Battlestar Galactica’s Gaius Baltar was a fascinating, albeit unscrupulous, character who many believed to be a Cylon. Some teases fed into this theory, but it was later shown that he was indeed not a Cylon. This proved to be for the best. Rendering Gaius Baltar as a Cylon, one of the Final Five, would have been detrimental to his character and Battlestar Galactica as a whole.
Gaius Baltar was a brilliant scientist on Caprica before the Second Cylon War. But he was embroiled in a relationship with a woman whom he later learned was a new type of Cylon, one with a human form. Gaius's unwitting collusion with his lover brought about the death of over 50 billion human beings, and he only escaped when this Cylon lover, Number Six, sacrificed herself to save him. Arising from his guilt, Gaius had near-constant visions of Six, and his conversations with her made him appear delusional to an observer. His story arc took him from traitor to vice president, and then to president, and then, while imprisoned, to the author of a manifesto titled My Triumphs, My Mistakes, which subsequently led to his role as a cult leader before the end of Battlestar Galactica. Throughout all of this, Gaius Baltar remained a charismatic, manipulative, arrogant, and self-serving character.
Battlestar Galactica teased the viewer with many hints that pointed to Gaius Baltar being a Cylon, hence the fan theory. His survival from the destruction of Caprica thanks to the protection of Number Six, when even she was destroyed, was too hard to believe. Gaius was even unsure of his state himself, and several scenes of the series showed him frantically asking, “Am I a Cylon? Am I one of you?” But the answer to the possibility of Gaius being a Cylon was always, easily, no. In Battlestar Galactica, there were only 12 Cylon models, excluding the Daniels, which had been destroyed by Number One long before the start of the story, and they were all accounted for. Gaius could not have been a Cylon, despite all the teases. It did seem, though, that he wanted to be one, which would have been a huge mistake.
How Battlestar Galactica's Ending Would Be Different If Gaius Baltar Was A Cylon
Gaius Baltar's desire to be a Cylon in Battlestar Galactica arose from the character's self-serving nature. As a human, he was a villain, a traitor to humankind. He committed at least two acts of treason and crimes against humanity. His fellow humans viewed him and his actions with hatred. But as one of Battlestar Galactica's Cylons, Gaius would be a hero for those same actions, and that is precisely how he wanted to be viewed. Gaius’s desire to conceal the things he had done gave rise to his intense guilt. His duplicity and frantic efforts to appear as something he was not are what made him who he was. Many of the things he did were central to the plot of the series, and without his humanity, these story elements would not have existed. His internal conflict made for good television. Without it, he would have been a very different character, and Battlestar Galactica would have been a very different show.
Gaius Baltar was despicable and weak. His cowardice drove his character and all storylines associated with him. In the show Battlestar Galactica, it was easy to hate Gaius Baltar. As its biggest villain, he was despised, but at the same time, he evoked a bit of sympathy for the untenable situations he found himself in, and his almost childlike demeanor drew in the viewer. Making him a Cylon would have wiped out his intense internal conflict, which is precisely what made him a great character and Battlestar Galactica a great show.