GALACTICA

This week’s episode focuses on Gaius Baltar who is my favorite character in the new series. (In the old series, I’d have to pick Starbuck for favorite.) And this episode seems to give me the most to write about of all the episodes so far this season.

First of all, we still have the mystery of Baltar’s hallucination of Number Six. We don’t know if it’s just Baltar having mental problems, or if, back on Caprica, the real Number Six who he was seeing implanted some sort of Cylon device into his body that causes him to have those hallucinations.

But no matter how you look at it, this does absolve some of Baltar’s guilt regarding the destruction of the colonies. He’s either mentally ill, or the Cylons have powerful ways of controlling the human mind. Whichever is the case, it means that Baltar is not fully capable of using proper judgment in making decisions.

And then I should also point out that Baltar didn’t know he was helping Cylons. He did give Number Six access to the computer system that he shouldn’t have given her, and yes that was illegal and done because the sex with her was so good, but he didn’t think he was endangering all of mankind by his actions.

From a moral standpoint, I say that Baltar can redeem himself if he builds a working Cylon detector and roots out all the Cylons still in the fleet. So far we’ve only seen four models (Boomer, the tour guide, the guy in the space station, and Number Six); we have no idea what the other eight models look. What we can be pretty sure of is that there are up to eight Cylon spies living with the fleet.

The writers of the show left us another mystery regarding Shelley Godfrey. Was she a real physical Cylon spy, or did the same device implanted in Baltar’s body which makes him hallucinate Number Six also cause many other members of the fleet to hallucinate her as well? Number Six, who usually gives Baltar advice, was strangely absent during the period of time between his accusation and exoneration. We are given the opportunity to believe that Number Six set the whole thing up to make Baltar seem more important.

But if Shelly Godrey was just an hallucination, wouldn’t her lack of existence have shown up on security tapes?

Others on the internet have commented on Adama’s inability to be seduced by Number Six. Good for him, but I have nothing else to add.

When Boomer and Helo had sex, Boomer’s spine lit up with a red glow. Human spines don’t glow red when we have sex. So there is a physical difference between humans and Cylons that causes the Cylon spine to glow red. This physical difference should be easy enough to detect if Baltar could just figure it out.