Battlestar Galactica: Could someone explain Gaius Baltar? **Season 1 spoilers only**

[theRogueRooster]

*** Please only include Season 1 spoilers ***

I have recently finished watching season 1 and am really digging the show. However, I don't get Gaius Baltar. Could someone explain his character to me? What is his connection with the cylons? Is he a cylon? What's up with "sexy cylon" always dominating his mind?

Thanks!
-tRR

 

[Ambrus]

IIRC, Baltar was the leading computer scientist on Caprica before the cylon attack as well as a vocal proponent for lifting the ban on artificial intelligence research which had been in place since the cylons revolted several decades earlier. Unknown to him at the time, a woman he was consorting with was in actuality a cylon agent sent to infiltrate the colonies. She aided him in his work and used Baltar to secretly gain control of the colonies' defense network and shut it down, opening the door for a surprise cylon invasion. The cylon he was with died in the attack (though her consciousness was supposedly uploaded to some other body somewhere by the cylons) but Gaius miraculously survived and escaped Caprica. In the first season, it is meant to be an ongoing mystery whether Gaius is a cylon sleeper agent himself, whether the sexy cylon that only he can see is somehow communicating and directing him via some unknown technology or whether Gaius is simply insane and suffering from his own delusion about the woman he loved/lusted after. Gaius himself is constantly trying to figure out which is true.

Hope that helps a bit without revealing any season two spoilers.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You probably didn't see the mini-series. Basically, Six (the sexy cylon) had used Baltar to infiltrate the Colonies, and became Baltar's lover. At her behest, Baltar baically betrayed Caprica. She presumably died in the nuclear explosion that took out Baltar's house on Caprica (in the opening credits you see her shielding him from the blast). Ever since, she's been showing up in his head. It's an open question even today if she is a hallucination or some kind of Cylon implant.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's an open question even today if she is a hallucination or some kind of Cylon implant.

Or an angel or envoy from (the Cylon) God.

 

[theRogueRooster]

Thanks for the help!

I just couldn't quite figure out what his deal was, but you fine folks have made things much clearer.

Thanks again!
-tRR

 

[LightPhoenix]

Speculating a bit, I've always been under the impression that Caprica-Six (for lack of a better descriptor barring season two spoilers) didn't just die in that explosion, but that she actively saved Baltar by protecting him with her body. That is to say, she sacrificed herself. Kind of like a mother saving a child from burning alive by sheltering the child. Except different, in ways I can't go into without S2 spoilers.