The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Director: Edward James Olmos
Role: Number Six / Shelly Godfrey / “Tough Six”
Cast: Edward James Olmos, Dean Stockwell, Michael Trucco, Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Callum Keith Rennie, Kate Vernon, Rick Worthy, Lymari Nadal, Rekha Sharma, Matthew Bennett, Alisen Down, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight
Release Date: U.S., October 27 2009 (DVD)
MPAA Motion Picture Rating: This movie is not yet rated.

• Overview
• Memorable Number Six Quotations
• Said of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan Movie Trivia
• Critical Reception
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan Online

More The Plan images of Tricia in our Battlestar Galactica: The Plan Photo Gallery

In Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, when the initial Cylon attack against the Twelve Colonies fails to achieve complete extermination of human life as planned, twin Number Ones (Cavils) embedded on Galactica and Caprica must improvise to destroy the human survivors.

* * * *

Tricia Helfer portrays Shelly Godfrey and “Tough Six”, two copies of the humanoid Cylon Number Six. Tricia also briefly appears in the film as an unnamed blonde copy of Number Six, as Caprica Six and Gina Inviere. For more information on Caprica Six and Gina, please see our pages on Battlestar Galactica and Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

Shelly first appears in the Battlestar Galactica series in the Season 1 episode “Six Degrees of Separation”, when the Number Six model was yet to be identified in the Fleet as a Cylon model. In the episode, posing as the intimate friend of a Dr. Amorak, Shelly claims to have proof of the renowned scientist Dr. Gaius Baltar being a Cylon co-conspirator and a traitor, but her evidence against him is eventually discredited and she vanishes off the Galactica without a trace. For more information on these events, please see our page on Battlestar Galactica.

In Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, which precedes and overlaps the events of Season 1, it is revealed that Shelly was not a “sleeper agent” and was in fact aware of being a Cylon throughout the Baltar-episode. Shelly’s attempt to smear Baltar was in fact part of a plan devised by the Galactica copy of Number One (Stockwell) to drive the remaining humans to ruin, but it is insinuated that Shelly may have deliberately faked her evidence poorly, leading to her being found out, because of an attraction to Baltar. It is also revealed that Shelly was able to elude her human guard on the Galactica because Cavil randomly grabbed her while she was walking around aboard the ship, placing “Tough Six” in a blonde wig in her stead. She was then consensually, if not voluntarily, airlocked by Cavil as a precaution, which explains how she was able to get off the heavily guarded Galactica. She is presumed to have resurrected and survived, but was not seen again in the course of the series.

The Plan also introduces a new copy of Six only known as “Tough Six”. Although similar in hairstyle to her blonde sisters (such as Shelly), Tough Six is easily recognized for having brown-color hair with blonde highlights and for wearing revealing outfits, most typically one of chains and leather. Tough Six is overtly sexual and flirtatious with everyone, and lives in the Fleet, evidently working as a prostitute. Tough Six also has sexual relations with the Galactica Cavil, but is not a key player in the events of The Plan or the Battlestar Galactica series. Her ultimate fate is never revealed.

[looking at the Centurions] “It’s like they don’t understand what we’re doing for them.”

[Cavil hands Tough Six a leaflet]
[Cavil: "Take one, my child."]
“Thank you, brother.”

[Doral: "What's the Plan?"]
[Cavil: "The Plan is, everything blows up a week ago, all the humans are dead, we Cylons all download and the universe basks in justice. However..."]
Tough Six: “It didn’t frakkin’ happen.”
[Cavil: "Mhm. Exactly."]
[Doral: "So it's up to us."]
[Leoben: "We can all get weapons and work separately."]
[Cavil: "Ah! There's a proposal on the table."]
Tough Six: “Over 10,000 victims each. We’ll be busy.”

[Gina prepares Boomer for her assignment as a sleeper agent]
“You’re gonna do fine. I know it.”
[Boomer: "Well, I'm glad you do, because I feel like... I feel like I'm gonna die or something."]
“In a way you are. When you wake up, you’re gonna begin a whole new life. A human life with a human name. Sharon Valerii.”

Shelly: “Will the other Six be okay?”
[Cavil: "Oh she's fast. She's almost beyond human."]

