Gaius Baltar

In the Battlestar Galactica remake series, Gaius Baltar is a brilliant scientist who is a key player in the Twelve Colonies' defense research.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the onset of the miniseries, Baltar is involved in an intense sexual relationship with a beautiful blonde woman. Believing the woman to be an employee of a rival computer corporation, Baltar slips to his lover certain computer secrets from his defense work. The woman (known as "Number Six") reveals to Baltar that she is in fact an advanced version of Cylon, and that the Cylons will use the computer secrets that Baltar has given her to infiltrate the Colonial defense systems, disable the Colonial military and attack the Twelve Worlds. That day the Cylons launch their attack and destroy most of humanity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Having thus recklessly (although unintentionally) brought about the near-annihilation of the human race, Baltar manages to flee Caprica (Helo gives up his position on the ship to save Baltar), finding refuge with the Galactica and its refugee fleet of civilian ships. There Baltar endears himself to Laura Roslin, the new President of the remnants of the Twelve Colonies, while nonetheless continuing to look out for his own interests above all else -- particularly his interest in preventing knowledge of his role in the genocide of humanity from being revealed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Baltar is haunted by visions of Number Six, with whom he converses often. It is intentionally left ambiguous whether these visions are the product of a computer chip that Number Six implanted in Baltar's brain while they were together on Caprica (the explanation originally given by a Number Six vision, but which she later refutes); or whether the visions are a manifestation of Baltar's own mind, as Baltar grows insane from the guilt that he feels over his unwitting role in the genocide of humanity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The vision of Number Six manipulates Baltar through his fear of anyone discovering his betrayal -- such manipulation may represent the Cylons influencing Baltar to work to their ends, or it may represent Baltar's own subconscious desperately seeking to avoid a discovery of his role in the Cylon attack.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In a twist of events, Baltar was later voted in as Roslin's Vice President. In the second season episode "Home, Part II" Baltar underwent a brain scan similar to an MRI which revealed no sign of a computer chip or any other foreign object in Baltar's brain. While this briefly led Baltar to think that he had truly gone insane, he then realized that the vision of Number Six he sees could not possibly be a hallucination generated by his subconscious mind, because she is aware of facts that his own mind could not possibly know. Number Six told Baltar that the first Human/Cylon Hybrid would be born in the ship's brig, and soon after the pregnant Caprica-Boomer was imprisoned in it. When Baltar confronted Six with this, she admited that she was both not a computer chip as well as not a hallucination produced by Baltar going crazy. When Baltar then asked just who or what she was, she simply replied that she's "an angel of God sent here to protect you".

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~