Relative State

Battlestar Galactica: Baltar and Six

January 9th, 2006

A couple of days ago, I watched the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica.

OK. Humanity made the machines, called Cylons. The Cylons rebelled, left, and attacked again. Humanity’s survivors are on the run in space. But you know this, or can find it out easily. That’s not what I want to talk about.

The series has a character called Gaius Baltar, who suddenly finds himself sharing his head with his former lover, a Cylon mimicking human form—Number Six.

Six sometimes appears as a hallucination to Baltar, in which case he must talk to her out loud, where others can hear. At other times she appears in the house in Baltar’s head (which is modeled on his old house, which was destroyed during the Cylon attack). Six can control Baltar’s body by appearing as a hallucination and literally twisting his arm, but to speak to others she must persuade or trick him to say what she wants. (Some of these scenes are extremely amusing.)

The writers are deliberatly ambiguous when it comes to the subject of Six’s nature. Is she some sort of manifestation of Baltar’s guilt at unintentionally betraying humanity? A Cylon plot to make Baltar secretly their agent? Is Baltar himself a human-mimicking Cylon and unaware of it? The writers seem to hint at many different possibilities without actually endorsing any.

I personally found some of Baltar’s and Six’s interactions to hit rather close to home at times. They have this very emotionally charged dynamic that is actually quite familiar.

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