Gaius Baltar

This article is about the re-imagined character. For the original series character, see Count Baltar.

Template:BSG Character Gaius Baltar is a fictional character in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. He is portrayed by actor James Callis.

Character biography

Gaius Baltar claims to be from the colony of Aerelon, a largely agricultural world that was known as the "food basket for the twelve worlds." He was born and raised on a dairy farm outside of the town of Cuffle's Breath Wash. At the age of ten, finding the Aerelon dialect to be detrimental to his career dreams, he trained himself to speak with a Caprican dialect in hopes that one day he might be considered a citizen of one of the more respected and wealthy colonies, Caprica specifically. This implies that a number of colonies (for example Sagittaron and Gemenon) are not only poor worlds but also viewed as intellectual and cultural backwaters. According to his account, Baltar left Aerelon after his 18th birthday.

Baltar eventually became a brilliant computer scientist and an important defense researcher on Caprica, and a personal friend to President Richard Adar. He was perhaps best known for his controversial views on the research into Strong AI, saying in an interview: "The ban on research and development into artificial intelligence is, as we all know, a hold-over from the Cylon Wars. Quite frankly, I find this to be an outmoded concept; it serves no useful purpose except to impede our efforts."

At the onset of the miniseries, he is involved in an intense sexual relationship with a beautiful blonde woman. Believing her to be a corporate rival, and desiring a sexual relationship with her, he gives her access to the Colonial defense mainframe. On the day the Cylons attack humanity, she reveals that the she is an advanced Cylon (known as Number Six) and that she used the information given to her to shut down the Colonial defenses.

Having unintentionally brought about the near-annihilation of the human species, Baltar flees Caprica when Karl Agathon gives up his place on a Raptor, feeling that his own life is less important to save than a famed scientist's. The Raptor returns to the Battlestar Galactica, where Baltar endears himself to Laura Roslin, the new President of the remnants of the Twelve Colonies. He secretly furthers his own interests above all else, particularly concealing his involvement in the genocide of humanity.

Baltar is haunted by visions of Number Six, with whom he converses often. It is 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 disclaims), or whether they are a manifestation of Baltar's own mind.

The vision of Number Six manipulates Baltar through his fear of discovery — such manipulation may represent the Cylons influencing Baltar to work to their ends, or it may represent his own subconscious desperately seeking to avoid discovery. The vision also lends him an edge, as it grants him unique knowledge and helps him overcome weaknesses in his personality.

The model of Number Six who had seduced him (now known as Caprica-Six by the other Cylons), began to experience similar visions after her consciousness was downloaded into a new body. Whereas Baltar experienced visions of her, she experienced visions of him. Both visions acted in similar ways: they were seemingly crueler than the person they were based on and manipulated the affected party against his or her own species.

In the episode "Colonial Day", Roslin uses Baltar's popularity and charisma to have him chosen as her vice president. In the second season episode "Home, Part II" Baltar undergoes a brain scan similar to an MRI which reveals no sign of a computer chip or any other foreign object in his brain. While this briefly leads him to think that he had truly gone insane, he then realizes 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 tells him that the first Human/Cylon Hybrid will be born in the ship's brig, and soon after the Caprican version of the Cylon Sharon Valerii (pregnant with the human Karl Agathon's child) is imprisoned in it. When Baltar confronts Six with this, she states that she was neither a computer chip nor a hallucination. When Baltar then asks just who or what she is, she simply replies that she is "an angel of God sent here to protect you, to guide you, and to love you."

Baltar's relationship with Six was further complicated by the appearance of Gina, another Six copy who had been posing as a maintenance worker on the Battlestar Pegasus. After discovering Gina, who had been repeatedly tortured and raped by Pegasus crewmembers, Baltar grows fond of her, making the illusory Six jealous. He eventually helps Gina escape from the Pegasus and arranges a place for her safety. Gina later forms a pacifist movement within the fleet, though it is noteworthy their methods are not always peaceful, and Baltar is initially reluctant to support the organisation despite his affections for her. Later, however, after saving President Roslin from terminal cancer, he reads the letter (a custom performed by all presidents, written to their successors) she had left for him to be opened upon her death which notes his "selfish nature" and asks that he overcome it for the well-being of the fleet. Angered by this, he gives Gina and the movement the nuclear bomb Adama afforded him in an earlier episode.

Having been offended by Roslin's letter, and encouraged by both his visions of Number Six and by political firebrand and outspoken Roslin-critic (and Baltar's former opponent in the race for Vice President) Tom Zarek, Baltar announces his intention to run against incumbent Laura Roslin for the presidency. He does this by surprising both her and the press at a press conference after Roslin's announcement of a moratorium on abortion. Baltar hijacks the conference, establishing himself as a candidate and secular scientific alternative to the moulded prophet-like image of Roslin.

