favorite non-warrior awesome lady
I’m less all over the Cylon love than most, I think. I don’t tend to be all that big on villains, though I am warming up to them generally thanks to the ME-verse, and BSG’s clumsy attempts at false equivalence leave me cold. Mostly, fuck ‘em. That said, I very much liked D’Anna, and I wanted to figure out why.
Her introduction, I’ll admit, is quite problematic, with D’Anna as literally inhuman traitorous strawliberal, there to show us that NO ACTUALLY YOU CANNOT TRUST THE FREE PRESS, THEY ARE WEAPONS OF THE ENEMY. (In case you do not get the memo, this is revisited with Insane Homicidal Vigilante Citizen Reporter Katherine Mayfair. WE DON’T HAVE A LIBERAL BIAS, OKAY?!?!?) Problematic, but deeply enjoyable. D’Anna, as we’ll see throughout her arc, is at her core a reporter, a seeker and teller of the truth. Her insight into the crew is probably gained by Nefarious Means to be sure, but she knows exactly how to exploit all of their weak spots - the desperation just to talk of the more steadfast officers, Tigh’s unwillingness to see the impact of his drinking, Lee’s massive (OH GROW UP) awkwardness - in order to create a tape which encourages the fleet’s dependence on the Galactica while discouraging anyone in their right minds from enlisting. It’s a brilliant piece of manipulation.
D’Anna starts out as a true believer, but not in the way the Sixes are. The Sixes accept the truth of their purpose and mission. D’Anna thinks it’s right, and it all makes sense to her, which is what leaves her open for her crisis of faith on New Caprica. Most of the Cylons either find the occupation worthwhile for its own sake, or accept the will of God as something completely independent of their actions. D’Anna believes she’s actively doing God’s work, and so when the whole occupation project reveals itself to be unfulfilling, she starts to question, going so far as to seek out the human oracle. At first, the miracle of Hera’s survival seems to be direct enough evidence to quell her doubts, and she once again becomes the elder sister Cylon, pressuring Boomer (not one of the other, more impressionable Eights, but Boomer, who’s already contaminated with the memory of humanity) to take the dreary day-to-day work of custody of the child.
It’s not enough, though; having experienced the miracle of resurrection in such short proximity with the sea changes presented by Hera and Gaius jolts her out of acceptance, past faith straight on into thrill-seeking and hubris. Once the rules aren’t enough on their own, she formally bypasses the prohibition against suicide, but finds a way into the resurrection chamber again and again. This is a miraculous space between life and death. But the slight wedge between life and death is the thing that offers choices, a fraction of an angle by which to turn and become something different, and this is what makes her delightful and dangerous.
Her decision to be the Chosen One is what makes her a standout Cylon, and paradoxically, the thing that means she cannot be the Chosen One. Being the Chosen One is passive; in fact, given what we eventually find out about Baltar and Six, it’s something beyond even that, something makes your very creation take its own shape. D’Anna taking independent action on the idea of having been chosen by the Cylon god is an act of ambition and free will, more human than machine. That’s why Cavil boxes her, not because her factual knowledge of the Final Five is dangerous in and of itself, but because her repeated trips to the tree of knowledge reveals a willingness to reach beyond dogma into greater understanding, which will inevitably lead to her understanding him, becoming his equal, and bringing the whole house of cards tumbling down. (Cavil himself is narratively a much stronger critique of Western religion than any of his eyerolls and air-quotes ever are.) I don’t think she ever claims not to believe - this would be no problem for Cavil, as long as she kept toeing the line on the human-hate - her quest for understanding is a journey of faith on its own. D’Anna is a heretic, not an apostate.
D’Anna is, for mostly different reasons, an appropriate but necessarily unsuccessful match for both Laura and Lee, which makes sense, because though she can adequately command the Cylon forces, she’s not a soldier, she’s a politician. She reacts in much the same way Laura does to the idea of sacrificing immortality, because with her boxing, she’s on her second chance in the same way Roslin is, and she’s not any happier about having a few miserable years tacked on to a bleak existence. Neither of them has any romantic illusions about the fleeting nature of life, and they’re on borrowed time as it is. Lee has had a similar journey to D’Anna in terms of resolving his FEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE MORE FEELINGS THAN ALL THE D’ANNAS COMBINED with his curious, intellectual observation of the world around him. She has their same ruthlessness, the same raw awareness of mortality, the same need to band together with and lead others both over and because of her conviction that she’s better than them. (ALL THREE OF THEM ARE RIGHT, natch, but it’s still pretty arrogant.)
Through the manipulations of the other Cylons - through no choice of her own - she is faced with the aloneness and mortality of the humans, and it appalls her. She is contemptuous of humanity because she is the most human of all the Cylons. In the end, D’Anna stays on Earth. Life is but a dream, and D’Anna doesn’t want to live without one.