*sigh*

Actually, the Cylons weren’t human creations in the original Battlestar Galactica. The *idea* of man vs. machine was certainly there, but when the Cylon’s origins were explored it turned out they were machines made by an alien race (the “original Cylons”) that killed their masters, replaced them and co-opted their civilization, and now go around trying to conquer everything.

Which is, yeah, a lot lot lot less compelling than modern Battlestar Galactica.

…I think you can get a lot of symbolic mileage out of the Cylons being monotheists and the humans having a more-or-less-lifted-from-Greek-mythlogy polytheism. It’s not that hard to read the “inhumanity” of the Cylon philosophy as how, say, an ancient Roman citizen might view the rise of the cult of the Risen Christ.

I won’t claim it to be a particularly original reading, but it’s marginally better the than ‘robots rise against their creators’ schtick the pilot seemed to promise. I at least hope we’re going to get at least some kind of motivation for the Cylons at some point soon.