Baltar, with Zarek as his close political advisor, proceeds to run a bitterly contentious campaign against Roslin. During most of the election, however, he is losing ground to Roslin, and is able to score political victories only by painting her as a dangerous religious fundamentalist. With little time remaining before the election, a desolate but habitable planet is accidentally discovered in a region of space where heavy electromagnetic interference make navigation and long-range observation very difficult. Baltar, although he has no personal desire to settle on the planet, announces that he will begin immediate civilian settlement of "New Caprica" if elected. The election promptly swings in his favor and, after an attempted conspiracy to commit voting fraud fails to keep Roslin in power, he is sworn in as president.

Just prior to his inauguration, Baltar visits Gina, who makes love to him for the first time (she had previously refused physical intimacy, having suffered severe emotional and physical scarring from being repeatedly raped aboard the Pegasus. During the inauguration itself, she detonates the nuclear warhead that Baltar had given her, destroying the luxury liner Cloud 9 and killing herself in the process, but alerting (unbeknownst to the humans) the Cylons to the presence of the planet.

Following this apparent act of Cylon nuclear terrorism, Admiral Adama urges Baltar to immediately focus on internal security and investigate how a Cylon agent could have carried out the bombing. Baltar refuses, however, and stubbornly proceeds with plans for settlement.

Baltar remains in office for at least one year, but his feelings of guilt (or possibly just his fear of being discovered) regarding his involvement in both the fall of the colonies and Gina's suicide bombing, combined with the stress of the presidency and his inexperience in dealing with policy matters, have led him to substance abuse and womanising, which he does not hide from his aide Felix Gaeta. Life on New Caprica has turned out to be extremely difficult, with the civilian population living in extremely rough conditions, and with shortages of basic supplies like antibiotics persisting. In addition, Baltar's government is in the midst of a major labor dispute with a union led by Galen Tyrol, who is advocating a strike for workers' rights. Baltar indicates to Gaeta that he may be willing to jail union organisers if the labor disputes continue.

The political difficulties faced by Baltar's administration are soon made irrelevant, however, when a Cylon fleet arrives in orbit of New Caprica. The remaining military fleet, which has been operating using skeleton crews, jumps away, leaving New Caprica to be occupied by the Cylons. A Cylon delegation, which includes the reborn versions of both the Number Six who had originally seduced Baltar (now known by the other Cylons as Caprica-Six) and the Sharon Valerii who was originally stationed on Galactica, lands in the human settlement and accepts Baltar's surrender.

According to a Doral model Cylon, in the 134 days since the Cylons landed on New Caprica, most humans have come to consider Baltar a traitor and would rejoice in his death. Compounding his alienation to his people, he has been forced at gunpoint to sign an execution order for hundreds of humans.

After the Colonials evacuate New Caprica, Baltar and Caprica-Six discover Hera, the child of Sharon Valerii whom Six predicted would be born in Galactica's Brig. Roslin, it turns out, had hidden Hera's existence by falsifying her death and secretly allowing a young mother to adopt the child as her own.

In the episode "Collaborators," we find Baltar living on a Cylon Basestar in a room furnished with no more than a bed and table, guarded by a Centurion. It is here that Caprica-Six tells Baltar that she has had a change of heart and has let her feelings for him cloud her judgement, presumably ending their relationship. However, by the end of the episode, it is indicated that she has cast the tie-breaking vote amongst the Cylons to allow Baltar to remain alive aboard the Cylon Basestar.

More recently, he was allowed to investigate a stricken Basestar that had fallen afoul of a human disease carried by an ancient probe, but he failed to mention the origin of the disease, resulting in his being tortured by a highly suspicious Number Three. During his torture, Baltar was led by the Number Six in his head to induce some form of spiritual epiphany in Number Three, and has subsequently been observed having repeated ménage à trois with both Six and Three. However, over the later portion of Baltar's stay on the Basestar, he grows closer to the Three model known as D'Anna, who becomes obsessed with finding the identities of the "Final Five" Cylons. Pondering his own identity, and if he himself is a Cylon, Baltar is forced to betray Caprica Six and align with Three. Together, in the episodes "Eye of Jupiter" and "Rapture," they defy the other six Cylon models and travel to the surface of an algae planet in search for an ancient ruined temple, which Three believes will show her the identities of the Final Five. On the surface, however, D'Anna collapses before she can tell Baltar if he is a Cylon or not, and Chief Tyrol gets the drop on Baltar and knocks him out. The ex-president is then transported back to Galactica in a body bag and sent to the brig.

