Cylon (1978)

Cylons are a fictional, extinct race of reptiles and the cybernetic civilization that replaced them in the Battlestar Galactica science fiction in the original 1978/1980 series. They are at war with the Twelve Colonies of humanity.

Types

Cylon society is composed of six models, four of which have been well-documented. All Cylons, from the IL-series down, typically repeat the phrase "By Your Command" when responding to any order.

Imperious Leader

Imperious Leader is the leader of the Cylon Alliance and highest Cylon model. The Imperious Leader is an IL-Series Cylon with some extra augmentation, including a third brain and a body shell resembling the reptilian Cylons. One was killed at the Battle of Carillon and another was likely killed during the Battle of Gamoray. The voice of the Imperious Leader is almost always identical to that of Count Iblis (both were voiced by Patrick Macnee).

In the Galactica 1980 episode "Space Croppers", Dennis Haysbert was the new voice of the Imperious Leader. It is stated in the original novelization of the pilot episode that the Imperious Leader's third brain is specifically designed to emulate the human mind (solely for the purpose of anticipating human actions).

IL-series

An IL-series Cylon acts as a commander for the military and governor for civilians of the Alliance. They have two brains, a humanoid face and wear shimmering cloaks. They are almost feudal in nature and bicker among themselves frequently. IL-series Cylons have an effete human-sounding voice, unlike the flat mechanical tones of Centurions. They pride themselves on having two brains, as opposed to the single brains of Centurions. The IL-series also have two "eye" scanners as opposed to the one scanner of the Centurion model.

• Lucifer - Baltar's second in command. Presumably led pursuit of the Galactica after Baltar's capture. (Voiced by Jonathan Harris)
• Spectre - Commander on the planet Atilla in "The Young Lords". Enemy of Lucifer. (Voiced by Murray Matheson)
• Lucifer refers to the second Imperious Leader as being upgraded from being a IL-model like himself.

Command Centurion

Command Centurion: Centurions with gold armor. These are the lower commanders for individual military units. The most well known Cylon character of this model is Commander Vulpa in "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero". Their voices are slightly different (lower pitched) than regular Centurions.

In the novelization of the original series it is stated that there is an elite class of Command Centurians, roughly equivalent to feudal Counts, which act as executive officers to the Imperious Leader and are not subordinate to the IL-Series, and like the IL-series they were also said to have multiple brains. In the TV series these are actually seen on screen, though very rarely, and are distinguished from other Command Centurians by black bands on their gold armor. Vulpa was originally of this class but had been demoted and stationed on ice planet Arcta.

Centurion

Military androids with silver armor. Basic centurions make up the ground forces and pilots of the Alliance military. Centurions are armed with a powerful energy weapon, often referred to as a blaster rifle. They also have bayonets and swords for close combat and execution of prisoners. (Although Earth's Roman Centurions commanded a unit of eighty men, Cylon Centurions form the rank and file of the Cylon forces.) There are four Centurions that are given names in the series: Flight Leader Serpentine from "Saga of a Star World", Centuri from "The Night the Cylons Landed", Red Eye from "The Lost Warrior" and Cyrus from "The Return of Starbuck", although the last two were names given to crashed Cylons by humans.

The Cylon Centurions – the type most often depicted in the original Battlestar Galactica – were strikingly similar to the Imperial stormtroopers of Star Wars. The similarities were noted by many at the time and may have been one of the factors that prompted 20th Century Fox's lawsuit for copyright infringement against Universal Studios, the owners of Battlestar Galactica. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed as "groundless."

Civilian

There is also a unique Cylon with glittering robes, with what looks like a mask attached to its face. They are seen in the Imperious Leader's delegation to Gamoray in "The Living Legend". This is evidently some kind of civilian Cylon, as Gamoray is said to have a very large community of civilian Cylons, though how civilian Cylon society differs from its military is never explored.

Android

A Cylon android is featured in the Halloween episode of Galactica 1980. Named Andromus, this model has a superficial human appearance and a condescending attitude toward Centurions, and it is believed to be entirely mechanical beneath its artificial skin.

Spacecraft

Cylons employ several spacecraft models, such as

• Basestar: A large warship mounting two pulsars, many laser turrets, and carrying 350 Raiders.
• Cylon Raider: A heavy fighter with a crew of 3, two pilots and a commander. They are armed with dual-firing weapons.
• A-B Raider: An advanced variation of the Raider, crewed by three Centurions and two Cylon Androids. Seen in the Galactica 1980 episode "The Night the Cylons Landed" Part 1.

The reimagined series analogue of this is the Cylon Heavy Raider.

• Cylon Freighter: A cargo ship referenced in the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack
• Cylon Tanker: A ship for transporting the fuel "tylium"

Civilization

In the 1978 Galactica movie and series and the 1980 spin-off, the Cylons were created to serve the reptilian race of the Cylon Alliance.

Cylons are robots created by an extinct reptilian race, as related by Apollo in the premiere episode. As a reminder of their reptilian roots, some advanced Cylon models keep large lizards as pets, as glimpsed in several scenes. In the episode "War of the Gods", Count Baltar mentions that he recognizes Iblis's voice as that of the Cylon leader, and Iblis counters that if that was true it must have been "transcribed" over a thousand yahren (years) ago.

At the beginning of the series the Cylons are singularly devoted to the destruction of humanity. The war started when the Cylon empire sought to expand into the territory of the Hasaries, and the Human Colonies intervened on behalf of the conquered Hasaries. Due to those events, the Cylon empire now viewed the entire human race as a target.

