Character Development
According to the podcasts by producer Ronald D. Moore, Tyrol was originally intended to be a smaller role in the series and only had about fifteen lines in the miniseries. Aaron Douglas so impressed Moore with his ability to ad lib dialogue that the character was expanded in both the miniseries and the first season. The original first season story arc would have had Tyrol and Sharon forming a family unit with the character of Boxey. After the Boxey character was dropped, Tyrol's role as a deck chief became more prominent, and he became the representative of the working class in the Colonial Fleet. Moore also credits actor Aaron Douglas for coming up with names for recurring 'knuckle-dragger' characters such as Tarn and Diana Seelix. Douglas stated that he felt a great deal of reluctance towards the idea of Tyrol becoming a cylon until he realized the expanded opportunities for the character. In the final podcast for the series, Moore acknowledged that the island Tyrol exiled himself to was in fact Britain (The original idea was that he settled on Vancouver Island, though due to the fact that the idea of him settling Scotland was so popular with fans, that is what was made canon). In the Netflix "Watch Instantly" streaming version of the series finale, Tyrol's decision to settle on an island is omitted.
Caprica showrunner Kevin Murphy stated that, had that show gotten a second season, Tyrol would have appeared in an episode, meeting Zoe Graystone in a virtual reality world and giving her help in developing the first "skinjob" Cylons.
While it may be a coincidence, Tyrol's forename, Galen, is one of the series' many homages (intentional or otherwise) to the Planet of the Apes franchise. Galen was the name of Roddy McDowall's character in the 1974 television series who, like Galen Tyrol, was a non-human aiding human military astronauts and surveying a post-apocalyptic "Earth".
Read more about this topic: Galen Tyrol
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