Or there never would have been a strike because they all would have been too scared of summary execution.
I would argue the opposite-- they are ALL heroic, in their way. Yes, even Baltar. Well, maybe not. 
Despite their flaws, I find something admirable in all of the Galactica characters, even the ones I find insufferable.
My apologies for turning up late to this party, I only watched the episode Tuesday and scanned the replies yesterday to catch up.
I have some different points, I might be imagining things, or this might never be covered by the end of the series…
Something strange happened in the episode, which raised my eyebrows and made me consider and theories just now.
When Baltar was getting beaten up by the soldier, and couldn’t stand, his ghost helped him stand up.
To me, that little moment meant they had physical form. Never hinted at before.
But that means, there might be 4 different factions in BSG
Humans. Not subdividing into the pro-anti government etc bunch. The good guys.
The seven. Want to kill humans. Or indeed the 3 or 4 currently at war with each other (It was unclear to me as to how many were killed off in the big attack in last episode). This could be the three now (with one in sleep mode).
The five. Which strangely the seven don’t know details of. We have no real knowledge of agenda. Callie getting chucked out airlock was first sign to me that they were anti-human or evil. I was previously thinking this lot were pro human, and Starbuck was one of them, guiding the humans to earth.
The ghosts. As seen by Baltar, Tigh and Blondie… Since humans and cylons have seen them (unless Baltar is a cylon, then only cylons see them… Or am I wrong). Yet blondie has seen hers (as a Baltar), so they aren’t part of group 1) or 2). So probably part of group 3. They seem to have some form.
She jerked him around by his tie, as I recall. 
Ok fair enough, the point being she had physical impact on reality, which as far as I know, hasn’t happened before right?
It looked like she lifted him up, and it looked like she dragged him around by his tie, but nobody who saw it freaked out. I say since it’s a story it could go either way. I hope we find out.
It has happened before, I think. Early on, his mental Six was pushing him around the corridors. This is the first time that it has happened so blatantly in front of everyone though.
The idea that the mental 6 could also be physical would explain how easily the Shelly Godfrey persona was able to appear and disappear in season 1. Was she really Mental 6 all along?
It’s happened a few times; I remember the corridor, and another time in the bathroom on Colonial One, she slammed his face into the mirror, and I think a couple other times. I recall at least once there being a witness, but they just kind of looked at him like, uh, that guy is acting a little weird, and walked away. This is definitely the first time it’s been in front of many people.
Didn’t Mental 6 once call herself “an Angel of God”?
I don’t think the search function is working, so apologies if this has been asked and answered, but why can’t Hera’s blood cure Rosalin’s cancer? Is it b/c she’s not a baby anymore? I seem to recall something about fetal cells.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on this one, because I had a theory (an unlikely theory) that maybe Tyrol would offer his son’s blood if he knew that Hera was too old. That is, it would be his own benevolence that outed him as a Cylon; lot of dramatic potential if the Doc tried the treatment again but Chief Jr.'s blood had adverse effects, which would squander whatever goodwill Tyrol had built up by offering a potential cure.
But they haven’t spent even a moment discussing Hera’s blood and whether she no longer has Cylo-stem cells or what. Not a word about it.
I think Tigh’s visions of Ellen are just a product of his own mind (like Adama’s visions of his wife were). It’s really interesting that Baltar’s seen a Virtual Baltar. Is Baltar’s Virtual Baltar the same Virtual Baltar as Caprica-Six’s Virtual Baltar? Is Six going to see a Virtual Six? If the Cylons can share memories do the other Cylons know about Caprica’s Virtual Baltar? Even if they don’t normally wouldn’t it be prudent to review them now that she’s gone over to the other side?
Just someone else he wants to sleep with.
That’s how I saw it, FWIW.
-Joe
“Oh me! Oh me! Ooooh meeeeeeeeee!”
-Joe
I’ve always thought of these visions as a visualization of a character’s thoughts…almost like a “cartoon balloon” if you will. Baltar’s Virtual Baltar to me, is his subconcious (just like Tigh seeing Ellen), or a mechanism of coping with the stress of the situation the character is in at the time. I’ve pretty much thought the same thing about Baltar’s Virtual Six (BVS) the whole series.
It is for this reason that my eyes nearly popped out of my head when BVS invisibly picked him up and forced him to take another body shot from the marine’s rifle!! That was a shocker indeed.
That’s why this show is so great…it’s always making you go back and think about what you thought you already knew or believed.
Absolutely, Baltar has his heroic moments. He saved Cally’s life, remember. And when he was tasked with getting information from Gina (the Six who’d been raped and tortured by the Pegasus crew), he was genuinely, truly appalled by what had been done to her. In the episode before last, he was willing to die to save a little boy’s life.
And, above all else - back on New Caprica, he was this close to taking a bullet instead of signing the death orders. He didn’t want to sign them. He knew it was wrong, and on a certain level he was willing to die rather than do it - but he broke. Who wouldn’t, with a gun to his head? I still think that every second he held out in that scene, and said “No”, was a second of heroism to match anything else we’ve seen on this show.
“Close” is only of significance when referring to horse shoes or thermonuclear weapons.
Do you think Bill Adama would have signed those orders? Or Laura Roslin? Or Lee, or Starbuck? I can see all of them taking that bullet, though obviously it’s an unanswerable question, but I think Baltar has been depicted until recently (arguably) as totally, pathologically self-interested. He has regularly committed acts that have contributed to humanity being down to 30,000 members: Caprica, Cloud 9, New Caprica, withholding the Cylon detector test…
That doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of moral judgment nor that he didn’t have serious qualms about signing that order. But I don’t agree that his hesitation before signing was heroic. It just makes him human. Those were people he knew. If it were easy, he’d be a monster. As it is, again, he’s very human.
He may have, like his Six, learned from his horrendous acts of destruction towards humanity. I’d like to think he could be redeemed by the end of the series. But as of now, he’s a war criminal with a lot of blood on his hands.
Do you mean everyone decides hes an ok guy after all, or he injects himself with the Cylon virus I harp about and blows his brains out on a basestar?