Transmission Recovered // About Cylons // Part One.

Robots, Sex, and How I Learned to Love the Cylon Nookie: Part One

A few years ago, when the Battlestar Galactica re-imagining craze was in full swing, it would have been quite impossible for me to care any less about the whole thing.  At the time, the only thing that tickled me a bit about it was the fact that everyone in the show said “frak” in place of curse words.

It sounded like something Tim Burton’s invaders from Mars Attacks! would say.

There I was, armed with almost no backstory, and all I kept hearing was how pretty much anyone could be a Cylon. Numerous were the occasions when an enthusiastic individual tried to talk to me about the show’s basic elements. Namely, “OMG! The Cylons look like people! And they have sex!”

They were all met with a pretty decisive “meh” on my end, despite the promise of gratuitous on-screen intercourse.

It wasn’t until Netflix began streaming the complete series that I started watching, somewhat halfheartedly. Needless to say, my hesitation didn’t last long. Before I knew it, I was watching multiple episodes at a time and screaming at my screen.

How does this happen, you ask? How does someone initially so uninterested become so immersed?

Well, first things first. If you’re not already familiar with the show, I bet you’re wondering what the frak I’m talking about. For this entry at least, I will focus on some basic stuff.  Namely…

1. “What the Frak is a Cylon?”

A Cylon, to put it simply, is a robot. But things are never simple, are they?

You see, we humans, as we are prone to do, went ahead and created machines that were much smarter than us and eventually became self-aware. The machines (as they tend to do) eventually decided that we were kind of douchey in general, and so they rebelled against us. We humans, in turn, didn’t take kindly to that, and so we had ourselves a big, nasty man vs machine war.

After some brief consideration (a truce of about 40 years – I guess they were all running on outdated firmware, or something), the Cylons further decided that it would be best if they just nuked our entire planet, and killed everyone.

Of course, they missed a few people. The show’s basic premise revolves around the remnants of humanity and the challenges they face to survive aboard a fleet of old spaceships. Believe it or not, the actual survival of the humans in space is actually the least interesting part of this show. The real stars of the show are actually the Cylons themselves.

For reasons I will explain momentarily, they decided that the next step in their species’ evolution was to forsake their presumably stronger, faster metal bodies in favor of humanoid ones. And no, I don’t mean in an Ahnold way, where if you shoot him in the face, you will likely reveal a metal “exoskeleton.”

I mean that everything about them appears human, including their insides. They have blood, guts, and, evidently, genuine emotions. In some cases, they even develop deep depressions and identity crises.

As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that it is nearly impossible to tell a Cylon apart from a human. In some instances, even the Cylons themselves don’t know they are Cylons. In fact, the only reliable way to know that your mom is not a Cylon is to shoot her in the face. For you see, if she is a Cylon, her entire consciousness, memories, and experiences will be downloaded into a fresh new body somewhere else, after which she will simply show up in a couple of hours, and chastise you for not cleaning up all that brain matter while she was gone.

Y’see, Cylons have a process called Resurrection, which can be repeated as many times as necessary. And since from the very beginning, we are told that there are only twelve Cylon models, you should probably assume that there are several other “Mom” model copies out there somewhere. (I hope you weren’t planning on staying out late tonight.

Oh, and if it turns out that your mom is, in fact, not a Cylon, well…sorry. But you should probably still clean up that mess of Mom’s brains you just splattered all over the floor.

Battlestar Galactica aired for four very long seasons. This does not count the two made-for-television movies, The Plan and Razor, or the spin-off series Caprica. I have therefore decided to split this entry into three, where I geek out about things you probably already know if you watched the show. There might be some spoilers if you haven’t.

I’m doing this because, for a time, this show literally took over my life, and this is my way of exorcising the thing. The good news is, some people think I’m pretty funny, so you’ll probably have fun reading this.

Next time on Robots, Sex, and How I Learned to Love the Cylon Nookie: Part 2

What is up with the nookie? Why do the Cylons think we’re so bad? Can’t they just chill? And why do they want human bodies, again?

All this and more, next time. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of Robots, Sex, and How I Learned to Love the Cylon Nookie.