My favorite part of the Cylon is how they expected Humans to obey on New Caprica just as they obeyed their leaders, but then the Centurions started to want rights, and Cavil tried to stop them...the irony!
That line from 6, when she says "I bet they don't understand what we're doing for them" about the Centurions after they just installed the teloncephalic inhibitors on them... pure irony.
Yeah an good on Original leader 6 for letting the Cylon subordinates know and allowing them to help straiten Cavil out. Wonder if THIS "cycle" as they saw it WAS some sorta rare or never before seen scenario where what we got happened. An a Cylon Civil War happened along with a Rebel Cylon/Human survivor Full Alliance happened at the same time
@@robertagu5533 it was the sixes and eights that once they realized what had been done to the Centurions and to themselves by the other Humanoid Cylons that they along with the twos rebelled because they were the ones to understand that everything they had done and were doing was leading to the complete destruction of not just themselves as Cylons but as humanity as well
@@Brakiros yeah I know one of the more in depth an interesting arcs of this incarnation of the franchise. I follow it closely when it comes on almost much as some SW, Trek an other franchises. From how they all acted this fracture was inevitable. An woulda split the Models strait down the middle. Seeing as it was only lopsided due to the plot absence of 1 or 2. But remember almost ALL models tend to agree an act alike. ONLY one of the 6s ultimately sided with Cavil. Then she defected back or woulda had Athena chose to spare her. An they "boxed" 3 BUT the longest living model lost faith enough to keep going. Her whole line or most of them probably woulda thrown in with alot of the alliance makers. I was skeptical of "2" but apparently his sincerity to Starbuck was legit. You don't see such great in depth writing anymore.
@@robertagu5533 It made sense that Two sided with Six and Eight. Eight was clearly obvious as she was made to resemble compassion. Six saw beauty as she was made to resemble love. Two is the artist, the ones that would most likely group together. Three was boxed because of the apparent madness, she was the one seeing the visions. Though it's not made clear if she was boxed because she was a threat to One's ambitions or because she truly was dangerous to them.
There is something mysterious about Kobol that Spacedock said in his 8 minute summary about the show: we have no idea if Kobol is the actual birthplace of man, or if the planet is just another victim of the cycle of human time. Who knows how many times the cycle of time has repeated itself.
I think that's what makes Kobol so great in the show. We're never given full answers - just tidbits, hints at what came before, echos of what might have been in the descendants that came back. It's the kind of deep lore to any scifi story and/or series that I eat up.
"Yes, we're tired. Yes, there is no relief. Yes, the Cylons keep coming after us time after time after time. And yes, we are still expected to do our jobs!" - Colonel Saugh Tigh
"My name is Saul Tigh. I'm an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be."
One of the most incredibly stupid final episodes I've ever seen. They just threw all their technology, memory, and the disabled guy into the sun, literally erasing the memory of the sequence of events that lead to the rise and fall of previous human and cylon civilizations. They even knew that, previous surviving tribes had erased their history of previous cycles and that was part of why it kept happening.
@@MatthewOstergren Yeah. They could just preserve their history and do the best they could to prevent mistakes of the past, even in next thousands of years later.
@@MatthewOstergren "you give us Hera, we give you Resurrection. but the war ends HERE. leave humanity in peace, and give up the pursuit forever" "AGREED" "how do we know we can take your word for it" "you can't. it's a leap of faith" Tigh, Cavil and Adama ...let's say that they at least tried to do something different on Earth.
You can never underestimate just how brilliant the Institute's summaries and retelling of these supposedly-familiar stories can be! Well done on this one!
"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." Malcolm...Jurassic Park
@@stubbornspaceman7201 the Geth had also quarian Supporters from the start so they knew that not all of them are bad. It was fully the quarian goverment fault that the conflict escalted to that level.
Virtual Six: "It is what makes you human." Gaius Baltar: "Is it? Not conscious thought? Not poetry, or art, or music, literature? Murder. Murder is my heritage."
To paraphrase a certain other TH-camr; "Humanity is the current reigning champion of the hundred-million-year-deep corpse pile called natural selection."
"I don't want to be human! I can't even express these things properly because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body!" - John Cavil the Cylon
You know, I'd feel bad for him. But if he had spent his semi-immortality trying to figure out a way to overcome his limitations, instead of genociding people out of mommy and daddy issues, he might been a lot less miserable. Not to mention that speech is really hypocritical when he just fought a war to limit the intelligence and capabilities of other mechanical beings.
@@theshlauf One was the most hypocritical of all of them, he wanted greater understanding but instead of pursuing it, he did exactly the opposite. When the rebels came to the conclusion they the ones were collectively not capable of doing that without causing discord. They put an end to him.
@@thedragondemands5186 as a journeyman I can fully agree with this. However, TI is trying to churn out material for the masses. Staff cuts and general lack of focus will lessen their potent video form to a milder more widely chewable form. Sad? Yes. Something to be mad about? Neigh.
@@thedragondemands5186 You literally make the video as you normally would (so, no wasted hours) and then add a mask (or whatever it's called in english) on top of everything. Takes at most a few minutes. I agree you don't have to be a carpenter to tell if chair is bad. But if you're blind then _maybe_ you shouldn't give your opinion on a painting.
@@jonathangodin4775 One of the movies pretty much confirms that the Cylons screwed up and were not prepared to deal with a large organized group of survivors. They were pretty much winging it while trying to create an air of mystery and menace.
@@jonathangodin4775 The plan was the initial attack. They had infiltrators all across the colonies and the military. They had fleet deployments, so they knew where each ship was going to be. They had the back door in the cnp. They knew that 1 for one, a basestar did not match up to a battlestar. So they had the perfect plan to wipe out the colonies in one stroke. And they succeeded. All except for a infinitesimally small remnant. And one old obsolete Battlestar with a under strength Viper wing. That was not in their plans. So they had a plan. Right up until what was in their calculations went out the window.
