bsg: on baltar

Is Baltar a Cylon? Bear with me a moment, and I think you'll agree that it does make some degree of sense, given what we know about Baltar specifically and the Cylons in general.

Everyone else in the science fiction-watching world is enjoying the third season of "Battlestar Galactica." Still, cut me some slack. Cable TV is ridiculously expensive and time-consuming. I can buy on DVD an entire season of a show that's worth watching for less than I would spend on a single month of cable. I've just finished watching Season 2.5 and have some thoughts on where the series may be headed. If I seem a little behind-the-times in some of my thoughts, remember why, and see if my ideas have any merit.

I believe we're given the first and best clue that Baltar is a Cylon as early as the miniseries itself. The morning of the Cylon attack, Six reveals both her nature and her mission to Baltar while the bombs are going off. At the end of their conversation, she pushes him down in front of her, and debris thrown by a nuclear blast hurtles through the window of his house, blowing out the windows and throwing glass and everything else into the room.

My reaction when I saw this was pretty similar to the reaction I had when I saw Bruce Willis' character in "The Sixth Sense" walking around Philadelphia after being shot in the abdomen: "Come on, there is no way he could have survived that."

So, what if Baltar didn't survive? There's no reason his consciousness couldn't have been downloaded into a new body, leaving that new body to wander around outside Caprica City in shock. (And isn't it just an amazing coincidence that Baltar — in shock but not seriously injured after the attack — just happened to be one of the people to find the raptor piloted by Sharon Valerii, who turned out to be a Cylon sleeper agent?) Given that the Cylons are capable of creating false memories, such as Sharon's childhood memories, he very possibly could "remember" leaving the ruins of his house and wandering outside Caprica City until good fortune brought him to Sharon and Helo.

Other points in favor of Baltar being a Cylon: his advanced knowledge of cybernetics and artificial intelligence; his ability to create a Cylon detector; his correct identification of the newscaster in the miniseries as a newscaster; his ruthless and self-serving amorality, which is most like the Cylon mentality; and of course his strange connection with Six.

The show has been deliberately vague about the nature of that connection. Baltar initially speculated that her appearances were externalized expressions of his guilt over his inadvertent role in the Cylon attack. And when Six explains that she had implanted a chip in his brain one night that allowed her to converse with him, he promptly countered that such an explanation was his own rational mind trying to resolve the impossibility of his experiences. Later, in Season 2, they switch explanations. Six tells Baltar that there's no chip in his head and that she's just a figment of his imagination, and he's so convinced that he was a chip in his head that he orders a brain scan. The scan turns up nothing inorganic in his head; still, that's no reason to discount the possibility. Since the Cylons are evidently adept at bio-organic engineering, there's no reason to believe that a Cylon chip would have to be silicon.

The biggest clue, I think, comes in the episode "Download," where we see the story for the first time from the Cylon perspective. As Caprica Six, the one who was killed in the nuclear bombardment, awakens in her new body, she is shocked to see Baltar with the Cylons standing outside the vat where she has just been activated. He never explains how this is possible, but for the remainder of the episode, it's clear that his relationship to her is virtually identical to the relationship the Ghost Six has to Baltar on the Galactica.

It's possible that the Ghost Baltar is an externalized aspect of Caprica Six's guilt over her role in the genocide. I'm sure she's come to understand him that way. But for both Caprica Six and Baltar to be affected the same way is too striking to be nothing more than coincidence. And if the distance between the Colonial fleet and Caprica has been too great for dead Cylons to download into new bodies, it's too great to carry on a form of communication that involves complex mental imaging, immediate responses, and emotion ranging through anger, sexual arousal, and condescension.

I think instead something is manipulating Baltar and Caprica Six toward a goal. Both have been maneuvered into positions of power and influence, Baltar as president of the Colonies and Caprica Six as a war hero who is able to persuade the Cylons to adopt a new approach to dealing with humans.

The Ghost Six repeatedly has spoken to Baltar about God, the plans he has, and the role Baltar will play (and is playing) in that. To some extent, Baltar has started to believe her. I'd wager a guess that the Cylon God — whoever or whatever it is — is the one moving the puppet strings here.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Cylon God turns out to be a Cylon (let's call it One), nor if it turned out in some way to be Baltar himself.