Daniel Graystone
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| Daniel Graystone | |
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| Colony | Caprica |
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| Introduced | Caprica pilot |
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| Children | Zoe Graystone† |
| Marital Status | Married to Amanda Graystone |
| Family Tree | View |
| Role | Computer engineer Founder and CEO of Graystone Industries Owner of the Caprica City Buccaneers Creator of the Cylons |
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| Portrayed by | Eric Stoltz |
| Daniel Graystone is a Cylon | |
| Daniel Graystone is a Final Five Cylon | |
| Daniel Graystone is a Human/Cylon Hybrid | |
| Daniel Graystone is an Original Series Cylon | |
| Additional Information | |
| Daniel Graystone in the separate continuity | |
| [[Image:|200px|Daniel Graystone]] | |
Dr. Daniel Graystone is the founder and CEO of Caprica's Graystone Industries, the inventor of the holoband, and owner of the Caprica City Buccaneers in the years before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. He is the creator of the Cylons.
Contents
Early Life
Growing up on Caprica, Daniel Graystone was not born wealthy (CAP: "There is Another Sky"). Though he was interested in engineering as a child - experimenting in his parent's garage at a young age - Daniel was a pyramid player and dreamed of being a C-Buc (CAP: "Know Thy Enemy"). Still, Daniel later admits that he was not very good at pyramid and leaned towards science, graduating from Apollo University with a PhD in Computer Science.[1]
Daniel met Amanda, his future wife, at a time in her life when she was recovering from serious psychological trauma, proving to be an important source of emotional stability for her (CAP: "End of Line"). Nevertheless, the Graystones' first years of marriage were financially and professionally difficult. When Amanda was pregnant with Zoe, the couple's only child, the Graystones lived in an apartment in Cloverdale, but struggled to pay the rent (CAP: "There is Another Sky").
Eventually, Daniel would secure an important meeting with management at the MicroCap company. With his car not working, Daniel was forced to ride the bus, but fell in the rain getting off. Still, he persisted, attending the meeting soaking wet and with a broken wrist, and coming away with a deal that would begin his upward climb (CAP: "There Is Another Sky").
Five years later, the Graystones' first home burned down. Daniel later comments that it was his computers and the house's older, wooden construction that started the fire. Unable to reach Zoe - whose room was in the attic of the house - Daniel and Amanda struggled to save their daughter; however all three managed to survive (CAP: "The Imperfections of Memory", "Ghosts in the Machine", "Things We Lock Away").
Corporate Success
Building on these early successes, Daniel founded Graystone Industries and pioneered the development of the holoband, a user interface technology that allows users to enter the digital construct known as V-world. The success of the technology made Daniel a celebrity scientist, frequently appearing on television (CAP: "Know Thy Enemy", "End of Line"). Despite this focus on consumer electronics, Daniel's company began vying for a contract with the Caprican Ministry of Defense for the creation of a robot soldier (CAP: "Pilot").
While the development of the cybernetic body was successful, Daniel had considerably more difficulty with the programming of a true artificial intelligence and its related hardware. The project had originally been planned to take five years, but the increasing number of prototype failures led to the program falling five years behind schedule and five hundred million cubits over budget. Frustrated with Daniel's failures, the Caprican government threatened to cancel its contract with the company and take the project to the Vergis Corporation, Graystone Industries' Tauron competitor, which had announced the successful development of a meta-cognitive processor that could serve as an artificial intelligence.
Personal Tragedy
Daniel suffered a personal loss when his daughter Zoe was killed in a suicide bombing aboard the Lev in Caprica City. However, he later discovered that before her death, Zoe had developed a method of uploading personal data onto the holoband that resulted in the creation of a holographic avatar of herself. Daniel believed it would be possible to use the U-87 prototype's body, combined with the processor developed by Vergis, to upload Zoe's avatar and allow her to live in the real world.
As a result, Daniel contacted Joseph Adama, a lawyer whose daughter and wife had also been killed in the terrorist bombing. Daniel asked Adama to use his ties to the Ha'la'tha crime syndicate on Tauron to steal the Vergis processor; in exchange, Daniel would reconstruct the personalities of Adama's daughter and possibly his wife. While Adama acquired the processor and handed it over to Daniel, he later became disgusted with the idea of resurrecting the personalities of the dead, leaving Daniel to pursue the matter himself.
Undaunted, Daniel tried to recreate Zoe as a robot, implanting Zoe's avatar in a U-87 unit. While the experiment initially seemed to work, with the robot calling Daniel "daddy" and taking a few steps forward, the avatar's data quickly became corrupted and the robot collapsed. Despite Daniel's efforts to recover his daughter's avatar, the program appeared to be irretrievable.