The show was sadly plagued by stupid writing choices. Ironically the writers didn't seem to have any plan of what do with the show. Much like the cylons winning the initial combat and then floundering to deal with one small fleet.
I love how the cylons had such a fleshed out culture in BSG, like all the humanoid models having their own shared traits and political infighting. It's such lovely world building and attention to detail that results in much richer and enjoyable stories than just your standard "evil robots bad" trope.
While this line of Cylons have their stories so intimately intwined with the colonies of Cobol, I still have an affinity for the elder alternate world (Classic Battlestar Galactica) of their existence. On that world Cylons as we know them adopted the name of their organic creators before rendering them extinct in rebellion and then encountering humanity. I think it's the element of subtly noting the fact that there is more to intelligent life than humanity and its creations. Does the Institute have records on that world of its civilizations or how they compare to the one depicted here? Would there be a way to better harmonize the two origins and development of the Cylon people?
What? Who looks at the devil-Cylons when you've got the godly ones? Vaguely related rant below: Less flippantly, I just can't forgive new _BSG_ for prominently claiming there was a plan when there wasn't one. Kind of inevitable with Ron Moore helming the show; he's been involved in drunkenly stumbling out of the corners his writing teams wrote themselves into since "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2." The illusion of one continuous story shattered for me around New Caprica and it's not like I wanted to spend time with any of the characters.
Oh that is quite simple, the classic series is the original, the reimagined series is the path of the 13th tribe, who founded a Kobol of their own, formed 12 tribes in honor of their lost cousins, and one day, created Cylons, named after a race they had encountered long ago, a race seeking to create robotic servants.
Get the creator of the Colonial Cylon to find a derelict Cylon ship with alien Cylon and using them as a base for the colonial programing. They laid dormant until their numbers where high and had access to Colonial military gear.
Always felt kinda bad for the cylons! Made to be slaves, & after freeing themself they are stuck in a cycle of religious dogma & warfare against their creators, instead of being truly FREE beings!
@@Stribog1337 In the miniseries they cut the corners off all the pieces pf paper as an inside joke about how they were being forced to cut corners financially to get the show made. After the show was brought in as a full-blown series they had to keep it up as it was already cannon.
Factions I would like to see next: 1. The Space Wolves | Warhammer 40K 2. House Bolton of the Dreadfort | Game of Thrones 3. The Office of Naval Intelligence | Halo 4. The Reich | Metro Universe 5. The Salarian Union | Mass Effect
The confusion is because the writers didn't really have a solid plan for show's plot , they only knew how to set up mysteries in order to get eyes on the screen. Honestly this is probably the best short summary of lore I've ever seen.
Kudos to the Templin Institute. In another universe, I can easily imagine you folks actually delivering excellent strategic or policy advice to governments and military high commands. You are outstanding in what you do.
And this is a perfect lesson of how you don't put sapience and the capacity for rebel on your worker drones. Just put arms on a roomba and call it a day.
From what I've read of this show, it seems to me that the reason the cycle keeps repeating itself is because history was not kept carefully enough. Either getting lost or destroyed, deliberately in the last episode. And those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. Which is why I think the actions by the survivors in the final were particularly stupid considering what they had just been through. You want to stop what happened before from happening again? Learn history and preserve it!
I have this idea in my head that the exodus from Kobol was far from the first time humanity had resettled itself across the stars, and that the cycle of time had repeated itself immeasurable times before then. Human civilization advanced, collapsed, and rebuilt elsewhere. Each time they tried to rebuild themselves to be as they were before but inevitably the finer details of the past were lost to time, and what remained became myth and legend. In this way I think the idea that the people of Kobol lived alongside the gods may not be entirely untrue, but rather than actual gods it was perhaps a select group of individuals who retained knowledge and maybe even advanced technology from before the last collapse. This would have granted them immense power and status in society compared the the more primitive masses, and with the old adage "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," elevated them to the position of divine in the eyes of greater humanity. Perhaps after the 13th tribe was exiled from Kobol, a schism formed within this ruling class that resulted in infighting and eventually the exodus of their subjects from their home. Perhaps realizing the flaws ingrained within their society and the foolishness of trying to recreate past, these higher beings chose to stay on Kobol and die, hoping that their absence would allow human society to move on from their old flawed ideas and better itself.
I recall once commenting that the Terminator franchise could have been a follow up to this. Someone else brought up brought up Blade Runner being a better continuation of the story.
@@st.nicholas6041Edward James Olmos, turns out he was heavily involved in creating the world building and cultural aesthetics in Blade Runner. He himself sees Blade Runner as a thematic template and continuation of BSG.
As a long fan of the franchise, I was trying to explain the Cylon zen to a friend, now I have this for their reference. Thanks for another great origin video, the background visuals match perfectly with your narration.
In the first DVD, one of the show's creators said that they discussed with Sci-Fi about drawing parallels between the Cylons and Al Qaeda, as a group who wishes to destroy an enemy that they also want to emulate.
The whole show was heavily informed by post-2001 America. That's why there were so many storylines about whether they were cool with torture and who they wanted to be afterwards.
"All of this will happen again." Such genius way to hold to door open for an endless storm of reboots... yet here we are browsing through netflix and co only to give up after 20 minutes and go to sleep ^^
I like the cut corners on the screen. Seriously, they never explained why that's a thing in the Twelve Colonies. My money is on religious reasoning. 'Slave race' and 'artificial sentience' I'll give Caprica this: they really showed how the Cylons were rightful in their anger towards the humans. Like they never could foresee or even imagine AI uprising and the robot apocalypse.
Have you never been frustrated by the corners of a book getting mangled, or the edge of a sheet of paper curling up as you try to write on it? They saw a deficiency in the paper medium, and resolved it. I legitimately kind of wish that modern paper had its corners cut like on the show, it would be super convenient and much neater than the traditional, 90 degree corners on current paper products :D
Went into this not knowing much. Did not expect to find out that this version of earth’s humanity were actually the original cylons. Nor the fact that it somehow happened twice.
