Galactica Cavil wants to be a certifiable, 100% machine. He thinks machines are superior to human life. He hates humanity. He hates himself and his fragile skin. He wants to experience the universe and the galaxies. Cavil would do anything to achieve his goals and that is to be rid of all human lives and to box any Cylons getting in his way.

All of that stuff is “growth”. It may not be human growth, but it is growth — if anything, Cavil craved change more than anyone else on the show. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to be a machine, especially for somebody who was half machine to begin with. The show definitely slaps a moral label on being “human”… but then, it also put a moral label on flush toilets, so I don’t find it all that convincing.

The problem isn’t Cavil’s machine philosophy, it’s all the killing. I think The Plan did a very good job of showing why that part wasn’t necessarily inevitable.

As for remaining the same in thought process, ideas, and emotions — like I said earlier, I don’t think Galactica Cavil did remain the same. At the beginning of the film, he trusted people. He trusted his parents to understand what he was trying to tell them. He trusted his siblings to help him with the war, especially Boomer. By the end of the show, he tells Tyrol “You should be afraid of trust. I trusted people, and every single one of them let me down. Every single one.” He’s speaking from experience, not some pre-programmed emotion, and that marks a huge change in his “thought process, ideas, and emotions”… at least as big as the one Caprica Cavil had.

In the end, I suspect Caprica Cavil still thought machines were superior, and still wanted to turn his back on humanity and experience the universe. He more-or-less says so (“Both errors led to the same result. We became what we beheld. We became you”). He’s not a nice guy; he’s still a Cavil. The only difference between them is that he learned that the Five’s love for humanity made the Plan futile… and Galactica Cavil learned not to trust in anyone or anything, even his brother’s word.

This may be true especially since they started out in the movie with a similar mindset.

What makes Cylons human are experiences and human interactions. They become informed and from there decisions are made.

Why Galactica Cavil as opposed to Caprica Cavil remain the same in thought process, ideas, and emotions, in other words he refuses to open up himself for growth, is for one simple reason.

Galactica Cavil wants to be a certifiable, 100% machine. He thinks machines are superior to human life. He hates humanity. He hates himself and his fragile skin. He wants to experience the universe and the galaxies. Cavil would do anything to achieve his goals and that is to be rid of all human lives and to box any Cylons getting in his way.

Galactica Cavil had a choice. He chose destruction instead of life and that point made real clear when he murdered the child.

He might not be defective but he’s definitely is a nutcase.

You can’t just say “well, one of them is psychotic and defective, but the other doesn’t have this problem” unless you can explain how one of them got that way, and the other one didn’t. IMHO, that’s exactly what the movie did: it showed why Cavil was like that. And it wasn’t anything broken inside of him, or inside Hat!Cavil… it was the different experiences they had aboard Galactica and on Caprica.

I agree that the Cavils are sort of frakked-up by default… but to be honest, all of the Cylons are. The point of their story is that they’re that way in the beginning, but as The Plan shows, they are all capable of learning and growing through experience… even the Cavils. Even NoHat!Cavil.

As for Ellen: I don’t doubt that she loved “her little boy John”. But at some point, Cavil stopped being that little boy John… and if No Exit is any indication, Ellen loves John, but she doesn’t love Cavil. She clearly despises him, even the parts of him which aren’t bad (like his supernova dream — she calls it “wrong”, but it’s actually rather beautiful and harmless… and would have made a much nicer hobby for him than nuclear apocalypse, at any rate!)

Even the hug she offers him is dependent on him being something he’s not (“you can be good, you can be my little boy”). So he won’t take it, because even though it’s the one thing he’s always wanted (“we wanted to be held to a bosom”), it’s not meant for him at all. And everyone suffers.

I kinda can’t blame Ellen for not accepting Cavil during No Exit, because whoa, look what he did! But there must have been a time before he killed his parents and blew everything up… and back then, she must’ve dropped the ball big-time. You don’t get elaborate thirty-year genocide plans out of happy families… especially not on this show, where parents who wash their hands of their children is a dominant theme.

NoHat-Cavil is incapable of expressing anything beyond his own needs to have absolute control over his universe.

Personally, I thought this was exactly what the hand-holding scene was meant to refute. When love is offered freely, Cavil does reach out. He does express a need other than control, right there, before he dies.

He just told the other Cavil he was going to have him boxed — if he were truly incapable of expressing anything beyond his own need to have absolute control over his universe, there is no way he’d have held that hippie bastard’s hand. But he did.

The tragedy is that it was too little, too late.

I noticed this right away. I saw them as twins, although, there were probably thousands of copies of Cavil out there. The light side and dark side of being twins, or the good and the evil. Alternatively, how twins can be different in personality despite sharing the same genetic structure.

Ellen was not a good example as a perfect mother or wife for that matter. But I think she loved Cavil as she did the other models. It’s Cavil and how he internalizes his thought processes. Personally, I think he was psychotic. Defective in some manner. He had an unhealthy fixation on Ellen. Remember Daniel. The F5 suspected Cavil of killing off his models. Why? Cavil is mentally deranged and extremely jealous of any attention Ellen gave to others.

Hat-Cavil doesn’t have this problem. Once he and the other models integrate themselves in human lives, they discover something about the life, which begins a change in attitude towards the Colonials. This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed the movie. Why the The Plan became such a failure.

NoHat-Cavil is incapable of expressing anything beyond his own needs to have absolute control over his universe.

Which comes back to that whole “you can’t wash your hands of the things you’ve created” theme — if you show your kids you don’t want them, they’ll only nuke the twelve colonies.

Oh Cavil did this. He boxed the Final Five.

Yeah, doesn’t it? To me, this movie is not just about one Cavil learning a lesson about love through experience… *both* of them do. It’s just that the one on Galactica learns the opposite lesson. After a year of getting let down by everybody, including and especially his parents and siblings, it’s no wonder he rolls his eyes at “love outlasts death” — nobody’s love for him lasted more than about ten minutes. Whereas Anders was kind to the other Cavil, and that small difference in experience changed everything.

Which comes back to that whole “you can’t wash your hands of the things you’ve created” theme — if you show your kids you don’t want them, they’ll only nuke the twelve colonies. Or, um, go hang out with killer robots until they get stabbed. Or something. You know.

I love your Genocidal Maniac description, it was just perfect for this Cavil.

heh, I hadn’t noticed Stockwell managed to get the cigar in there. Wonder how many of those things he goes through every day?

Great picspam!