Ellen Tigh is a fictional character from the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot series, portrayed by Kate Vernon from 2004 to 2009. She is the manipulative wife of series regular Colonel Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan) during the first three seasons of the series. In season four, she is revealed to be the last of the Final Five Cylons, synthetic humanoid machines who are the precursors to the Cylon antagonists who oppose the human race throughout much of the series.
Appearances The reimagined Battlestar Galactica debuted on Sky One in the United Kingdom on , and on the Sci-Fi Channel in the United States on . Vernon first appeared on , in the ninth episode of season one, "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down", as the wife of series regular Colonel Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan). Her character was killed off in season three, and at the time series creator Ronald D. Moore assured Vernon there was no way for her to come back. She was subsequently surprised to be asked to return in season four, and kept the secret that Ellen was the final Cylon for two years. Vernon remained on the series until its final episode, "Daybreak", on March 20, 2009. Vernon reprised the role in the television film Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, which was released digitally on October 27, 2009, and first broadcast on SyFy on January 10, 2010.
Characterization
Early seasons Ellen is introduced as the beautiful but troublesome wife of the gruff Colonel Saul Tigh, XO of the Battlestar Galactica and second-in-command to its captain, Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos). Ellen is well known to Adama, Saul's longtime friend, who notes that she was rumored to have "slept with more than half the fleet while Saul was in space", and believes that Ellen encourages Tigh's worst instincts and brings out his self-destructive streak. Tigh's reunion with Ellen, and its inherent pressures, fuels his alcohol abuse. She has been described as "hard-drinking, attention-seeking and promiscuous", but devoted to Tigh despite her selfishness. Ellen is an attractive woman who unapologetically uses her sexuality to get what she wants for herself and her husband. Ellen has been described as the Lady Macbeth of the series in that she believes her husband should command more respect and power, and she has spent years manipulating him and other men to get it.
In season two, Tigh is forced to take command of Galactica and the fleet when Adama is incapacitated. Ellen recognizes her husband's limitations and attempts to both guide and push him to action. Moore noted that though Tigh is an effective leader during a military crisis, he is otherwise hampered by his lack of political skill, his alcoholism and Ellen's manipulation. Moore explained that her manipulation is both conscious and unconscious, and that she reacts to her husband's weakness by attacking. Maurice Molyneaux of Slashfilm noted that Ellen constantly tears Saul down even as she builds him up. Vernon said, "She is deeply in love with Saul and all she wants is her man. But she's been in competition with Adama from the get go and that's one hell of a fight. Ellen and Saul are cut from the same cloth, they are inseparable really".
In season three, Ellen proves willing to do anything to guarantee Tigh's continued safety. She performs sexual favors for one of the Cylon Cavil (Dean Stockwell) models to effect Tigh's release from a Cylon detention center where he is treated roughly, and betrays the human Resistance to Cavil when he threatens Tigh's life. When her duplicity is revealed in "Exodus", Tigh chooses to execute her himself rather than let a less sympathetic member of the Resistance do it. Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club wrote of Ellen's death, "It's a tragic, heartbreaking end to a character who, for most of her time on the series, had been little more than an irritant. Her time on New Caprica allowed the writers to clarify what made her more than just a twerp: her unshakable devotion to her husband was at once her redemption and her doom. After [Saul] learns the truth, that Ellen betrayed them to the Cylons, she tries to explain herself—and what's so painful to watch is that you can't really fault her reasoning. She did what she thought was necessary, not for the greater good but to protect this one thing in her life". Describing the situation surrounding Ellen's death as "Tigh's best moment of character development", Craig Elvy of Screen Rant lamented that it was rendered meaningless by her resurrection in season four.
The Final Five In the series, a race of sentient machines called Cylons launch a cataclysmic attack on human civilization that kills billions, and subsequently pursue the fleeing 50,000 survivors to exterminate them completely. Biological models of Cylons, indistinguishable from humans, have infiltrated what remains of the human population, and their identities are revealed over the course of the series. There are a finite number of distinct models, but each model can have multiple copies, which share biology and general personality throughout their model but develop into distinct individuals. The synthetic biological Cylons can be harmed and killed in the same manner as humans, but each copy can be resurrected by downloading their digital consciousness into a new body. Multiple copies of seven distinct Cylon models are depicted in the first three seasons, followed by the revelation that a "fundamentally different" group, dubbed the "Final Five" Cylons, are also embedded in the human fleet. Four of the Final Five are revealed in the season three finale, "Crossroads", including Tigh himself. Ellen is revealed as the last one in the season four episode "Sometimes a Great Notion", and her resurrection and self-realization are depicted in the episode "No Exit".
