Thursday, October 30, 2003
What does Baltar do all day in that dark room?
In the episodes in which Baltar is in command of a Cylon Base Ship, every time we see him, he’s sitting in this chair that rises many feet above a large dark command room. His back his to the door, and then Lucifer walks into the room, and his chair swivels around to face him.
It must be quite a lonely and boring life for Baltar just sitting there in an empty room in the dark with absolutely nothing to do or to look at. There doesn’t even seem to be a TV screen or a computer in there.
The detractors of the show would say that this is just another example of how the show doesn’t make any sense. But it’s obvious, to anyone who thinks about it, that the command room with the chair is just for ceremonial purposes. Baltar is probably in his nearby living quarters enjoying all the luxuries that a Base Ship can offer, and then he decides he wants to talk to Lucifer, so he walks into the command room, climbs up into the chair, and then he punches a button on the chair which summons Lucifer.
This bring up the question of why he always has to talk to Lucifer under such formal conditions. Wouldn’t it be easier if they just gathered around a conference table? The answer is that Cylon society is extremely hierarchical, and superiors must always talk to inferiors in a manner such that the inferior knows his place. This is the difference between the humans and the Cylons. On the Galactica, Adama is often chummy with his crew, and they just hang out on the bridge and talk.
The only problem with this explanation is that we often see Lucifer being very familiar with the Cylon Centurions who escort him into the command room. Maybe this is because the Centurions are so far beneath Lucifer that he doesn’t have to prove anything. The Centurion automatically knows he’s inferior to a model such as Lucifer.
UPDATE: I wrote the above after watching the first few episodes from the DVDs. But then I noticed that in the later episodes, like "The Living Legend", Baltar comes out of his command room and visits other parts of the Base Ship, and even flies around in a Cylon Raider. Maybe as he becomes more used to being in command of a Cylon Base Ship, he becomes less worried about demonstrating his authority by sitting in the big chair?