Creation of the Cylons
Despite his failure to bring back his daughter, Daniel uses the stolen processor to perfect the military prototype for the government project. Dubbing the unit a Cybernetic Life-form Node (CYLON), Daniel presents the completed unit to an impressed group of government officials. Graystone Industries was officially awarded a contract for the production of one hundred thousand U-87s (CAP: Caprica pilot).
This success was short-lived, when it quickly became apparent that only the original U-87 prototype would function sufficiently; as described by Dr. Cyrus Xander, Daniel's assistant, attempts to produce copies or to transplant the stolen MCP into other robot bodies produced "morons" (CAP: "Rebirth"). For long weeks, Daniel and his company would struggle in vain to find an explanation for the problem. He briefly (and correctly) suspected that Zoe's avatar was still in the robot, but attempts meant to force Zoe to identify herself failed (CAP: "Ghosts in the Machine"). Faced with the plummeting price of Graystone Industries stock, a dwindling supply of cash, and an accelerated production schedule forced onto him by a suspicious military, Daniel decided to purge any anomalies from the MCP and to start with "clean" MCPs. The Cylon, however, killed a Graystone Industries employee and escaped from its laboratory before the procedure could be performed (CAP: "End of Line").
Public and Personal Crises
Although Daniel and Amanda were arguably the highest profile relatives of the Lev bombing victims, the public attention given to them did not greatly exceed that of other survivors. All of this changed abruptly at a memorial service one month after the bombing, during which Amanda announced that Zoe was responsible for the bombing. Daniel was forced to whisk his wife away from an angry crowd (CAP: "Rebirth"). Almost instantly, attitudes on Caprica and across the Twelve Colonies turned against Daniel, his family, and Graystone Industries. Daniel himself was abducted and beaten by Sam Adama and compelled by a changed Joseph Adama to bring back the avatar of his daughter--a demand which Daniel could not meet (CAP: "Reins of a Waterfall"). Public opinion continued to sour, and Daniel reluctantly decided to make a more active PR response by appearing on the Backtalk with Baxter Sarno late night talk show (CAP: "Reins of a Waterfall"). Despite coaching and high expectations for the interview, Daniel's attempts to defend himself and to present Zoe as a "troubled" teenager floundered, until he was unexpectedly joined on stage by Amanda. Together, the two of them created a more compelling narrative, of Zoe being yet another young victim of the dangers of life on the holoband--and continuing in the spirit of that narrative, Daniel spontaneously announced the creation of a fund for young holoband addicts and the end of the holoband as a profit-making enterprise for Graystone Industries (CAP: "Gravedancing").
Stunned by the instant elimination of sixty percent of the corporation's revenue, the board of directors of Graystone Industries quickly maneuvered to remove Daniel from the board. Daniel countered with a dramatic presentation to the board, arguing that the holoband could not be sustained as a source of profit in any case, and that the future of the company lay in a new technology that would even more radically change the face of Colonial society: the Cylons. Daniel's position as CEO was saved (CAP: "There Is Another Sky").
Daniel's successes were threatened by the appearance on Caprica of his personal rival, Tomas Vergis, who revealed that not only did he know that Daniel was responsible for ordering the theft of the MCP, but also for the murder of two close friends during the theft. Rather than taking Daniel to court, Vergis promised to systematically take or destroy everything that was dear to him (CAP: "Know Thy Enemy"). Vergis' first target was the Caprica Buccaneers. Starved for funds to sustain the U-87 project, Daniel capitulated and made plans to sell the team. Even more damaging was Vergis' brief conversation with Amanda about Daniel's role in the theft and murders. Confronted by Amanda with the claim, Daniel could only respond that the situation was "complicated." Amanda had nothing else to say to him, leaving Daniel to face the loss of the U-87, the military contract, and potentially his company by himself, as well as the very real possibility of his wife's suicide (CAP: "Ghosts in the Machine," "End of Line").
Ultimately, Daniel Graystone revives from this crisis with his personal resourcefulness, his wife, and the help of the Ha'la'tha. By promising the Ha'la'tha partial ownership of Graystone Industries, he blackmails the board into reinstating him as CEO and removing Tomas Vergis. Amanda's involvement with the GDD surveillance of Clarice Willow alienates her from Willow and forces her to reconcile with her husband and seek his protection. With her help, Daniel rediscovers his daughter's avatar in V-World, and the two convince Zoe to reconcile with them. He pledges to develop a lifelike mechanical body that will enable Zoe to inhabit the real world, a promise that he fulfills five years later. Daniel prevents the head of the Ha'la'tha from assassinating him and forms a firmer friendship with the Adamas and the rest of the Ha'la'tha's new leadership. Daniel and Amanda's thwarting of the STO terrorist attack do much to restore their public image and the fortunes of Graystone Industries. (CAP: "Apotheosis")
References
- ↑ Ann Royall (Ianuarius 12, YR42). Graystone Computer Science Wing Coming to AU (backup available on Archive.org) (in ). The Caprican. Retrieved on 16 October 2010.
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