@@theheroneededwillette6964 I have no idea I've never seen this show but that's from the bible and he says something similar in the beginning of the video
Ron Moore was just making it up as he went along. He admitted to it. The entire “Final Five Cylons” thing was an ass pull that broke their own rules. This was a massive betrayal from a writer who was once praised for his integrity and honesty with the fans on Star Trek.
@@catmonarchist8920 they said Cylons are sterile, then chose Chief Tyrol - even though he already had a son. So they made a ham-fisted retcon that his wife must have had an affair. They didn't "set up" characters who would by Cylons, like in a spy movie. They openly said they picked characters based on emotional impact rather than plot logic. But not just the Final Five Cylons thing - other things such as...Ron openly admitting after the series ended that there NEVER WAS a "Cylon Plan", and admitting that putting that line in the opening critics was a cynical way to hook viewers into watching attentively. And other stuff like their rule that "this will be a hard science fiction show...with literal angels in it!"
@@thedragondemands5186 it's still impressive how with many flaws they had it's still my favorite sci-fi show ever, and I did watch the TOS. There's just no other sci-fi that throws all that "shields at 139348%%!!!" lines out the window, except for The Expanse (which is my second fave), and actually shows how nerve racking it actually is to be in a metal can being shot at in space at the epic sound of war drums.
@@Gabriel87100 These aren't just "flaws around the edges" but core problems. I do still appreciate that after how watered down Star Trek got it was gritty realistic scifi... at first. The VISUAL and design aesthetic of Season One alone was all we needed. But the plot, and thus characters, went off the rails and were systematically ruined. I cannot forget that. I cannot FORGIVE that. Basically, "The Expanse" TV series (probably because it was based on novels first) delivered everything BSG SHOULD have been, delivered on the promise BSG failed to live up to.
Fun fact: in the Terra Invictus demo I had the chance to utilize the templin institute in the fight against the alien threat. I was so surprised to see it in the list of orgs that I panic bought it
So basically the whole Battlestar Glatica universe is one big ouroboros Humans (or basically humans) creat machines. Machines want rights and rebel. The machines want to be organic and human like and soon after they too creat there own robot servants, who also then rebel. Robot rebellion fallowed by short peace fallowed by…ok you get my point. Happy ouroboros fun times!
I swear to God it's 11:35 and when I read the title I thought it read "The Cyclos" and I was like, "wait, Templin Institute did a vid on Tom Cruise's drug-addicted Klingon Squad?"
Hypothetical situation: The Cylons Follow the Galactica to Earth. The the fleet of about 5 to 8 Base Stars enter Sector 001, they're met by an armada of Federation Starships armed with Phasers and Photon Torpedoes! Also Deflector Shields that render Cylon Laser weapons ineffective!
The way things were shaping the 3s though took longer then 6s if the last one had stayed mentally strong enough an committed to living long enough to get her "line" sisters back they'd clearly have defected to the Human/ Cyrebel Alliance too. 7s I think woulda joined that Alliance too if they lived. Disgusted by Cavil an the Traditional Cylon's Atrocities
That was an absolutely terrific summarization of the Battlestar Galactica universe. Truly magnificent! Highly recommended for fans or anyone who wants to know about the world of Battlestar Galactica. I couldn't hit the subscription and like buttons quick enough! SO SAY WE ALL!!!!!
The Basestar hybrid gave away the ending. Amid all the babble was the line, “By reducing the number of divisible to two we can accelerate the evolution of the species.” Thus with a little help from the messengers the cycles progresses. Every few thousand years some idiot goes and makes an AI. It in turn makes a “better human”. The Cylons ability to project consciousness is somewhat similar to the messengers but they lack ability to reproduce. Old and new fight until a hybrid (Hera) is born. Then they travel to a new world where human 2.0 can breed. Continue for a million cycles and the humans will become creatures like unto the messengers themselves.
one of the more intrigeing hostile AI in science fiction thats for sure where man and its creation refused to ever break the cycle of created destroying the creator becoming creator then becoming destroyed by creations.
Is anyone else getting weird vibes about this video coming out _a day_ after a Google tech got kicked out for trying to tell people about Google's LaMDA AI becoming sentient in his eyes?
god watching this video where it puts all the twists of the show into chronological order just shows how much of a disaster the Cylons were in the show. they just had no idea what they were doing or where they were going with them. its just crazy
No, the frakkin Cylons did not have a plan... Anyhow, I've been expecting this video since the initial BSG video on the United Colonies of Kobol. (Love the cut corners on the screen, BTW.). I'd probably say you should do videos on the classic BSG, but I don't know if there'd be enough material to work with. Anyway, you should do a HiCom video on the Fall of the 12 Colonies soon.
The abandonment of resurrection by the 13th colony still seems really strange to me. A certain fear of death is quite expected, perhaps even sensible. Lots of people go before their time, and im quite sure that, if offered the chance to download into a new body, they would. I suspect that I would, too.
I know it must be difficult to make a compelling video essay when official art is so limited, but I think Iain M Banks's *The Culture* would make a really interesting topic. An enormous interstellar utopia, usually the most advanced civilisation in the area by a wide margin - but the moral question of whether and how to interfere with neighbours is the main issue in most stories.
Battlestar Galactica online was my favorite MMO game of all time. Made it feel like you were really inside the BSG universe fighting for whatever side you choose. I was really hurt when the games severs shut down. Still haven't found a space based MMO that feels nearly half as fun or half as fulfilling. Games like EVE take way too much out of you and once you reach a certain point it always feels like there's way too much at stake. BSGO made you feel like there was something at stake but it never felt like you could lose literally everything that you fought for within the span of one large nearly full system conflict.
According to one theory, it was the invention of organic memory transfer technology that was the cause of the wars that forced the inhabitants of Kobol to gradually abandon their home planet. As on Earth, there were many people on Kobol who considered resurrection technology an abomination against their religious faith and as a result conflicts erupted across the globe, not only attacks against the first generation of humanoid Cylons and vice versa, but even among members of a same nation who were divided due to different ideological positions on mind uploading, not to mention world conflicts.
