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Gaius Baltar Is A Cylon

Created by dave. Last edited by dave, 18 years and 92 days ago. Viewed 9,256 times. #3
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I Think Gaius Baltar Is A Cylon

(written after Six Degrees Of Separation)

Jenn and I have been discussing Dr. Baltar's invisible girlfriend, Number 6, and what it means for the story line. Jenn's contention was that Number 6 is real, and is a manifestation of the Cylon's direct influence over Dr. Baltar. My opinion was that Number 6 was merely a self-induced manifestation of Dr. Baltar's guilt complex over his aparrent betrayal of his species. I thought this because:

  • Number 6 has been obsessed with God and religion, and thus far no other cylons have expressed opinions on this topic; and
  • the manifestation appears to be aware of what is going on in Dr. Baltar's immediate surroundings.
Granted, there has been very little cylon-human interaction (and by that, I mean a conversation between a human and a cylin within a context of both participants knowing exactly who each other and themselves are) which would lead to a discussion on religion. However, at this point Number 6 is the only one on the record (and all of that in Dr. Baltar's head) about God in any depth.

Secondly, if the manifestation is truely real, then either the Cylons have some form of make-Cylon-selectively-invisible device, or they have some way of communicating instantaneously over great distances without knowing precisely where the receiver is (because presumably if they could locate the receiver, they would just jump in with a base-star and wipe everybody out -- for more discussion on this, see Battlestar Galactica/Cylon Tactical Errors, error #1). Either would presumably require a lot of power, and would be detectable either directly or indirectly (like through the energy field's influence on local devices). The manifestation being purely a product of Dr. Baltar's own guilt complex is the simpler explanation here, not requiring any fancy technologies.

However, I was washing the dishes last weekend and thinking (there are always dishes or bottles or to wash, so I spend most of my dish-washing time thinking) that perhaps we should approach the problem from an alternative angle: let's assume that the cylon in Dr. Baltar's head is real, and see if we can reverse-engineer a consistant scenario with this being the case.

So, hmmm. Dr. Baltar is acting pretty psychotically. The cylon still works as a manifestation of his guilt; however, the guilt could be the psychological lever the cylons need to manipulate him. It still leaves the communication problem over great distances.

And then it occured to me:

  • cylon copies have their memories snap around between instances at the time of death, so there is obviously some kind of psionic vector here that does not depend on knowing in advance the location of at least one of the endpoints
  • Boomer is acting kind of psychotic, and we know she's a cylon...
Hmmm, maybe Dr. Baltar is a cylon!

With this reasoning, it is not so far a reach to assume that some cylons can send their thought and receive the thoughts of other cylons, even over great distances.

It also explains Dr. Baltar's rather miraculous survival during the holocaust; and it explains Number 6's explanation of who she is and what she got Dr. Baltar to do for her. Otherwise, there was no need (well, except the dramatical expositional requirement) for that particular talk.

I figure this will be drawn out over a couple of seasons, as there is no need to play this particular card for quite some time, especially as everyone's attention has been drawn to Boomer as the obvious insider.

Now I'm not so sure how this meshes with Number 6's brief interlude as a person that the rest of the Galactica crew could see. Clearly there is a "real" Number 6 present on Galactica; and clearly the "real" one can communicate with the one in Dr. Baltar's head.

The main question is: what do the Cylons want? Once we know that, their behaviors will undoubtably make much more sense.

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