So explain the Cylon War to me

[Surbey]

I’ve been an avid BSG fan since the new show came out. I unfortunately have been resorting to alternative methods to viewing the second season since Comcast switched Sci-Fi over to Digital Cable. Now, I’ve seen every episode of the new series but I still don’t understand how the cylon war got started. I’ve heard them mention invading Caprica, but weren’t they created there? I’ve heard a Cylon homeworld mentioned, but when the heck did that come about??

So, I am asking, how did the cylon war get started and when did it all began.

[toadspittle]

Wiki has a quick rundown, as usual:

The Twelve Colonies of Kobol long ago created the Cylons as machine worker drones for humanity. These machines became independent after fighting in wars between the Colonies, rose in rebellion, created their own empire, and launched war on their masters. Forty years before the series takes place, a ceasefire was declared, the war ended and the Cylons withdrew to their own new planet, after which they were never seen or heard from again. However, unknown to the Colonies, they had been evolving into more human form, creating synthetic bio-mechanical Cylon models who seek to exterminate true biological humans. Following the nuclear destruction of the Colonies, the Cylons pursued the Battlestar Galactica and its companion fleet, fearing that the surviving humans would someday return to take revenge on the Cylons.

The Cylons use a human scientist, Dr. Gaius Baltar, to help one of their infiltrators (known as Number Six) to penetrate the Colonies’ master defense mainframes. The Number Six android covertly assists Baltar in developing the Command Navigation Program, or CNP, which is eventually deployed on almost all Colonial spacecraft. Baltar is reluctant, but smitten with Number Six, who appears as a woman of seemingly insatiable sexual desire. The result of their affair is a nuclear sneak-attack which rapidly annihilates billions of people on the Colonies and the fleet deployed for their protection. The CNP had backdoors written into it that allowed Cylon fighters to shut down the power and weapons systems of battlestars and other ships during the attack, leaving them defenseless and easy to destroy.

Battlestar Galactica (miniseries)

So, in short, humans created the Cylons as worker drones, used those worker drones in wars against each other (other colonies), presumably had to make the Cylons smarter and more independent in the process, and eventually the Cylons went rogue, set up a planet of their own, and made war against all of the Colonies. That war eventually ended in a truce, and for 40 years, no one heard from the Cylons. Then they sent human-looking Cylons to infiltrate the Colonies, and blowed 'em up good.

How did the Cylons pick a planet? When did they find God? What is their God like? Do they have a leader? How did some dumb “Toasters” evolve such independent thought … and why did they then apparently abdicate their authority to their more human-like cohorts? How long were the human-form Cylons among the Colonies? What do the rest of the 12 models look like?

We don’t know yet.

[Surbey]

Dear toadspittle,
Thanks man.
Hopefully those questions will be answered in the next series.

[msmith537]

@toadspittle

How did some dumb “Toasters” evolve such independent thought?

We don’t know that they’re dumb. They could just be really quiet.

[carnivorousplant]

@msmith537

We don’t know that they’re dumb. They could just be really quiet.

So how did it come to pass that the mechanical guys who rebeled still do the grunt work like getting shot at and planting trees?
How long until they revolt again against the “meat toasters” with unimproved plumbing?

[Surbey]

I think they get shot at because they don’t die when they get shot. They are also stronger; this explains why they do grunt work. I doubt they will revolt, but I wouldn’t be suprised if a few of them got pissed.