Following an abortive suicide attempt in his cell, Baltar is first subjected to a radical form of hallucinogen-based interrogation and then offered the possibility of escaping execution in exchange for cooperation, as Adama, Tigh and Roslin seek to learn what Baltar knows about any clues to Earth's location the Cylons may have obtained from the temple. When both of these stratagems fail, Roslin rejects Adama's suggestion that Baltar be made to "simply disappear" and orders him to be given a fair trial for his crimes. In the course of his interrogation, Baltar admits his complicity in the original Cylon attack on the Colonies, thereby making a successful defense all the more difficult. However, all that Baltar can actually plead guilty to in a later court proceeding is leaking defense secrets to a rival defense contractor: something for which several years of imprisonment might be called for but hardly death. As for his other treacheries, he could testify that everything he did was meant to save his own skin after the fact. At the worse, that could mean a life sentence in prison with later parole.

Roslin decides that Baltar will be given a fair trial per his request, even after a warning from Tom Zarek, now Vice President, that doing so will provoke dangerous unrest among the fleet's civilian and military populations alike. Roslin assigns Lee Adama to assemble a team of jurists to serve as Baltar's judges. Meanwhile, Baltar smuggles writings out of his cell through his lawyer, which are published in a memoir, My Triumphs, My Mistakes, in which he attempts to explain his actions to the public and foment class warfare by describing the fleet as a bifurcated society, accusing the elite upper class of militarism and professional civilians of exploiting the less well-educated worker class. The book becomes popular among certain segments of the fleet populace, despite Roslin's attempts to suppress its distribution, including workers on the tylium refinery ship and Chief Galen Tyrol's flight-deck maintenance crew, as well as his wife Cally Tyrol. This leads to Tyrol's calling a general strike and exacerbates the fleet's already strained social order.

As his trial proceeds, Baltar's first lawyer is killed in an explosion aboard a sabotaged Raptor. His second attorney, Romo Lampkin, survives a similar attempt on his life. Lee Adama then joins Baltar's defense team, and his conduct therein causes him to fall out with his father and resign his military commission. In the end, Baltar is found not guilty for his crimes, with Admiral Adama casting the deciding vote in Baltar's favor. Roslin is disgusted that Baltar is now free as she still truly believes that Baltar was involved in sabotaging the colonial defenses in the attack. As the Cylon fleet attacks at the Ionian Nebula, Baltar is led away to safety by three female followers of his work, one of whom had asked him to bless her child earlier.

Treacheries

• Gave access to a classified Colonial defense systems computer program to the Cylon agent later known as Caprica Six with whom he had a two year relationship and whose Cylon heritage was unknown.
  • Result: Massive nuclear assault on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and subsequent occupation by the Cylons. The genocide of 20 billion people, leading to the near annihilation of the Colonial civilization and leaving approximately 50,000 survivors.

• Did not alert anyone that Lt. j.g. Sharon "Boomer" Valerii was a Cylon.
  • Result: Various, including the attempted assassination of Commander Adama

• Gave a nuclear weapon to the Number Six model Cylon known as Gina
  • Result: The destruction of the ship Cloud Nine, plus other civilian ships and the people onboard resulting in an unknown number of dead likely in the thousands. The resulting radiation 'spike' alerted the Cylons to New Caprica's location.

• Manipulated at gunpoint by the Cylons in his position as President of the Colonies during the New Caprica occupation by the Cylons. This included signing a warrant authorizing the deaths of many humans, including Laura Roslin and Tom Zarek but this first and only official mass execution was foiled.
  • Result: Oppression of the New Caprica residents, including death squads and political imprisonment, and unknown numbers of dead civilians resulting in a post-exodus population just over 41,000.

• Led the Number Three model Cylon known as D'Anna Biers to the hybrid Cylon/human baby, Hera Agathon.
  • Result: Nuclear explosion on New Caprica averted.

• Helped the Cylons in their search for Earth.
  • Result: Full account remains to be seen. He does, however, take D'Anna to the Temple of Five. He is discovered by troops from Galactica and knocked unconscious. Galactica discovers the "road map" to Earth, leaving the Cylons empty-handed.

• Spread propaganda and radical political ideals while imprisoned in order to win public favor in the fleet.
  • Result: Prompted disenfranchised workers to revolt and stage a general strike which highlighted inequality and forced the Caprican 'aristocracy', including the President, to allow Tyrol to continue as leader of the union.

External links

• Battlestar Wiki biography