Shooting A Fellow Cylon In The Head: A Slap in The Face?
As Audra mentions in her Cylon-on-Cylon Violence post below, it was a bit shocking to see Caprica Six get shot in the head — and it did sort of chafe a bit on No. 3’s noting of Caprica Six’s rock-to-her-head as the first Cylon-on-Cylon violence. Have the Cylon really gone from “do no harm (to each other)” to “shoot someone in the head for the hell of it” in just a year?
I think they might well have. What if (metaphorically) Cainslew Abel, but instead of Cain receiving the punishment of an eternal brown thumb and a mark of death, Abel simply came back the next day and beateth Cain about the head for making him recoverthe sheep that were (temporarily) lost while Abel waited to emerge from the goo? How long would it take for the moral wrongness of homicide to drop to level of face-slapping if mankind couldn’t die?
Of course, Caprica Six’s absence –temporary or not — did affect the outcome of the situation; Even if she does revive in a few hours, Aaron’s shot removed her ability to protect Gaius at the moment, creating a tactical (if not strategic) advantage. It can be awfully inconvenient to be dead.
And don’t forget that Cylons can indeed die, albeit under some pretty difficult-to-recreate situations.
Where am I going with all of this? Consider this: If the Cylon ever disagree with each other strongly enough to fight a civil war, it’d be one of the strangest wars ever seen. Imagine Cylons killing other Cylons not to permanently destroy them, but rather to “take them out of action” long enough to destroy a military target or other property. In such a war every bomb would be an inverse“neutron bomb” — a bomb that can destroy property without harming the sentient presence in and around the target.
While the idea of a Cylon civil war might be a bit too far out to land on the BSG writers’ dradus, I suspect the idea of a Cylon actually completely killing another Cylon isn’t. Considering how big a deal the rock-to-the-head became, how will they respond to a real Cylonicide?
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To the comments of Cylon on Cylon violence, I really did not like this aspect of it because it reminded too much of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; with the comments of “No Chain ling has every harmed another.†It also can even go back as far as the old Planet of the Ape movies. I remember there was a BIG moment in one of the last or even the last movie when they are chanting “Ape has killed Ape!†when the first Ape on Ape murder occurred.
There is also a possible continuity error or errors with this statement, because if you go back to the Mini Series there was a Number Six and two Centurions on the space station in the beginning when the Cylon Base Ship destroyed it. How is that NOT Cylon on Cylon Violence.
Also, was it not the sleeper Cylon Boomer that helped with nuking the Cylon Base Ship in the last episode of the first season? She, a Cylon committed nuclear violence upon a ship full of Cylons.
If you can find reasons for all of these to be counted as exceptions, or if you can theorize that perhaps the Cylon leadership kept these truths from the Cylon public then one can say that the shooting in the head of Caprica Six is not that surprising. For once the violence threshold was crossed; the stigma of doing it again is forever lost.
Those other incidents you mention were part of the plan. It’s not violence if you’re being killed and downloaded on purpose.