on the Blue Planet. Along the way, they left a route marker should the humans come looking for them eventually, a Temple of Hope that would point the way to Earth.

Were these original Cylons the "gods" that the humans worshiped and lived with on Kobol? Or were they an ancient race of artificially intelligent beings? Tory believes that the Thirteenth Tribe was created by the humans on Kobol, so the latter seems plausible. These beings couldn't reproduce sexually but they could live on via an ancient resurrection technology, a technology that was later rediscovered by Ellen and her fellow scientific researchers on Earth. Such technology fell out of favor because, over the course of thousands of years, the Thirteenth Tribe was able to reproduce biologically.

In their hubris, like the humans, the Thirteen Tribe also created a slave race of Centurions... who rose up to overthrow their fleshy oppressors and unleashed a nuclear holocaust on Earth. Everyone was killed... but Ellen and her colleagues had foreseen this eventuality and had used the resurrection technology to download their memories aboard a ship that was orbiting the planet, as Anders told us.

The Thirteenth Tribe, however, lacked FTL jump drives and therefore had to cross the universe in order to reach the Twelve Colonies, a journey of roughly 2000 years. During that journey, time slowed down for the Final Five so that when they arrived at the Colonies, they weren't much older than when they had left Earth.

Unfortunately, they arrived at the Colonies just as the First Cylon War was raging. The Final Five intervened and ended the war, recalling the Centurions and restoring peace to the Colonies in order to buy the humans more time. They didn't want to see a repeat of what had happened to them on Earth.

And that's where things get really interesting...

Cavil. Ellen and the others attempt to appeal to the Centurions' belief in a loving, forgiving single God and--in order to make them understand and sympathize with the humans--create eight humanoid models that bridge the gap between man and machine. The first model created? John Cavil, who turns out to be a sadistically twisted creation who loathes his corporeal body.

And like Cain slew Abel, he brutally murders one of his fellow children, Daniel, a Model Seven who was artistic and sensitive (more on him in a bit); poisoning the amniotic fluid containing his entire line and corrupting Daniel's programming, John causes his entire line to be irreversibly damaged. He then turns on his creators, shoves them in a compartment, cuts off the oxygen and suffocates them. When they download, he erases their memories and implants false ones, eventually setting them up over time among the humans in the Colonies. An experiment and a punishment wrapped in one.

Cavil also apparently warps the other humanoid models' beliefs, erasing their own memories of the Final Five and making any discussion about this mythical figures strictly verboten. Hell, he boxes off D'Anna's entire line when she glimpses their faces in the Temple of Hope during the supernova, lest the others discover his malevolent ways. And he puts into motion the very thing that the Final Five worked so hard to prevent: another nuclear holocaust.

Yes, Ellen and the others gave their children free will, something the Centurions strove for. But in doing so, they allowed their children the very means to express their true selves. And in Cavil's case, it's a wickedness that will perhaps destroy three races in the end. Then again, it's the very thing that allows Boomer to rescue Ellen, against her better judgment.

The Final Five attempted to create something that was the best of two very different races: man and machine. In creating the humanoid Cylon models, the Final Five hoped to find a means to ensure the viability of both their races. There's a reason why these models can't reproduce amongst themselves: because they are meant to biologically intermingle with the humans (something that Boomer can't quite stomach)... much like, in order to survive, the human-made Galactica will have to fuse itself with Cylon technology.

Daniel. So there's the matter of Daniel then. It's driven me crazy for several seasons now that the Sharons were Model Eight, but I could only name seven models. Not a coincidence, fellow BSG fans. And now we know that there was a Model Seven, an artistically-tempered model named Daniel. But while we're told that Cavil destroyed all of Daniel's line, I can't shake the feeling that there could be another one out there somewhere, either by accident... or by design. Could Ellen have predicted Cavil's innate darkness and protected one Daniel? Perhaps by sending him to "The Colony," a seemingly secret location that also contains ancient resurrection technology? Hmmm...

The Biblical Daniel had the ability to interpret dreams. Coincidence then that Cavil, when he was new and fresh, suffered from nightmares involving "dog-faced boys chasing [him] through the yellow mists"? Cavil, for his part, deleted the sub-routine that the Final Five programmed him with that allowed him to sleep. After all, you can't dream if you don't sleep.

Kara. We've been wondering for some time now just what Kara Thrace really is. After all, she saw her own corpse on Earth, in the charred remains of her original Viper, yet she has all of her memories. The logical answer: someone used organic memory transfer technology to bring Kara back to life after her death. She's not a missing member of the Final Five or one in a line of Cylon humanoid models. She is Kara Thrace... in a new body. After all, we know that the Cylons have Kara's genetic material, which they harvested from her on Caprica. What's troubling me is that it was Simon who culled her ovaries... and he still seems extremely loyal to Cavil's cause. So is Kara's return to center stage orchestrated by Cavil himself? Was he aware of the hybrid's prophecy that Kara is the "harbinger of death"?

Or is someone else pulling the strings? After all, while we know that Kara's mother was human, we still don't know who her father was. And Kara, as we know, has an artistic streak, an obsessive painter within her who repeatedly painted the Eye of Jupiter from a young age. Someone downloaded her memories into a new body, created a fake Viper from scratch, and restored her to the fleet. But who?

In Season Three's "Maelstrom," where Starbuck seemingly blows up, Kara is granted a vision of her mother before her death, where Kara angrily walked out on her... but this time is offered a chance to change the past by "Leoben," and instead holds her mother's hand as she dies. The message her mother wanted to impart to her was that Kara shouldn't fear death. But the "Leoben" who arranges this epiphany isn't actually Leoben. So who is he? We haven't yet learned the answer to that dangling plot thread.

Could it be that Kara's father is Daniel himself? And that "Leoben" is actually a Daniel who escaped Cavil's purge in order to save his own daughter? Did Daniel reproduce with a human... and later save her by using Cylon technology?

And if that's the case then where was Kara between her death and her return to the fleet in "Crossroads, Part Two"?

The Colony. My theory: Kara's memories were downloaded to Ellen's Colony, as it is known to house that very same memory transfer technology. While there, someone (Daniel?) recreated Kara's Viper, kept her in a fugue state, and then planted her back among the fleet, so that she could help them find Earth and help the Final Five regain their missing memories. So will we get to see The Colony? Youbetcha. It's only a matter of time before Starbuck pulls the plug on poor brain-dead Sam Anders and I believe that he will resurrect... down on The Colony. Just who else will be down there remains to be seen but my guess right now is we'll see Daniel after all.

What did you think of this week's episode and its revelations about the Cylon race, the seventh model, and Cavil and Ellen's relationship? And what do you think about a possible Starbuck/Daniel connection? Discuss.

This week on Battlestar Galactica ("Deadlock"), the Final Five are reunited; Tyrol attempts to fix the cracks in Galactica's hull; Ellen Tigh is forced to make a decision that could have lasting repercussions for the Cylons and humans alike.