Number Six

Number Six was a model of humanoid Cylon created by the Final Five following the Cylon War. As with all humanoid Cylons, there were many copies of the Number Six template, each sharing the same face and basic personality, and a Six killed within range of a Resurrection Ship downloaded into a new body with her memories intact. The Sixes were among the most effective Cylon infiltrators, and they later stood at the center of the political upheavals that fractured the Cylon race. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded", "No Exit", "Six of One")

Description and infiltrators#

Number Sixes took the form of a tall woman, typically blonde-haired. The Sixes who infiltrated human society ahead of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies were noted as more individualist than the other models, often customizing their appearances and inventing their own names. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "Six Degrees of Separation"; Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica: The Plan)

Several Sixes ran notable infiltration missions. Caprica Six seduced Gaius Baltar and used him to reach the Colonial defence mainframe. Gina Inviere worked for Integral Systems Engineering, a defence contractor helping with the refit of the battlestar Pegasus, and won the trust of its crew and of Admiral Cain herself. The original script for "Six of One" also had Natalie Faust posing as a reform advocate on Gemenon, though that detail never made it to screen. Other infiltrators included Tough Six, who worked as a prostitute, and Shelly Godfrey, who claimed to have been an aide to Dr. Amarak at the Ministry of Defense, though she may have lied. The Sixes were ultimately successful in pushing the Cylons to abandon their occupation of the Twelve Colonies and seek peace with humanity. That shift began with Caprica Six, whose rebirth and change of heart drive the episode "Downloaded". The model's face was already haunting Baltar in the episode "33", where a Six only he could see pushed him to pray as the Cylons closed in. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "Six Degrees of Separation"; Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica: The Plan; Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded", "33")

New Caprica#

About a year after the humans settled New Caprica, the Cylons located the colony by the radiation signature of a nuclear detonation that Gina Inviere had triggered on Cloud 9, killing herself in the process. The Cylons, led at first by Caprica Six and Boomer, came intending to live alongside the humans and help them. Although the occupation proved brutal, Caprica Six genuinely believed they were helping, and the experience left her disillusioned as harder-line models took over. Gaius Baltar left the planet with the Cylons when the humans escaped. Caprica-Six nonetheless aided the Colonial Fleet in the rescue of Hera Agathon and became a willing prisoner, and she refused to give the evidence that would have helped convict Baltar of treason. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II", "Occupation", "Precipice", "Exodus, Part II", "Rapture", "Crossroads, Part I")

The Cylon Civil War#

After the Cylons confirmed that the Final Five were present within Galactica's refugee convoy, the Sixes were drawn back into political upheaval. The Sixes, Twos, and Eights believed the Final Five should be welcomed back into Cylon society and objected to the lobotomizing of the Raiders that the Ones, Fours, and Fives had deemed defective, models that held the Five to be an irrelevance. The dispute came to a head with the removal of the telencephalic inhibitors from the Centurions, who then began massacring the opposing three models. The cleansing split the Cylon fleet between basestars under Faust's faction and those under the Ones, Fours, and Fives. (Battlestar Galactica, "Six of One")

Faust's faction suffered heavy losses at the start of the war when it walked into Cavil's trap, and only her own basestar came out of it. Under Natalie's leadership a truce was brokered with the Colonial Fleet, and she planned a joint strike on the Resurrection Hub that would also free a Number Three able to identify the Five. The operation succeeded, but Faust herself was shot dead aboard Galactica before it began. The rescued Three, D'Anna Biers, later revealed four of the Five and helped lead both fleets to Earth. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Ties That Bind", "Faith", "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?", "The Hub", "Revelations")

Settlement#

In the aftermath of finding Earth a nuclear wasteland, the rebel Cylon society faced yet another dilemma. With no world left to share and defend alongside the humans, the rebel Cylons debated leaving the fleet entirely. Caprica-Six had become pregnant after a relationship with Galactica's executive officer, Colonel Saul Tigh, himself one of the Five, and the Cylons wanted the child raised among their own people. When Caprica-Six miscarried, that hope died with the pregnancy, and the Cylons stayed with the fleet, helping repair Galactica with their organic resin. (Battlestar Galactica, "Deadlock", "Someone to Watch Over Me")

During the Battle of the Colony, most of the remaining Sixes stayed with the fleet under Admiral Hoshi, while Centurions from the rebel basestar fought alongside Galactica's volunteers. When the survivors found a new habitable planet with a rich web of life, the Cylons settled it alongside the humans and gave up their technology. The Centurions were given the rebel basestar and left to find their own way. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part I", "Daybreak, Part II")