[Cavil and Shelly talk on their way to an airlock]
[Cavil: "Is Baltar's machine on the trash heap?"]
“I did what I could, I don’t know.”
[Cavil: "Trying to make a guilty man look guilty. It should be so easy."]
“We had to fake the evidence! Baltar, he… He helped us so much on Caprica–”
[Cavil: "Are you attracted to this human?"]
“No!”
[Cavil: "Coz the other Six got addicted to him!"]
“I’m not addicted!… Baltar’s a brilliant man, yes, but you should’ve seen me! I was brutal with him, I pushed him!”
[Cavil: "You pushed him? My dear, if you'd pushed him you would've sent him through a wall!... Oh, look. An airlock. How handy."]

[Tough Six to Cavil]
“You want a progress report? I’ll give you a frakkin’ progress report.
[Cavil: "Oh, no. Please don't. Please don't."]
“Oh, come on, it is spectacular. Doral blew himself up, causing minor damage to a minor hallway. And Boomer jettisoned the water, and then she personally found loads more water. [laughs] And then she shot Adama, but not very accurately, since she loved him. And then, Leoben, he got obsessed with Kara Thrace, and then was captured and airlocked. And my sister Six utterly failed to discredit Baltar and his dreamy hair and destroyed our frakkin’ cover in the process. And now Simon… Simon killed himself, really killed himself, out of resurrection range, without blowing up the ship that he lived on because he couldn’t imagine life without his little human wife and his little human daughter because he loves them…”
[Cavil: "Oh, stop, stop, stop."]
“Guess I’d better.”
[Cavil: "Yes. They're all letting me down."]
“Why are they letting you down, One? What’s the x-factor?… You can’t declare war on love.” [leaves with the bottle of booze]
[Cavil: "I think I already did. Hey, where'd the bottle go?"]

[a One and a Six meet on Caprica]
[Cavil: "What's going on? Why the cease-fire?"]
“There’s been a vote.”
[Cavil: "A vote?"]
“There’s going to be a truce. We just need to convey it to the humans. All of them.”
[Cavil: "I can deliver that message."]
“But your model voted against it.”
[Cavil: "But I've had a new insight. Besides, there's nothing for me here."]

Select quotations regarding the film from Tricia Helfer and her co-workers:

Describing The Plan:
“It was fun for me to go in and fill in some holes. Not holes as in things they did wrong, but as in things that you didn’t know. At the end of the day, Battlestar was more from the human perspective, obviously. It was fun to go back and see things from the Cylon perspective. Things that we knew had happened… Little things like how Shelley Godfrey got off the ship, which fans had always wondered about. She was in one episode in the first season and she disappeared off the ship. A lot of people asked, ‘How did she get off the ship?’ and even I was like, ‘I don’t know!’ So it was fun to go back and go, ‘Oh! This is how she got off the ship!’ Little things like that were fun. [...] It’s really from Brother Cavil and Sam Anders’ [perspective]. Their storylines are the lead storylines in The Plan. I was actually shooting a pilot for FOX called Inseparable, that didn’t end up going anywhere, at the same time. So I’m kind of a smaller character in The Plan, but it was definitely fun to get to go back and do some of those characters – and also bring a new character to life. In the script she was called Tough Six. She’s a brunette one and definitely a heavy drinker and is a harder edged Six than we’ve seen, so she was really fun to play. It was kind of like, ‘Damn, why couldn’t she have been in the series?! That would have been fun!’ [laughs]“
- IGN.com interview, July 7 2009

On The Plan and the future of Battlestar Galactica:
“I think we’d all be open to it if there was a great story to tell and the whole team came back together. But I don’t think anyone would want to go back if you have only a couple people. We saw some of that in The Plan -– some of the team was there and it was weird being on set in a way. Yes, it was Brother Cavil & The Cylon’s story, but it did feel a little different. I think to come back after time away, it would have to be the same team and a great story.”
- PopWrap interview, August 4 2010

• The planet behind the Universal Studios-logo in the beginning of the film is not Earth but the planet Caprica.

• Several actors from the original Battlestar Galactica series appear in The Plan only via archived footage. Actors such as Katee Sackhoff (Kara “Starbuck” Thrace) and James Callis (Dr. Gaius Baltar) do “appear” in the film, but did not actually shoot any new material for it.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan was released on North American DVD in Ocotber 2009, before finally premiering on TV in January ’10, and has therefore barely been reviewed by any professionals. The fan reception for The Plan has been mixed, however, some citing it as a simply brilliant new perspective on old events while others felt disappointed at the recycled footage and weak story.

