Gaius Baltar

Dr. Gaius Baltar was an accomplished computer scientist of Aerilon descent whose ambition and political connections made him a celebrity advocate for re-introducing software networking to military vessels after the Cylon War. Manipulated by the Cylon agent later known as Caprica Six, he gave her access to the defense software she used to cripple the Colonial Fleet, allowing the Cylons to kill billions in mere hours. Escaping among the survivors aboard Galactica's convoy, he spent the years that followed guided and tormented by a vision of Six visible to him alone, drawn through science, politics, and religion toward an unlikely redemption. (Battlestar Galactica, miniseries; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Origins and the destruction of the Colonies#

Baltar claimed to be from the colony of Aerilon, and at the age of ten trained himself out of the Aerilonian dialect into the Caprican one, hoping to be taken for a citizen of a wealthier world. He was the son of a farmer, a background he kept hidden as he rose to scientific celebrity in the years before the Fall. (Battlestar Galactica, miniseries; Battlestar Galactica, "Dirty Hands")

He became involved with a beautiful woman he believed worked for a defense contractor, and to deepen the relationship he gave her access to the highly classified Colonial defense mainframe, an act of treason. In return she helped design a navigation program for Colonial warships, covertly seeding it with backdoors. When the Cylons attacked, they used those backdoors to disable fighter squadrons and sabotage capital ships outright. The woman revealed herself as the Cylon model Number Six, later known as Caprica Six, who had used his access to bring down the Colonies' defenses. She shielded him with her own body from the blast that destroyed his home. Karl "Helo" Agathon then gave up his place on a Raptor for the famed scientist, and Baltar reached Galactica, where he set about ingratiating himself with President Laura Roslin and concealing his role in the genocide. (Battlestar Galactica, miniseries)

Scientist for the Fleet#

Aboard Galactica, Baltar was haunted by visions of Six, with whom he conversed constantly, never certain whether she was an implant, a manifestation of his own mind, or something else. The vision manipulated him through his fear of exposure while granting him knowledge he could not otherwise possess. To deflect suspicion when he realized a Cylon device had been planted in the Combat Information Center, he framed a civilian named Aaron Doral, and soon afterwards he was given the job of building a blood-based Cylon detector. Falsely accused of treason on the basis of fabricated photographic evidence, he was cleared when the photograph was shown to be a fake, leaving his standing stronger than ever. Another threat came in the episode "33", when a defence researcher aboard the Olympic Carrier claimed to know how the Colonies' defences had been breached. (Battlestar Galactica, miniseries; Battlestar Galactica, "33"; Battlestar Galactica, "Water"; Battlestar Galactica, "Six Degrees of Separation")

His apparent gifts deepened his sense of being chosen. Asked to guess the target of a bomb run against a Cylon mining base, he pointed at random and was correct, and came to believe God had guided his hand. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Hand of God")

Vice Presidency and Presidency#

As Caprica's delegate to the Quorum of Twelve, Baltar was elected Vice President with Roslin's backing. He then ran against her for the presidency, far behind in the polls until the accidental discovery of a habitable planet let him promise immediate settlement; the issue swung the election and he was sworn in. During the inauguration, a nuclear warhead he had earlier handed to the Cylon prisoner Gina Inviere destroyed the luxury liner Cloud Nine. (Battlestar Galactica, "Colonial Day"; Battlestar Galactica, "Epiphanies"; Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

A year of settlement on New Caprica brought hardship, and when a Cylon fleet arrived in orbit Baltar accepted their delegation's terms and surrendered. He learned the Cylons had detected the colony from the light of that same nuclear blast a year before. He remained President only as a figurehead, forced at gunpoint to sign execution orders, though he repeatedly urged the Cylons that their occupation could not succeed. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Precipice")

Trial and redemption#

During the Exodus, Baltar and Caprica Six found the hybrid child Hera, and when the Cylons fled New Caprica he left with them aboard their fleet, where he lived for a time and grew close to the Number Three model D'Anna in her search for the identities of the Final Five. Knocked out by Galen Tyrol in the Temple of Five, he was returned to Galactica in a body bag and imprisoned. D'Anna, Caprica Six and the other Cylons he lived among are profiled in our rundown of Battlestar Galactica characters. (Battlestar Galactica, "Exodus, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Torn"; Battlestar Galactica, "Rapture")

Subjected to interrogation, Baltar admitted his unwitting complicity in the original attack. His smuggled memoir, recasting the Fleet as a class society, made him popular among its working ranks even as it sowed unrest. At his trial, with Lee Adama on his defense team arguing that the Fleet had forgiven many out of necessity, he was acquitted by a vote of three to two, William Adama among those voting in his favor, to Roslin's disgust. (Battlestar Galactica, "Taking a Break from All Your Worries"; Battlestar Galactica, "Dirty Hands"; Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II")

After his acquittal Baltar became the reluctant prophet of a largely female following that had built a shrine to him, preaching, under his vision's direction, that God loves all people regardless of their sins. During the assault on the Cylon Resurrection Hub he was gravely injured and, delirious, confessed to Roslin that he was to blame for the attacks; she let him bleed until her conscience moved her to save him. (Battlestar Galactica, "Escape Velocity"; Battlestar Galactica, "The Hub")

The final battle and after#

When Gaeta and Zarek mutinied, Baltar lent Roslin his transmitter and fled with her to the rebel baseship until order was restored. He persuaded Adama to arm his religious group as a counterweight to disorder, cementing his leadership of it. When the last Raptor left a doomed Galactica, Baltar chose to stay and finally do something noble, fighting as part of the reserve during the battle at the Cylon Colony. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Oath"; Battlestar Galactica, "Deadlock"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

There Baltar and Caprica Six found Hera and carried her into the CIC, where his speech to the Cylon leader Cavil, in which he confessed that his atheism had given way to belief in unexplained, supernatural influence, helped Saul Tigh broker the truce that ended the war. On the new Earth, Baltar joined the survey crew and, observing Hera with Caprica Six, made peace at last with following in his father's footsteps as a farmer. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")