Cylons are led by the Imperious Leader, an IL-Series Cylon elevated to a supreme leadership position over all Cylons. The Cylon Empire is also responsible for tributary powers under the aegis of the Cylon Alliance. The Ovions (an insectoid race enslaved by the Cylons and transported to the planet Carrilon for mining purposes) are the only known member of the Cylon Alliance shown onscreen, other than the Cylons themselves. This may be due to the fact that the Cylons rarely maintain alliances for longer than is necessary for efficiency; they regularly turn on and exterminate their living allies when it suits them.

Cylon society is almost exclusively military. Until the discovery of Gamoray, which the Colonial fleet had targeted for its rich fuel reserves, no civilian Cylon outpost had ever been seen by anyone.

Official spin-offs/related works

Novels

• In the novelization of the original series it is stated that there is an elite class of Command Centurions which act as executive officers to the Imperious Leader and are not subordinate to the IL-Series. In the TV series they are distinguished from other Command Centurions by black bands on their gold armor and are very rarely seen. Vulpa was originally of this class but had been demoted and stationed on ice planet Arcta.
• In the novelization of the original series it is stated that there is a class lower than the typical Centurion, that of the Cylon Drone. Though appearing identical to Centurions, Drones are not capable of sophisticated independent thought beyond following simple instructions to perform menial tasks. These are observed on the episode "The Living Legend" of the original series. Centurions can be relegated to Drone status for being rebellious, in which case they are essentially lobotomized.

Multi-brain status and built-in lie detectors

The Berklee book series also explored two other aspects of Cylon design. The first is the development of multiple brain status. This allows Cylons additional thinking and deductive abilities. The second is an unexplained talent for knowing when a human is lying, which appears in the episode The Lost Warrior.

Presented in The Gun on Ice Planet Zero book, multi-brain status is presumed to be the upgraded inclusion of an auxiliary brain unit, allowing for higher-level thinking abilities. The command centurion and garrison commander on planet Tairac, Vulpa, demonstrated this ability.

• Cylon centurions (the chrome soldiers) have single brain status.
• Command centurions have three brain status.
• Imperious leaders enjoy three or four brain status.
• IL-series Cylons, such as Lucifer and Specter have second brain status.

Comic books

According to the Maximum Press comic of Battlestar Galactica, just prior to the start of The Thousand Yahren War, the Cylon imperious leader made a deal with the mysterious and demonic Count Iblis (meaning "Satan" in the Arabic language) to betray his entire race in exchange for power that would allow him to "become like Count Iblis." Count Iblis lied about the process of "empowerment" and changed the imperious leader into a cybernetic entity, more machine than man. Enraged, the imperious leader swore revenge and became more and more driven by conquest and warfare.

In the Maximum Press comic, the Cylons were originally led by a ruthless, conquest and expansionism-driven emperor named Sobekkta, one of the original living Cylons, who were a race of intelligent reptiles.

Video games

The Cylons also appear in the official computer game adaptation, which is a prequel to both the original and re-imagined series.

Popular culture

• In the source code of Mozilla (and its Netscape predecessor), the indeterminate progress bar that slides back and forth — rather than rolling or filling up from left to right — is referred to as the "Cylon".
• A Cylon appears in the Futurama episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He’s part of the musical duo Cylon and Garfunkel, a parody of Simon and Garfunkel.
• The classic Cylons have also appeared on The Simpsons on several occasions, the most notable in Mayored to the Mob during a sci-fi convention. There's a quick gag in a boxing arena where three Centurions square off against R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars. ("See the mighty robots from Battlestar Galactica fight the gay robots from Star Wars!") They easily pin C-3PO to the floor, and R2 refuses to help.
• In the FOX Animated Series Family Guy, the host of 'KISS Forum' also hosts 'Battlestar Galactica Forum' on Quahog's public access channel. He introduces the forum by putting a classic Centurion mask on and saying "Welcome to Battlestar Galactica Forum" in traditional Cylon computerized-monotone.
• Several Cylons appear briefly in the South Park epic Imaginationland, as one of the evil fictional creations set free when the barrier between the "good" and "evil" halves of the imagination is destroyed by terrorists.
• In the opening credits of certain seasons of The A-Team, Dirk Benedict watches a Cylon walk past (while at the Universal Studios tour), raises a finger and opens his mouth as if to say something, then gives up. Dirk Benedict played the character Starbuck in the original Battlestar Galactica series. This scene is later recreated on the animated show Family Guy.
• In a third season episode of Knight Rider, "Halloween Knight", the episode villain is shown briefly in a Cylon mask. KITT's red LED forward scanner throughout the series, of course, is an homage to the Cylon's red eye, which oscillates back and forth while active while using the same sound effect. Both series were created by Glen Larson.
• Cylons were the focus of a short skit on the Adult Swim program Robot Chicken in which it is said that the original cylon actors had so many problems walking around in their suits that they were constantly falling down.
• A Cylon makes a brief appearance, firing off his blaster in the 'Alien Attack' section of the ride, in the final firefight scene of Beverly Hills Cop 3.
• A Cylon lookalike robot is featured in the official music video for Bloc Party's single, Flux.
• In The Replacements episode "(episode needed)", Riley finds a head of a Cylon in a cabinet onboard the spaceship.
• The Re-imagined series hints that the original Cylon models were replicas of the ones from the original series.
• In the video game Persona 3 one of the items the player can buy is a drink called "Cylon Tea."
• The album Programmed to Love by British electronica band Bent features the song "Cylons in Love".

References

External links

• "Cylons" at Battlestar Wiki