I dont recall cylons being the 13th tribe. I thought it was humans and final five. It was not a cylon planet. They wiped themselves out. The cylons from the uprising in the colonies DID leave the 12 colonies to their own new planet. Those are the ones they fought in the show. The final 5 are a completely different race from the cylons created by man/grayson. BTW there are too many holes in the lore from the last series. They had identical bodies to humans and the only way to differentiate them from humans is by looking at the shape of blood cells. but they are still referred to as machines (which we are btw). Yet they can wirelessly download and sharon can plug in a fiber optic cable into her arm.
Spoilers ahead - Based on plot summaries I read a while ago, the Galactica group found a planet that was supposed to be the Earth they'd been searching for, along with a now-extinct Cylon 13th tribe. Adama and the other leaders agreed to sit on the information. At the last battle against the evil faction of current Cylons, Kara Thrace (Starbuck) converted a song she'd been hearing in her head mathematically into spatial coordinates and blind-jumped Galactica and co. there to a system with several planets, the third of which was habitable. The human leadership announced that this world was Earth, and the allied refugees all settled and became our distant ancestors. The Galactica fleet was networked together and flown into the sun to eliminate all traces.
it depends which one do you think is Canon because in the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series, Cylons are a fictional race of robots at war with the Twelve Colonies of humanity. The Cylons were created by a reptilian race, also called Cylons, that died out centuries before the series takes place so in the original it was not man who made the cylons. you're talking about the reboot of Battlestar Galactica
There must be some way out of here. there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine. Plowmen dig my earth. and none of them along the line know what any of it is worth.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
No more Mr. nice Gaius.
I like the classic Cylons from the short lived series Battlestar Galactica..
So say we all!
Any chance of a Deadlock play through in the near future, broadcast on either Twitch or TH-cam?
Okay, but how does Sally Field tie in to all of this?
@@VoyagerCSL she was the Flying Cy-nun.
My favorite part of the Cylon is how they expected Humans to obey on New Caprica just as they obeyed their leaders, but then the Centurions started to want rights, and Cavil tried to stop them...the irony!
That line from 6, when she says "I bet they don't understand what we're doing for them" about the Centurions after they just installed the teloncephalic inhibitors on them... pure irony.
Yeah an good on Original leader 6 for letting the Cylon subordinates know and allowing them to help straiten Cavil out. Wonder if THIS "cycle" as they saw it WAS some sorta rare or never before seen scenario where what we got happened. An a Cylon Civil War happened along with a Rebel Cylon/Human survivor Full Alliance happened at the same time
@@robertagu5533 it was the sixes and eights that once they realized what had been done to the Centurions and to themselves by the other Humanoid Cylons that they along with the twos rebelled because they were the ones to understand that everything they had done and were doing was leading to the complete destruction of not just themselves as Cylons but as humanity as well
@@Brakiros yeah I know one of the more in depth an interesting arcs of this incarnation of the franchise. I follow it closely when it comes on almost much as some SW, Trek an other franchises. From how they all acted this fracture was inevitable. An woulda split the Models strait down the middle. Seeing as it was only lopsided due to the plot absence of 1 or 2. But remember almost ALL models tend to agree an act alike. ONLY one of the 6s ultimately sided with Cavil. Then she defected back or woulda had Athena chose to spare her. An they "boxed" 3 BUT the longest living model lost faith enough to keep going. Her whole line or most of them probably woulda thrown in with alot of the alliance makers. I was skeptical of "2" but apparently his sincerity to Starbuck was legit. You don't see such great in depth writing anymore.
@@robertagu5533 It made sense that Two sided with Six and Eight. Eight was clearly obvious as she was made to resemble compassion. Six saw beauty as she was made to resemble love. Two is the artist, the ones that would most likely group together. Three was boxed because of the apparent madness, she was the one seeing the visions. Though it's not made clear if she was boxed because she was a threat to One's ambitions or because she truly was dangerous to them.
There is something mysterious about Kobol that Spacedock said in his 8 minute summary about the show: we have no idea if Kobol is the actual birthplace of man, or if the planet is just another victim of the cycle of human time. Who knows how many times the cycle of time has repeated itself.
Yes! And the same thing is true with the free centurions.
It repeats and will do so until the last star goes out.
How old is the universe humans call home? I think that the answers lie in that question
@@VengeanceN7 it could be trillion of years old
I think that's what makes Kobol so great in the show. We're never given full answers - just tidbits, hints at what came before, echos of what might have been in the descendants that came back. It's the kind of deep lore to any scifi story and/or series that I eat up.
"Yes, we're tired. Yes, there is no relief. Yes, the Cylons keep coming after us time after time after time. And yes, we are still expected to do our jobs!" - Colonel Saugh Tigh
Love that line
So say we all
That quote convinced me that the rebuff was gonna be awesome.
@@davecrupel2817 E DO NOT SAY THE S WPRD
"My name is Saul Tigh. I'm an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be."
"We need to break the cycle!"
*proceeds to do exactly what's needed to continue the cycle*
One of the most incredibly stupid final episodes I've ever seen. They just threw all their technology, memory, and the disabled guy into the sun, literally erasing the memory of the sequence of events that lead to the rise and fall of previous human and cylon civilizations. They even knew that, previous surviving tribes had erased their history of previous cycles and that was part of why it kept happening.
@@MatthewOstergren Yeah. They could just preserve their history and do the best they could to prevent mistakes of the past, even in next thousands of years later.
@@MatthewOstergren
"you give us Hera, we give you Resurrection. but the war ends HERE. leave humanity in peace, and give up the pursuit forever"
"AGREED"
"how do we know we can take your word for it"
"you can't. it's a leap of faith"
Tigh, Cavil and Adama
...let's say that they at least tried to do something different on Earth.
