There’s an argument online that Laura Roslin is a Cylon. Typical. We finally get an effective female president, and she may not even be human. The reasons are based on a number of events that have taken place throughout the series. I hate to say it, but there may be something to this idea.
Every member of the government was killed in the attack, except her. Cylon blood was used to eradicate her cancer, but it hasn’t been brought up again as a possible source of medicines. The Cylons are obsessed with finding Earth; Roslin has been the pushiest advocate for the fleet to find Earth. The Cylons are religious fundies; Roslin had her religious fundy escapades as well. She was also the biggest advocate for keeping Helo and Sharon’s baby alive, but secretly so.
My thoughts on her possible Cylon-itude are completely different. Before she was the President, even before she was the Secretary of Education, Roslin was a teacher. Wouldn’t a teacher be more interested in setting up a system of basic education for the fleet’s children rather than letting them be trained by their parents to do a specific job?
Tyrol had the right idea: training programs, rotating workers, and putting the white collar Colonial One passengers to scrubbing stuff. If Laura Roslin was a lifelong teacher, why didn’t she come up with something similar for the fleet herself? Tyrol’s plan actually follows some basic principles of classroom management.
I really think that if teachers applied their classroom management skills to the general public instead of limiting them to a stinky, over-crowded room, they could take over the world.
So, Roslin is not applying her classroom management skills to the fleet. She has a group of people who are stuck in a place where they don’t want to be; it’s exactly like a classroom. Except with the constant Cylon threat hanging in the air, which I guess is similar to the No Child Left Behind Act.
In the well-managed classroom, everyone has a job. One kid passes out paper, another makes sure the door is closed, another feeds the class hamster. That way, every kid has some responsibility to the class and they feel like they’re doing something important.
And those classroom jobs rotate. The kid that feeds the hamster doesn’t keep that job all year because that causes problems with the other kids. He starts feeling superior to the kid who collects the paste, who winds up marked as a paste eater. So, the kids rotate jobs every week or so and everyone gets a chance to feed the hamster and everyone gets stuck collecting paste.
Translating that to the fleet, every job needs to be delegated to everyone, whether they’re in the military or not. That way, everyone is contributing to the survival of the species and everyone has a job to do. And the jobs rotate, albeit to a more limited extent, so the fleet doesn’t have that Proletariat/ Bourgiousie conflict brewing.
What really bugged me was Roslin’s reaction to the news that eleven year old kids were working on the refinery ship. Even the most bitter, veteran high school teacher, even though they know that social status breeds social status, holds the core belief that education will save even the poorest, most down-trodden child.
Roslin didn’t care. She basically said, “Too bad for them. That’s just the way it is.” And that’s why I think she’s a Cylon.
If Roslin isn’t a Cylon, she’s a lousy teacher. Or the show’s writers don’t understand the psychology of teachers.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
I’m going to chalk this whole episode up to bad writing as opposed to Cylon infiltration. The fact that both Adama and Roslin got so worked up about simply improving working conditions, the way that Roslin faciously imposed the lottery system . . . all of it was just too one-sided for my tastes. No, my theory is either Adama or Felix Gaeta – my two favorite characters – is the Cylon infiltrator.
I never thought of Gaeta, but it holds up. The speculation on the internets puts a lot of emphasis on D’Anna’s reaction to one of the five in the Eye of Jupiter- that reaction as if she’s familiar with one of those faces. She probably had a lot of face time with Gaeta on New Caprica.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too, although for D’Anna’s reaction – and I hate to say this – I think of Adama. When D’Anna sees the face she says something to the effect of “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know.” But I can’t see her apologizing to Gaeta – while the Cylons saw a lot of Gaeta on New Caprica, they seemed rather indifferent to his presence. On the other hand, what if all of D’Anna’s constant efforts to thwart Adama turned out to be for naught, that he was a Cylon on their side all along?
I’m not convinced a cylon Roslin was ever part of the original plan for BSG. That said, I remember saying to someone waaay back in the first series that the cleverness of the set-up is that – any time an actor wants out of the series – it can be discovered that he/she is a cylon.
They don’t need to have to have done anything remotely cylon-friendly in the past because they don’t need to have known they were a cylon. Even Adama could suddenly be revealed as a cylon. On that basis, even if Roslin isn’t supposed to be a mechanical skin-job, there’s no guarantee she won’t be revealed as one at some point in the future.
I have to wonder at this point if there is a plan or if there was a plan, and it was abandoned. What I’d really like to see, even more than the final five Cylons, is some point of hope on the show.
Or aliens.