• Rating > Internet Movie Database: 6.5/10 (3,600 user votes counted)
• Rating > MetaCritic: No rating (professional)
• Rating > Rotten Tomatoes: No rating (professional)

Extracts from professional reviews:

“The result is a film that feels incomplete, episodic and disjointed. It plays less like a movie and largely like a disk full of high quality bonus material. Most of what happens here feels irrelevant to the series — almost like it was tacked on to the BSG mythos to satisfy completists and hardcore fans. Still, it’s worth watching to see Dean Stockwell carry the film with a fearless performance as the scheming and duplicitous Brother Cavil. The veteran character actor takes center stage in The Plan, and your enjoyment of the film will rest largely on how much you like, or dislike, Cavil and his major role in the series.”
- Mike Moody, TV Squad

“The problem is, The Plan doesn’t have much in the way of its own story to tell. Instead, it’s almost entirely about echoing, adding to or putting a new spin on stories we already saw on the series. The benefit The Plan has is hindsight – now that we know who all the Cylons are, this movie is free to show what was going on with all of them during major events on the series. Boomer’s sabotage of the water supply; Leoben’s obsession with Kara; The Number Six named Shelley Godfrey who messed with Baltar’s mind during Season 1 – all of these milestones ate expanded upon, among many other key BSG moments. [...] I’m sure some would argue that The Plan can’t stand on its own… and that it doesn’t need to. After all, it’s aimed at fans of the show who would be familiar with all the events we’re seeing callbacks to. Battlestar Galactica: Razor was a similar project, down to taking place in-between events we already saw on the show, but it still was able to tell its own specific story, while also adding to the overall mythology of the series– just as so many terrific Battlestar episodes did. The Plan, however, feels a bit empty. There’s no doubt it adds new information and interesting things to ponder when watching the series again, but viewed on its own, it feels disjointed and rambling, likely because it is trying to cover so much in a relatively short amount of time. “
- Eric Goldman, IGN.com

“In the later seasons we see the Cylons conflicted by their actions, torn by somewhat human emotions, with in-fighting and rebellion rife amidst them, and Battlestar Galactica: The Plan attempts to go back to the beginning and basically show you what would have been included in those early episodes (across the first two seasons only) to give a Cylon backstory, had the writers had enough foresight. The result has had a very mixed reception from fans. Some think it is insightful and amazing, and brings a whole new perspective to the early days of BSG, cleverly and seamlessly integrating itself with what we have already seen with use of old as well as new footage. Others see it as nothing more than a padded-out collection of deleted footage, strewn together by a vague story arc about one of the first Cylon models (Cavil – played by Dean Stockwell) and a few unnecessary sub-stories about characters you never really noticed before and certainly do not care about. Despite being a huge BSG fan I have to say that I fall closer to the second category.”
- Cas Harlow , AVForums.com

Awards & Nominations

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan has received a total of 1 award nomination.

Nominations:
• Cinema Audio Society Award (2010) — Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for DVD Original Programming

Personal Thoughts

Sandra: Even as a Battlestar Galactica fan, I have to say I was really disappointed with The Plan. Granted, my expectations were high, especially with EJO at the helm, but The Plan was just tragically bad compared to the series. Too much revealed, too much sex and nudity, too boring. The movie just completely lost the mystique and intrigue of the series in every respect, and as much as I appreciate the legendary Dean Stockwell, Cavil just isn’t a strong enough character to carry a full movie. Personally, I like to think this movie never really happened, simply because it preserves the mystery of the series for me. :(

The Plan also marks my least favorite turn of Tricia’s as Six. It’s not that she would’ve been bad in the role, by any means, rather just that both the Sixes she portrays in the film are neither particularly likable nor interesting as characters, especially Tough Six, who really in no way contributes to the actual story (an “interesting” look though she has). And Number Six was in many ways such a big part of the mystery surrounding the series that I just feel like some things should’ve been left only for the imagination.

Below are some Battlestar Galactica: The Plan related links that may be of interest to you.

• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan official site
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan TFL-approved fanlisting
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan TFL-approved Number Six character fanlisting
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan TFL-approved Shelly character fanlisting
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan TFL-approved Tough Six character fanlisting
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan on IMDb.com
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan on RottenTomatoes.com
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan on Wikipedia.org

• Edward James Olmos on IMDb.com
• Edward James Olmos on Wikipedia.org

• Edward James Olmos on EdwardJamesOlmos.com
• Grace Park on Grace Park Fan
• Grace Park on Grace Park Online
• Michael Trucco on MichaelTrucco.com