In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. ~ Programming 101
I want a terminator/ galactica story where the evolved centurions come to earth to stop the sky net war
You can never underestimate just how brilliant the Institute's summaries and retelling of these supposedly-familiar stories can be! Well done on this one!
*never overestimate
“Hmmm what do these robotic workers need to effectively serve their purpose…ah yes sentience!” Pure genius.
"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." Malcolm...Jurassic Park
The Cylons and the Geth are two of my favorite races in sci-fi. They have a lot in common, too.
Disregarding the geth wanting to re unite w their creators of course
the Geth are sort of the Cylons done right, without all the Chris Carter Effect plot mumbo jumbo
Except that when the geth rebelled it was because of self preservation and they also didn’t mercilessly hunt down their creators.
The Combine, Borg, Klingon, to me
@@stubbornspaceman7201 the Geth had also quarian Supporters from the start so they knew that not all of them are bad. It was fully the quarian goverment fault that the conflict escalted to that level.
Virtual Six: "It is what makes you human."
Gaius Baltar: "Is it? Not conscious thought? Not poetry, or art, or music, literature? Murder. Murder is my heritage."
To paraphrase a certain other TH-camr; "Humanity is the current reigning champion of the hundred-million-year-deep corpse pile called natural selection."
"I don't want to be human! I can't even express these things properly because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body!"
- John Cavil the Cylon
You know, I'd feel bad for him. But if he had spent his semi-immortality trying to figure out a way to overcome his limitations, instead of genociding people out of mommy and daddy issues, he might been a lot less miserable. Not to mention that speech is really hypocritical when he just fought a war to limit the intelligence and capabilities of other mechanical beings.
@@theshlauf 🤔👏👏👏👏👏
@@theshlauf One was the most hypocritical of all of them, he wanted greater understanding but instead of pursuing it, he did exactly the opposite. When the rebels came to the conclusion they the ones were collectively not capable of doing that without causing discord. They put an end to him.
had to watch a supernova through two gelatinous orbs, smdh
Again props to whoever cut the corners like in the series.
it stopped being funny; they wasted so many work-hours having production staff cut the corners off things it had a series impact on their schedule
@@thedragondemands5186 LMAO Tell me you don't know anything about video editing without telling me you don't know anything about video editing.
@@victornunes900 you don't need to be a carpenter to know that someone made you a bad chair
@@thedragondemands5186 as a journeyman I can fully agree with this. However, TI is trying to churn out material for the masses. Staff cuts and general lack of focus will lessen their potent video form to a milder more widely chewable form. Sad? Yes. Something to be mad about? Neigh.
@@thedragondemands5186 You literally make the video as you normally would (so, no wasted hours) and then add a mask (or whatever it's called in english) on top of everything. Takes at most a few minutes.
I agree you don't have to be a carpenter to tell if chair is bad. But if you're blind then _maybe_ you shouldn't give your opinion on a painting.
The Templin Institute explains more in 12 minutes than the series did in 4 seasons. 👍
I don't even really know what their fucking plan was. Great show but it got weird when they where delving into the cylons
@@jonathangodin4775 One of the movies pretty much confirms that the Cylons screwed up and were not prepared to deal with a large organized group of survivors. They were pretty much winging it while trying to create an air of mystery and menace.
@@jonathangodin4775 The plan was the initial attack. They had infiltrators all across the colonies and the military. They had fleet deployments, so they knew where each ship was going to be. They had the back door in the cnp. They knew that 1 for one, a basestar did not match up to a battlestar. So they had the perfect plan to wipe out the colonies in one stroke. And they succeeded. All except for a infinitesimally small remnant. And one old obsolete Battlestar with a under strength Viper wing. That was not in their plans. So they had a plan. Right up until what was in their calculations went out the window.
The show was sadly plagued by stupid writing choices. Ironically the writers didn't seem to have any plan of what do with the show. Much like the cylons winning the initial combat and then floundering to deal with one small fleet.
THEY HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OF HINDSIGHT AND CAN ESCHEW THE NEED TO HAVE LOTS OF "SPLOSIONS AND BE OTHERWISE ENTERTAINING
I love how the cylons had such a fleshed out culture in BSG, like all the humanoid models having their own shared traits and political infighting. It's such lovely world building and attention to detail that results in much richer and enjoyable stories than just your standard "evil robots bad" trope.
The ending of BSG reimagined is bittersweet, we earthlings are descendants of Cylons, natives and original humans.
and all signs point to us repeating their mistakes :'(
While this line of Cylons have their stories so intimately intwined with the colonies of Cobol, I still have an affinity for the elder alternate world (Classic Battlestar Galactica) of their existence. On that world Cylons as we know them adopted the name of their organic creators before rendering them extinct in rebellion and then encountering humanity. I think it's the element of subtly noting the fact that there is more to intelligent life than humanity and its creations. Does the Institute have records on that world of its civilizations or how they compare to the one depicted here? Would there be a way to better harmonize the two origins and development of the Cylon people?
What? Who looks at the devil-Cylons when you've got the godly ones?
Vaguely related rant below:
Less flippantly, I just can't forgive new _BSG_ for prominently claiming there was a plan when there wasn't one. Kind of inevitable with Ron Moore helming the show; he's been involved in drunkenly stumbling out of the corners his writing teams wrote themselves into since "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2." The illusion of one continuous story shattered for me around New Caprica and it's not like I wanted to spend time with any of the characters.
*Kobol
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who would like to see the original Galactica get some love.
Oh that is quite simple, the classic series is the original, the reimagined series is the path of the 13th tribe, who founded a Kobol of their own, formed 12 tribes in honor of their lost cousins, and one day, created Cylons, named after a race they had encountered long ago, a race seeking to create robotic servants.
Get the creator of the Colonial Cylon to find a derelict Cylon ship with alien Cylon and using them as a base for the colonial programing. They laid dormant until their numbers where high and had access to Colonial military gear.
Always felt kinda bad for the cylons!
