What's in a number?

[trinityvixen]

Something that bothered me into not sleeping longer when I tried to take a nap today, was the continuing puzzle of the numbers of the Cylons. It's impossible to entirely divine the Cylon command structure (if it's not a perfect democracy among the twelve models, which I can't rule out, given the round-table vote in the season three premiere), so I'm giving up on determining if 1 is the one in charge or if 12 is (or if, as seemed to be the case in the miniseries, 8 gives every other number amiss and is in charge).

More, I'm interested in the development of the models as it relates to their characters. We know the following numbers:
Three - D'Anna Biers (Lucy Lawless)
Five - Aaron Doral (the tour guide)
Six - Uh, Six? (Tricia Helfer)
Eight - Sharon Valerii (Grace Park)

There are three other outed models: Leboen Conroy (Callum Keith Rennie) Simon (the doctor from the farm), and Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell!), but none of them have numbers. With each creation, there has to be some assumption that the new model addresses not necessarily flaws in the old but lapses, omissions, and inadequacies. Assuming the Cylons didn't know to create twelve models originally, say they started with model one. By the time they got to three, they reached D'Anna. As she's appeared, she's the spy among the Cylons--the quality control model. It implies that one and two might be so faulty, so inhuman that they couldn't blend effectively (which, perversely, might benefit them, as the most obvious might be overlooked--God knows, they've never questioned Baltar being a Cylon, and he's the most jumpy, obvious candidate, too).

So, we have D'Anna as Three. What changes along the spectrum (assuming here and now that there is an adaptive spectrum, which, I know, there might not be), then, by the time we get to Five? Doral is even quieter than D'Anna. He blends better by standing out even less. It's sort of like the best disguise is hiding in plain sight--instead of being so overt people overlook, be so boring they do. Who's afraid of a tour guide, after all? He's not tall, not muscular, losing his hair, fairly average looking. So average, he's the second Cylon identified by the survivors and yet he still gets onto the Galactica to self-detonate.

If there is a gradual spectrum that gave Five from one away from Three, where the hell does Six come from? Six was the craziest, scariest Cylon ever (until Three was revealed to be the quality control model in "Downloaded"--I still get chills from Lucy Lawless smiling down her arms with a gun going "God loves me!" ::shudder::). Her belief in God was her schtick, emphasized 100X above and beyond the rest of the Cylon models (who are, Cavil excepted, actually faithful, just not freakish about it). If there's something they learned from Five, it was to swing 180 degrees in the other way, best I can figure.

Would've been nice if Leoben had been a bridge there. If I were to put a number on him, he'd be 5.5. He's (sorry, ivy03) not all that attractive, or out of the ordinary in any of his physical dimensions, but he's got half of Six's devotion and insanity about God, with a bit more actual madness (the guy is asylum-level nuts). It's possible that he would be Seven. I could see him being the come down off of Six's devotion, pushing him towards the more human but leaving him with the impression of God, which, well, insanity.

Boomer, Eight, is the most human, as far as we know her. Her model is problematic to the others, riddled with problems, the model most likely to break away (as two individuals in that line have). In that respect, I'd say Cavil is Nine. Maybe not Nine, but definitely higher than Eight. Due to his age, he's not been seeded too often (old people being weaker than younger folk, he might attract too much attention by just the well-meaning). But he's farther from the belief of God than any model we've met, so he's as far from Six, the proven closest to God, as possible (and you get farther from the end of twelve from six than from the start).

Which leaves Simon, the doctor, the least visited Cylon. He's an anomaly. I'd put him as Four, with some of Doral's anonymity but also still enough of Three's authority (he's a doctor for his alibi, which affords him some level of natural deference to him because people tend to believe doctors are more intelligent, more together than the average person). It's too hard to guess with him, but that's about what I'd say.

Just an exercise in curiosity, so by no means definite. Anyone who knows of an official listing, more thought-out fan-based one, do let me know.

Listening to the commentary on the miniseries (HOLY GODS, EVERYONE LOOKS SO MUCH YOUNGER IN THE MINISERIES), it's fun to learn what they thought would and wouldn't work, what would shock, etc. I love how unapologetically sexual they made it, and that they decided to not to it the typical way (i.e. innuendo only, cheesy costumes, love-slave sexual surrogates a la Kirk et al). Also, from reading some feminist blogs complaining about the portrayal of sex in fictional, televised/filmed works, it's fun to see them start the very first romantic encounters with two woman-dominant pairings: Six, who, duh is in charge always but who, specifically, in her liason with Baltar is the one to throw him on the bed and is on top to boot; and Sharon, who is shoving the Chief around and is his actual superior aboard Galactica. It's keen, and it gives me heart as the relationships portrayed are not made out to be shallow or the men involved unmanly just because the women involved push back just as hard. It almost forgives the artifact of a patriarchal society that married couples have, so far 100% of the time, adopted the man's last name (almost--if Gaius ever married six, we all know he'd be Mr. Gaius Six).

And I didn't remember Lee being a total dickweed to Tyrol when he came onboard. Dick.