The other seven models of human-form Cylons don’t know what the Final Five look like – but they know they exist.
How can they not know what the Final Five look like? Who designed the Final Five? Who, in the Cylon social/command structure, has both the ability and the authority to do something like that in secret? Certainly not the old Centurion models. And there doesn’t seem to be an Imperious Leader as in the original series.
My thought was that the Final Five are probably more like the First Five, and they designed the 7 models we’re familiar with. They could have created the next seven, but never revealed themselves to them. This could explain D’Anna’s reverence toward them.
Who designed them? Count Iblis maybe? The Cylon homeworld may contain some sort of “Deep-Thought-like” Super AI computer that designed everything from the 12 human models, to the base-ships and raiders.
Of course, all I’m doing is adding to the speculation.
For the Final Five to have been the first five, their numbering system would have to be very wonky – we’ve already seen Models Three and Five, after all.
All we really know is that the original Centurions were sentient enough to rebel, but that the current models don’t seem so at all. Also, the original Centurions may be “still around.”
Since the Cylons “evolved,” I’d assume that there were some intermediate improvements from original Centurion to Cylon skinjob, and at some point these missing link Cylons designed the twelve models.
I think the real question is… given that cylons have been sentient for only a few centuries, and given that all of those centuries have been in a high-tech society with plenty of recording equipment of various sorts… how can there be enormous religion-inducing mysteries at all?
Someone proramed them to develop a religion.
I may be wrong but my impression was that “The Cylon” as they themselves refer to it, is a vast interlocking system that forms a gestalt or meta-intelligence, of which individula Cylons are components.
True, but we’ve also seen an Eight (Boomer), so the Final Five can’t be contiguous.
Which would imply that their separation from the other models is not due to their order of manufacture.
Like the Borg Collective? Curiously, there has been no clear indication of that, yet – though I would not be surprised if it came out that when the Cylons speak of “God” that is just their name for the Cylon group-mind.
If anything, we have evidence that they’re acting as a group of independent collectives. When they put things to a vote, there is one spokesperson for each model. Now, I suppose it’s possible that it’s just a representative government sort of setup, but the writers at least leave open the door to the possibility that each member of a given model has the capability to link up in some collective fashion in order to express their will.
The models seem to be able to share memories amongst others of their model. When Helo first met Athena on Caprica, she knew details of what Boomer had known on Galactica. And when Athena returned to the fleet, she again gave some indication that she could remember events that it was Boomer who had experienced.
D’Anna on New Caprica seemed to have some recollection of things D’Anna in the fleet had experienced, although I think the New Caprica D’Anna was supposed to be the one from Caprica, not the one from the fleet.
So the Cylon model reps may not even have to confer with others of their model to reach a decision – they might all be the same individual, with only minor and recent differences in memory. Only if they’re separated from other Cylons for longer periods do they seem to develop into different persons: Gina became unlike any other Six, and Athena unlike any other Eight.
But there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of some über-collective regarded as the Cylon God. The Cylons inherited all the religions and beliefs of their Colonial parents, so they should be clear enough on the concepts to mean “God” when they’re referring to God.
Then why their monotheist heresy?
I think we need to face up to the fact that the writers had no idea what they were going to do with the cylon model issue, so they made an arbitrary number (12) that seemed big enough to string along for a while if the series had legs. Then they (again arbitrarily) started assigning numbers to some of the revealed models.
Later, when the “guest star is actually a cylon” formula started wearing thin, they decided to stop that and use the five remaning “unknowns” from their original number as a plot point. Thus we started getting all the baloney about the cylons not knowing who they are, etc.
There’s no real mystery to it, except what they have retconned into one. In a Season 2 episode, Adama asked Sharon if she would reveal to him the identities of other cylons in the fleet and she refused, implying that she was able to, but would not. At that point, the only unknown cylons now generally known were Cavill and D’Anna. It’s pretty clear in retrospect that the “final five” BS hadn’t been dreamed up by the writers at that point.
That said, the reveal of one of those final five is about the only thing I’m still even slightly curious to see in this show. Really, though, I just want to see what kind of plot gymnastics they’re going to try to pull off to make it somebody we already know.
I think that the Cylons could’ve easily arrived at monotheism in the same way that it was arrived at in the real world. But I think it’s more likely that they arrived at it via divine revelation – we’ve seen evidence that someone or something is capable of that: Roslyn’s visions, the prophecies about Kobol and such, the oracles’ visions, etc. Whether it’s the Cylon god or the Kobol gods (seems unlikely from what we know of them), it could’ve led the Cylons to find their monotheism.
Also, I don’t think that there being twelve Cylon models was “arbitrary” – it is a clear parallel to the Twelve Colonies and the twelve gods of Kobol. The numbers were clearly arbitrary, since Number Six was named in homage to, well, Number Six of “the Prisoner.”