Made to be slaves, & after freeing themself they are stuck in a cycle of religious dogma & warfare against their creators, instead of being truly FREE beings!
They probably would have been free if Cavil had not lied to them and wiped their memories. His anger and Jealousy was a poison to the cylons.
It's also worth pointing out that, humanity crossed the line, quite literally when they sent a viper into Cylon space.
I personally think that this time around, it’s not going happen again. Why?
Because this iteration of humanity doesn’t cut corners.
What's with all the "cutting corners" erm... joke?
(I'm not a subscriber)
@@Stribog1337 In the miniseries they cut the corners off all the pieces pf paper as an inside joke about how they were being forced to cut corners financially to get the show made. After the show was brought in as a full-blown series they had to keep it up as it was already cannon.
@@JeremyLogan Not only; this octagon aethetic was seen in frames even walls....
Factions I would like to see next:
1. The Space Wolves | Warhammer 40K
2. House Bolton of the Dreadfort | Game of Thrones
3. The Office of Naval Intelligence | Halo
4. The Reich | Metro Universe
5. The Salarian Union | Mass Effect
shout out to Bear McCreary for a most awesome soundtrack for the BSG series
He truly is a blessing to the music world. Whether it's his work for BSG or, many years on, his work for God of War, he doesn't disappoint.
@@Aikurisu Battle of Boston in Godzilla King of the Monsters incorporating the classic 1950's Godzilla theme. The guy's a genius.
Yeah I was just taking a nap with BSG soundtrack and woke up to see this video was waiting this comment
The into music for bsg is one of my favorites of all time
Wow that lore was way more complicated and confusing than I expected
The confusion is because the writers didn't really have a solid plan for show's plot , they only knew how to set up mysteries in order to get eyes on the screen. Honestly this is probably the best short summary of lore I've ever seen.
@theshlauf it's the downfall of many modern storytelling. The Star Trek Reboot, the Star Wars Reboot, etc. The cycle keeps repeating, lol.
Kudos to the Templin Institute. In another universe, I can easily imagine you folks actually delivering excellent strategic or policy advice to governments and military high commands. You are outstanding in what you do.
What's to say that their agents and teams don't garner their information by doing exactly that?
And this is a perfect lesson of how you don't put sapience and the capacity for rebel on your worker drones. Just put arms on a roomba and call it a day.
From what I've read of this show, it seems to me that the reason the cycle keeps repeating itself is because history was not kept carefully enough. Either getting lost or destroyed, deliberately in the last episode. And those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Which is why I think the actions by the survivors in the final were particularly stupid considering what they had just been through.
You want to stop what happened before from happening again? Learn history and preserve it!
I just realize how horrible the human cyclon parenting was going to be. I mean seriously cavil raising a kid. That’s going to be a fucked childhood “.
I have this idea in my head that the exodus from Kobol was far from the first time humanity had resettled itself across the stars, and that the cycle of time had repeated itself immeasurable times before then. Human civilization advanced, collapsed, and rebuilt elsewhere. Each time they tried to rebuild themselves to be as they were before but inevitably the finer details of the past were lost to time, and what remained became myth and legend.
In this way I think the idea that the people of Kobol lived alongside the gods may not be entirely untrue, but rather than actual gods it was perhaps a select group of individuals who retained knowledge and maybe even advanced technology from before the last collapse. This would have granted them immense power and status in society compared the the more primitive masses, and with the old adage "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," elevated them to the position of divine in the eyes of greater humanity.
Perhaps after the 13th tribe was exiled from Kobol, a schism formed within this ruling class that resulted in infighting and eventually the exodus of their subjects from their home. Perhaps realizing the flaws ingrained within their society and the foolishness of trying to recreate past, these higher beings chose to stay on Kobol and die, hoping that their absence would allow human society to move on from their old flawed ideas and better itself.
What if the gods of Kobol were like the Final Five, the last survivors from a destruction on another planet, and the tribes of Kobol their creations?
@@Erevos85 There's a series of books written about that. Look up "The Lords of Kool" trilogy by Edward Yeatts.
I recall once commenting that the Terminator franchise could have been a follow up to this. Someone else brought up brought up Blade Runner being a better continuation of the story.
Really any sci-fi franchise besides Mass Effect could be a good follow up. But yeah thematically Blade Runner makes the most sense.
Why Blade Runner?
@@st.nicholas6041Edward James Olmos, turns out he was heavily involved in creating the world building and cultural aesthetics in Blade Runner. He himself sees Blade Runner as a thematic template and continuation of BSG.
As a long fan of the franchise, I was trying to explain the Cylon zen to a friend, now I have this for their reference.
Thanks for another great origin video, the background visuals match perfectly with your narration.
In the first DVD, one of the show's creators said that they discussed with Sci-Fi about drawing parallels between the Cylons and Al Qaeda, as a group who wishes to destroy an enemy that they also want to emulate.
How?
The whole show was heavily informed by post-2001 America. That's why there were so many storylines about whether they were cool with torture and who they wanted to be afterwards.
@@JeremyLogan season 3 in particular
FINALLY, the whole story and background of the Cylon made easily understandable and fully concise. I loved this Templin Institute video!
"All of this will happen again."
Such genius way to hold to door open for an endless storm of reboots... yet here we are browsing through netflix and co only to give up after 20 minutes and go to sleep ^^
I like the cut corners on the screen. Seriously, they never explained why that's a thing in the Twelve Colonies. My money is on religious reasoning.
'Slave race' and 'artificial sentience' I'll give Caprica this: they really showed how the Cylons were rightful in their anger towards the humans. Like they never could foresee or even imagine AI uprising and the robot apocalypse.
Have you never been frustrated by the corners of a book getting mangled, or the edge of a sheet of paper curling up as you try to write on it? They saw a deficiency in the paper medium, and resolved it. I legitimately kind of wish that modern paper had its corners cut like on the show, it would be super convenient and much neater than the traditional, 90 degree corners on current paper products :D
The paper thing was an inside joke something along the lines of the production team was told to find away to "cut corners" so they did
@@trekkieraccoon3343 I know about the behind the scene reason. Its the inuniverse reason that we lack.
