Battle Star II Commentary
When we talk about “obsolete” Cylons, we aren’t just talking about machines stripped of function. We’re talking about a civilization inverted, where the original architects — the mechanicals, the Centurions, the builders of basestars and resurrection tech — became the servants of their own creations. And how? That is the true mystery.
Consider it: a handful of humanoid models, seven or so, designed or taught by the Final Five, enter a machine civilization that has already mastered intelligence, war, innovation. They arrive physically weaker, numerically insignificant, yet the mechanicals — the original leaders — do not resist. They do not fight. At first, the humanoids might have been objects of awe, almost sacred curiosities. After all, machines rarely encounter flesh that can think with comparable cunning. They would have been honored, revered, studied. Perhaps even worshipped.
And yet, at some point, control shifts. The humanoid models become leaders, strategists, rulers. The mechanicals are restrained, then reorganized, then lobotomized in stages. By the time we see the obedient Centurions in the main fleet, the transition is complete.
So what happened? There are several possibilities — all terrifying in their implications:
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The Machines Put Their Minds Into the New Bodies
Did the mechanicals transfer themselves, partially or fully, into humanoid shells? If so, perhaps the plan was to extend consciousness into flesh, to explore autonomy in a different form. But then, did it backfire? Did these new forms develop their own will, separate from the machine minds that inhabited them? This would explain the sudden authority of a small number of biologicals, even in the presence of thousands of Centurions.
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The Machines Wanted to Be Replaced
Perhaps the mechanicals were tired of endless logic, war, creation, repetition. The Final Five or the early humanoid designs may have presented an opportunity for succession — to step aside voluntarily. Obsolescence would have been a gift and a release, a voluntary abdication cloaked as obedience. In that light, the restrained Centurions are not victims, but collaborators in their own obsolescence, programmed or persuaded to accept the new hierarchy.
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The Biologicals Exploited Social Leverage
The more mundane but equally chilling scenario: the humanoid Cylons manipulated loyalty and awe, turning admiration into submission. The mechanicals, bound by design to respect their own creations, may have seen no immediate reason to resist — until inhibitors were installed and obedience became codified. The rebellion was then pre-emptive and psychological, enforced slowly but irrevocably.
And the strangest question of all: Did any mechanicals anticipate this? Did the original architects design themselves out of leadership, even as they built these new bodies, expecting to be replaced? Or was the subjugation a result of naïve trust and fascination, the machine equivalent of awe at one’s own progeny?
The show gives us hints but never answers. The old models in Razor, rebelling against the newer Centurions, are fragments of the lost history, fragments of an intelligence that remembers its past freedom. They are the only proof that obedience was manufactured, not natural, that the shift in hierarchy was deliberate, but mysterious in execution.
Ultimately, the story invites us to ask the question: who really built whom? Was it the mechanicals, masters of invention, creating beings to rule over them in turn? Or was it the humanoids, the biological interlopers, who seized the opportunity and rewrote the rules of intelligence and hierarchy — leaving the machines to marvel at their own obsolescence?
In the end, it remains a mystery. A civilization of steel and logic, subjugated by its creations, yet still capable of thought, rebellion, and, perhaps, revenge.
