I’m a relative newbie to Battlestar: Galactica. I had seen a few random episodes over the last few years, and was interested but never knew quite who was who or what the hell was going on. Now though, I have a room-mate now who has most of the series on DVD, and I’ve been working my way through the entire series. I’ve seen the original mini-series, and have almost seen the entire first season. Lately though, an idea about the Cylons has popped into my brain and I’m wondering if it’s a deliberate subtext on the part of the writers, or I’m reading too much into it.
I was thinking about how often the number 12 figures into the series - 12 colonies, 12 ‘Lords of Kobol’, 12 types of humanoid cylons, Roslin has a vision of 12 snakes, etc. Also, at least one episode refers to some of the 12 lords of Kobol by name as Artemis and Apollo, indicating that they are equivalent to the 12 great Olympian gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, Demeter & Dionysus).
That got me to thinking - are the 12 types of Cylons meant to be archetypes of the 12 Olympian gods? That would fit well with the Cylons attitude that they are more highly evolved creatures than their human ‘parents.’ It would also be fitting given that the Olympian Gods assumed power by defeating/destroying the Titans, who preceeded them, like the Cylons did to the humans.
Since I’m the type of person that once I get an idea, I have to run with it as far as I can go, I even found specific parrallels between the various Cylons and the classical dieties:
Number Six - She would very obviously be patterned on Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love, eroticism and sexuality.
Leobon - The god Hermes/Mercury was the border guardian who ushered deceased mortals from the living world to the underworld. (The ‘Galacticans’ first encounter Leobon at the Ragnar station, which seems to be the boundaries between the 12 colonies system and deep space.) Hermes is a trickster god (Adama warns Starbuck that he will ‘mix the truth with lies in order to trick you.’) And Hermes was also the messenger god who among other things imparted divine messages to humans, sometimes via dreams (Roslin has dream visions about Leobon, he also relates messages about Kobol to Starbuck and tells Roslin that Adama may be a Cylon.)
Sharon ‘Boomer’ - May be Artemis, the huntress goddes (Boomer’s job seems to be a deep-space tracker/scout, sort of like hunting). Also, Artemis was more than any other diety considered to have a dual nature, she was one & the same with several other goddesses, particularly Hecate the goddess of dark magic & treachery. (Boomer is a sleeper agent, there is the Galactica Boomer & the Caprica Boomer.) The major fly in the ointment to this theory is that Artemis is supposed to be a ‘virgin’ huntress, and neither Boomer is a virgin.
Doral - He I’m not sure about. I want to say he’s Zeus, because he just seems (to me at least) like the ringleader, and the nominal ‘head’ Cylon. But I don’t know…
Adama - At the point in the series I’m up to, Roslin suspects him of being a Cylon. I don’t know if this was resolved (this didn’t seem to be a plot point in the third season episodes I’d seen), but assuming he is a Cylon, he’s either Ares (god of war), or Hades, god of the underworld - because even more than Roslin, Adama is the leader & chief of the humans who are lost in a figurative limbo.
Ellen Tighe - Suspected of being a Cylon in the only episode I’ve seen with her. She’d be Dionysus, the god of drunken wanton behavior. As with Boomer, it’s not a perfect parrallel, since Dionysus was male though.
That’s all the definitve and suspected Cylons that have appeared in as much of the series as I’ve seen so far. Whaddaya think? Given that this series has a lot of fairly obvious mythological references (the 12 colonies were obviously named after the signs of the Zodiac, space station ‘Ragnar’ being a reference to the norse ‘Ragnarok’ - the end of the world), I’d bet money that the writers did this intentionally. But then, there’s about two seasons worth of episodes I’ve yet to catch up on, and I could turn out to be way off base.