Battlestar Galactica

[sike]

So here is an honest question...why did the other "skin job" cylons not know who the "final five" were but Cavil did? I'm assuming somehow he erased their collective memories, but was that ever expressly said?

and why didn't 4 of the "final five" remember who they were? Seems that Ellen remembered everything, but the other 4 had different degrees of memory of their old lives.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by sike

So here is an honest question...why did the other "skin job" cylons not know who the "final five" were but Cavil did? I'm assuming somehow he erased their collective memories, but was that ever expressly said?

and why didn't 4 of the "final five" remember who they were? Seems that Ellen remembered everything, but the other 4 had different degrees of memory of their old lives.

Yep, I'm pretty sure Cavil mentions it at some point during the final season, but I know for sure that he lays out a full explanation in 'The Plan'.

Cavil wiped the memories of their current bodies so they wouldn't know who they were when the colonies were attacked - he wanted them to *feel* just how pathetic being human actually was... The plan kinda backfired when none of the 4 were actually killed in the invasion and, ironically, the "belief" that they had always been human ended up playing a key role in ending the war between man and Cylons. Cavil had to suffer through the knowledge of being a Cylon trapped in a meat puppet body, whereas the other 4 got to experience the joys of "being human" because they were unaware of their true nature...

Only Ellen remembered who she was because her mind-erased body was killed and she was downloaded into a new body that remembered everything.