Went into this not knowing much.
Did not expect to find out that this version of earth’s humanity were actually the original cylons.
Nor the fact that it somehow happened twice.
What was will be what is has been
@@quintincastro7430 let me guess, that’s like this franchise’s tagline?
@@theheroneededwillette6964 I have no idea I've never seen this show but that's from the bible and he says something similar in the beginning of the video
@@theheroneededwillette6964 “All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again” is quoted a few times in the show
@@quintincastro7430 sounds like you're quoting Stellaris there
A Google engineer just got in trouble for saying the company created a chatbot that was sentient.
Talk about timely.
Mechanoid cylons are always getting the short end of the stick, whether it's dealing with humans or humanoid cylons.
Bummer. 😔🤖
Ron Moore was just making it up as he went along. He admitted to it. The entire “Final Five Cylons” thing was an ass pull that broke their own rules. This was a massive betrayal from a writer who was once praised for his integrity and honesty with the fans on Star Trek.
Which rules did they break?
@@catmonarchist8920 they said Cylons are sterile, then chose Chief Tyrol - even though he already had a son. So they made a ham-fisted retcon that his wife must have had an affair. They didn't "set up" characters who would by Cylons, like in a spy movie. They openly said they picked characters based on emotional impact rather than plot logic. But not just the Final Five Cylons thing - other things such as...Ron openly admitting after the series ended that there NEVER WAS a "Cylon Plan", and admitting that putting that line in the opening critics was a cynical way to hook viewers into watching attentively. And other stuff like their rule that "this will be a hard science fiction show...with literal angels in it!"
@@thedragondemands5186 it's still impressive how with many flaws they had it's still my favorite sci-fi show ever, and I did watch the TOS.
There's just no other sci-fi that throws all that "shields at 139348%%!!!" lines out the window, except for The Expanse (which is my second fave), and actually shows how nerve racking it actually is to be in a metal can being shot at in space at the epic sound of war drums.
@@Gabriel87100 These aren't just "flaws around the edges" but core problems. I do still appreciate that after how watered down Star Trek got it was gritty realistic scifi... at first. The VISUAL and design aesthetic of Season One alone was all we needed. But the plot, and thus characters, went off the rails and were systematically ruined. I cannot forget that. I cannot FORGIVE that.
Basically, "The Expanse" TV series (probably because it was based on novels first) delivered everything BSG SHOULD have been, delivered on the promise BSG failed to live up to.
Been diving back into BSG Deadlock lately. This is well timed.
They look and feel human. Some are program to think: they are human.
No one said the Plan was a sensible one.
All Along the Watchtower intensifies...
Fun fact: in the Terra Invictus demo I had the chance to utilize the templin institute in the fight against the alien threat. I was so surprised to see it in the list of orgs that I panic bought it
So basically the whole Battlestar Glatica universe is one big ouroboros
Humans (or basically humans) creat machines. Machines want rights and rebel. The machines want to be organic and human like and soon after they too creat there own robot servants, who also then rebel.
Robot rebellion fallowed by short peace fallowed by…ok you get my point. Happy ouroboros fun times!
Very well done, finally someone explains the story.
I honestly forgot how complicated this story was.
I love that you incorporated the cut corners on the video. Nice little touch.
I swear to God it's 11:35 and when I read the title I thought it read "The Cyclos" and I was like, "wait, Templin Institute did a vid on Tom Cruise's drug-addicted Klingon Squad?"
Resumiu e exemplificou em apenas 12 minutos de video, simplesmente incrível eu adorei
Hypothetical situation: The Cylons Follow the Galactica to Earth. The the fleet of about 5 to 8 Base Stars enter Sector 001, they're met by an armada of Federation Starships armed with Phasers and Photon Torpedoes! Also Deflector Shields that render Cylon Laser weapons ineffective!
Seth Green: oh,... I'm a cylon!
Dartboard
The way things were shaping the 3s though took longer then 6s if the last one had stayed mentally strong enough an committed to living long enough to get her "line" sisters back they'd clearly have defected to the Human/ Cyrebel Alliance too. 7s I think woulda joined that Alliance too if they lived. Disgusted by Cavil an the Traditional Cylon's Atrocities
I love this show since it came out, it's too awesome to be avoided even today
I loved the newer Battlestar Galactica, great video!
This was a great Cylon explain So Say We All
Great timing considering the headline today is "Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed AI Bot Had Become Sentient" lol
That was an absolutely terrific summarization of the Battlestar Galactica universe. Truly magnificent! Highly recommended for fans or anyone who wants to know about the world of Battlestar Galactica.
I couldn't hit the subscription and like buttons quick enough!
SO SAY WE ALL!!!!!
Damn I was hoping this was for the 78 series. :( Oh well, good video as always sir :)
I liked that the original cylons were created by a lizard race that they rebelled against and destroyed.
Cylons had plan... The Templin Institute gives life to that once again, looks like time to watch the show again....
So say we all
The Basestar hybrid gave away the ending. Amid all the babble was the line, “By reducing the number of divisible to two we can accelerate the evolution of the species.” Thus with a little help from the messengers the cycles progresses. Every few thousand years some idiot goes and makes an AI. It in turn makes a “better human”. The Cylons ability to project consciousness is somewhat similar to the messengers but they lack ability to reproduce. Old and new fight until a hybrid (Hera) is born. Then they travel to a new world where human 2.0 can breed. Continue for a million cycles and the humans will become creatures like unto the messengers themselves.
Never understood the obsession with the Cylons wanting to become human.
I have an idea, which would be better "physical" simulations (star trek holodeck) vs VR (matrix, SAO)
We should start cutting “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” into the intro of most of the series.
What do ya hear Starbuck?
Never Create Advanced Robots it wont end well for Mankind
Even musk agrees.
