Lucifer (Battlestar Galactica)

Lucifer is a fictional character from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series. Lucifer is the robot assistant to Count Baltar, voiced by Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space fame.

An IL series Cylon, Lucifer has a transparent pointed head, often wears red robes, and has two oscillating eyes, in contrast to the single eye of Cylon Centurions. Lucifer views a similar-looking Cylon, Specter, as an inferior version.

Often sarcastic, Lucifer is assigned to Baltar by the Cylon Imperious Leader. Initially, Lucifer expresses enthusiasm for his assignment, stating that he can learn much from Baltar. However, as the series progresses, Lucifer begins to see the flaws in Baltar’s military strategy. These themes are expanded in the novelizations of the series by creator Glen A. Larson, where Lucifer is portrayed as having an overlay personality that he can engage and disengage to better study Baltar; in the novelization of "The Living Legend" Lucifer even falsifies a combat report to study Baltar's reaction.

Lucifer is one of the characters from the original Battlestar Galactica series that has no direct analog in the 2003 reimagined Battlestar Galactica. However, the Cylon mistress Number Six of the reimagined character Baltar serves a similar role in the saga's structure, as a close cylon liaison to Baltar. Another possible connection is that the introduction of Lucifer established that there was more than one model of Cylon android, which is a major component of the reimagined series.

In a podcast concerning the reimagined season 4 episodes 21 - 23, "Daybreak", executive producer Ronald D. Moore explains that elements of the plot required changing due to the writer's strike. However, when explaining the original intentions of the story, he made it clear that the Cylon Number One (John Cavil) played by Dean Stockwell, was intended to be revealed as a re-imagining of Lucifer. Indeed, in Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, John Cavil and Ellen Tigh are sitting in a bar, and Cavil refers to himself as a Mysterious Stranger, an oblique reference to Mark Twain's story of that name and thus to the Devil. This may be an allusion to his role as the re-imagining of Lucifer.