Monday, February 27, 2006

Caprica Six and Baltar

Back on the popular culture front for a moment (which is a fun thing to do when breaking from grading midterms), I've been getting a lot of traffic over the weekend to my post in which I claim that the manifestation of Number 6 in Baltar's head is neither madness nor a cylon. The most recent episode, in which we find out that the Number Six who was Baltar's lover on Caprica (a.k.a. "Caprica Six") sees her own hallucination of Gaius Baltar. Apparently, many people out there think this proves my theory to be correct. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it proves it, but it is certainly suggestive.

This was really a wonderful plot twist, because it establishes for us the idea of a Fifth Column in both the human and cylon ranks -- a Fifth Column that is being controlled by a third force, neither human nor cylon. In all likelyhood, this third force is the cylon god (since both Baltar's Six and Caprica Six's Baltar seem very interested in god's plans), but that's far from certain.

By the way, following the Aeneid storyline, the trailer for the season finale looks like the fleet is going to find Carthage (a habitable planet) and be tempted to stay. The real question is who will stay behind on Carthage, who will go on to Rome (Earth), and who will be Dido (whom I predict will die in a nuclear blast visible to the questors in space as they are leaving)?

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:22 AM

    you should meet the pest control guy who sprays my house once a month -- he saw me watching Star Trek once, we talked about science fiction a bit, and now he can't stop talking about Battlestar Galactica everytime I see him. it seems like an addictive show. (I guess I should probably try watching it first before I pass judgement, eh?)

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  2. Of all the developments on BSG, nothing has stunned/dumbfounded/delighted me more than the reveal that Carpica Six has an imaginary Baltar since the "Boomer is a frakkin' Cylon!" moment from the miniseries. I literally stopped breathing for a second. As to what is causing the competing imaginary friends, the Cylon God and the Lords of Kobol are the only two I can even conceive of it being. We'll have to see, I guess.

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  3. Interestingly, in his podcast on this episode, Ron Moore suggests that in both cases (Galactica Baltar and Caprica Six) that we are seeing psycosis manifesting.

    I will hopefully get around to posting on this whole issue at some point.

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