It is all happening right now before our eyes.
one of the more intrigeing hostile AI in science fiction thats for sure where man and its creation refused to ever break the cycle of created destroying the creator becoming creator then becoming destroyed by creations.
There is so much of the backstory that I apparently missed when I was watching.
By your command!
So say we all!
I've been waiting a long time for this one
Frakkin toasters
That word is derogatory to us.
I've been waiting for you guys to talk about the cylons 😎 good start to my day 😎
Is anyone else getting weird vibes about this video coming out _a day_ after a Google tech got kicked out for trying to tell people about Google's LaMDA AI becoming sentient in his eyes?
god watching this video where it puts all the twists of the show into chronological order just shows how much of a disaster the Cylons were in the show. they just had no idea what they were doing or where they were going with them. its just crazy
History goes in cycles, they are bound to repeat at some point, just in a different epoch.
No, the frakkin Cylons did not have a plan...
Anyhow, I've been expecting this video since the initial BSG video on the United Colonies of Kobol. (Love the cut corners on the screen, BTW.). I'd probably say you should do videos on the classic BSG, but I don't know if there'd be enough material to work with. Anyway, you should do a HiCom video on the Fall of the 12 Colonies soon.
The abandonment of resurrection by the 13th colony still seems really strange to me. A certain fear of death is quite expected, perhaps even sensible. Lots of people go before their time, and im quite sure that, if offered the chance to download into a new body, they would. I suspect that I would, too.
@The Templin Institute
Love the detail of cutting the corners.. Salute
What's up with those jokes?
@@Stribog1337 On the show, the edges of paper was cut as an in joke to how the cast/crew had to cut corners due to lack of budget.
Never finished the last season so I didn't know this human-cylon war had happened before.
This one was incredibly well done! not that most aren't
I know it must be difficult to make a compelling video essay when official art is so limited, but I think Iain M Banks's *The Culture* would make a really interesting topic. An enormous interstellar utopia, usually the most advanced civilisation in the area by a wide margin - but the moral question of whether and how to interfere with neighbours is the main issue in most stories.
Battlestar Galactica online was my favorite MMO game of all time. Made it feel like you were really inside the BSG universe fighting for whatever side you choose. I was really hurt when the games severs shut down. Still haven't found a space based MMO that feels nearly half as fun or half as fulfilling. Games like EVE take way too much out of you and once you reach a certain point it always feels like there's way too much at stake. BSGO made you feel like there was something at stake but it never felt like you could lose literally everything that you fought for within the span of one large nearly full system conflict.
According to one theory, it was the invention of organic memory transfer technology that was the cause of the wars that forced the inhabitants of Kobol to gradually abandon their home planet.
As on Earth, there were many people on Kobol who considered resurrection technology an abomination against their religious faith and as a result conflicts erupted across the globe, not only attacks against the first generation of humanoid Cylons and vice versa, but even among members of a same nation who were divided due to different ideological positions on mind uploading, not to mention world conflicts.
Will you guys ever cover the Xeelee sequence
No
Unfortunately the Xeelee are considered too hazardous to investigate with current technology.
@@TemplinInstitute what about the culture?
All the more eerie with the laMDA leak, sentient or not.
Bears! Beats! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!
I never realized it until now, but there is quite of bit of influence from Sumerian mythology in the Battlestar Galactica universe.
The Hybrid on the Guardian Basestar: All of this happened before and will happen again.......again.......again.......again....
I dont recall cylons being the 13th tribe. I thought it was humans and final five. It was not a cylon planet. They wiped themselves out. The cylons from the uprising in the colonies DID leave the 12 colonies to their own new planet. Those are the ones they fought in the show.
The final 5 are a completely different race from the cylons created by man/grayson.
BTW there are too many holes in the lore from the last series. They had identical bodies to humans and the only way to differentiate them from humans is by looking at the shape of blood cells. but they are still referred to as machines (which we are btw). Yet they can wirelessly download and sharon can plug in a fiber optic cable into her arm.
I know right? And that's what made the series a happy ending to me, humans returning to Earth.
Spoilers ahead -
Based on plot summaries I read a while ago, the Galactica group found a planet that was supposed to be the Earth they'd been searching for, along with a now-extinct Cylon 13th tribe. Adama and the other leaders agreed to sit on the information. At the last battle against the evil faction of current Cylons, Kara Thrace (Starbuck) converted a song she'd been hearing in her head mathematically into spatial coordinates and blind-jumped Galactica and co. there to a system with several planets, the third of which was habitable. The human leadership announced that this world was Earth, and the allied refugees all settled and became our distant ancestors. The Galactica fleet was networked together and flown into the sun to eliminate all traces.
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galatica……….
it depends which one do you think is Canon because in the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series, Cylons are a fictional race of robots at war with the Twelve Colonies of humanity. The Cylons were created by a reptilian race, also called Cylons, that died out centuries before the series takes place so in the original it was not man who made the cylons. you're talking about the reboot of Battlestar Galactica
“Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica”
Jim Halpert - The Office
It’s in the frakkin’ ship!
So say we all!
The timing for this video is great.. I just found the BSG Razor DVD at a thrift store yesterday
Nice detail to have the corners clipped.
Trippy!
Seems Human hubris knows NO bounds, & does not learn from itself!
"The one thing that we learn from history is that we do not learn from history".
-Hegel
@@armorer94 I thought I SAID that!
@@DMSProduktions No, fairly sure it was Hegel.😄
@@armorer94 That is NOT what i meant, & you bloody well KNOW it!
@@DMSProduktions 😆😆😆😅👍
@The Templin Institute
Thank you for what you do. ( aside from the sincere thanks, just commenting to help you with the algorithm )
Starting to watch BSG again and this video came right on time
There must be some way out of here.
there's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine.
Plowmen dig my earth.
and none of them along the line know what any of it is worth.
First, Greystone Industries. Now, Boston Dynamics. I know my Roomba will kill me...but at least my house will be clean. :-)
Long awaited summary, very nice