Vernon said, "When they killed me off, I went up to Ron [Moore] and I looked him straight in the eyes and I said, 'Isn't there any way I can come back?' And he just looked at me very gently and assuredly said, 'No'." Moore believed he was telling the truth until season four, when he and his writing team were debating the identity of the final Cylon. He said, "Ellen's name was kicking around the office. It worked primarily because of her relationship with Tigh. It really sort of anchored that couple as something that was very special. It also made the fact that Tigh had killed his wife back on New Caprica even richer and more complicated and filled with more ironies." According to Moore, the concept of Ellen and Saul Tigh's relationship being more than an average husband-and-wife relationship went back to the pilot miniseries, but was not made part of the story arc for the two characters until the middle of season three. As writing progressed on the episode "Torn," the writing staff needed to explain why Gaius Baltar (James Callis) would only see the seven known Cylon models aboard the Cylon Basestar rather than all twelve. Moore came up with the concept of five special Cylon models that had yet to be revealed. When one of the Final Five Cylons was revealed to be Saul, Moore finally decided to make Ellen the fifth Cylon because "Tigh being revealed as a Cylon was such a profound shift in that character, such a big leap for the show, that it felt really natural that she was also a Cylon." Moore said, "They've always been Cylons, and there's something profound about that. They're a married couple who just have to go at it periodically and just have major issues and major problems. But the bond between the two of them was something that literally could not be broken. And I thought that was a really interesting and ultimately very positive thing to say." The couple has been described as Shakespearean “Battlestar-crossed lovers", and Vernon quipped that they "have the longest-standing relationship in the universe."
In 2009, Vernon said that Ellen was the most interesting, complex character she had played in her 25-year career. Jed Gottlieb of the Boston Herald wrote, "Ellen has proved to be a much more complex character than anyone ever imagined." Vernon had previously felt that Ellen was undervalued, underappreciated and underestimated, and said of the character after the reveal, "There is so much more to Ellen than her need for power... There's a depth to Ellen. Her heart is much bigger than anyone realized. People like to minimize her as a bitch, but I say she was just misunderstood. ... Ellen wants harmony in the fleet — she wants peace. That's her overall goal." Vernon said of Ellen in season four, "The Lady Macbeth scenario has seen it's day ... she's much more realized now in terms of who she is. And with that she carries an important agenda and an important intention." In "No Exit", Ellen makes the case to fellow Cylons Cavil and Sharon Valerii (Grace Park) that the value of humans is their ability to love, adapt, feel emotion, show compassion and be creative. She argues that Cylons have been programmed with the capacity for all these things, and must just choose to embrace them. Molyneaux noted of Ellen, "In the end, she's key to breaking the cycle of conflict with the Cylons."
Molyneaux wrote that even with her Cylon memories restored, "all versions of Ellen are consistent". and Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune concurred that "the two Ellens—the cool Cylon version and the impetuous human version—basically have the same programming." Several reviewers praised the elevated version of Ellen introduced in "No Exit", who is depicted as shrewd and commanding, yet compassionate, while noting that some of her core character flaws emerge in the next episode, "Deadlock". Marc Bernardin of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "It felt like Ellen was waging a tiny war within herself, fighting between the lesser angels and greater demons of her nature. Between her "duty" as the matriarch of the Final Five, and her unholy desire to wreak havoc on Tigh ... she forces Tigh into an impossible choice, between Ellen and Caprica [Six]; between duty and desire, between who he is and what he is ... Ellen is the poison apple." Ryan wrote, "The Ellen in ['Deadlock'] seemed more like the old Ellen we used to know—the Ellen who likes a drink, likes to make trouble and usually overplays her hand." Jevon Phillips of the Los Angeles Times was less impressed by Ellen Tigh's characterization, calling her "annoying" and the change from the "cool character" of the previous episode "disconcerting". Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger explained, "This episode makes clear that Cavil didn't invent entirely new personalities for his 'parents' when he imprisoned them in new bodies. The real version of Ellen is smarter than the one we knew, and maybe more regal, but she's still just as frakked-up, just as trapped in the ring of fire with Saul as she ever was."
Storyline
Season one