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Kara Thrace
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Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is a fictional character in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica franchise. Played by Katee Sackhoff, she is a revised version of Lieutenant Starbuck from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series.
Character history
Kara Thrace bears some parallels to the original 1978 Starbuck character: Both are portrayed as the best pilot in the fleet witth a tendency to challenge authorities and get into trouble.
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Encyclopedia
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is a fictional character in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica franchise. Played by Katee Sackhoff, she is a revised version of Lieutenant Starbuck from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series.
Character history
Kara Thrace bears some parallels to the original 1978 Starbuck character: Both are portrayed as the best pilot in the fleet witth a tendency to challenge authorities and get into trouble. Both are avid gamblers. Both have crashed and been marooned on a deserted planet, using a downed Cylon ship to make an escape. Both are best friends with Apollo. Kara had a relationship with Apollo's late brother Zak (mirroring the original Starbuck's on-and-off relationship with Apollo's sister Athena), affecting her relationship to Apollo and Zak's father, Commander Adama.
However, the two characters differ both in their gender - complicating Kara Thrace's relationships with other characters, notably Apollo - as well their outward appearance: whereas the original Starbuck, played by Dirk Benedict, was a slick, well-groomed ladies man, Kara appears more rugged and grimy.
Background
Kara had intended to be a professional Pyramid ball player until her knee gave out. She eventually joined the military, where she found more acceptance than she had felt at home as an abused child. Although Kara's mother, Socrata Thrace, had served as a Marine Sergeant Major in the First Cylon War, Kara was the first person in the family to become a commissioned officer. Socrata was not content with her daughter's military record, however, claiming she was not disciplined enough, and that she was wasting her natural talent for flying. Kara's father, Dreilide Thrace, was a piano player. He left the family when she was a child.
During her first assignment, then-Private Thrace was repeatedly insubordinate to her superior, Sergeant Mike Gibbons. Later she was assigned to the air wing on the Battlestar Triton, and received disciplinary actions from the Battlestar's commander, Commander James Jonasson.
As a Flight Instructor at the Colonial Flight School, she met and became romantically involved with one of her students, Zak Adama. Although Zak told her that he did not want any special treatment from her, Kara passed him even though he failed Basic Flight, as she could not bring herself to crush his dreams.
Her leniency cost Zak his life when he was killed on his first Viper mission. After his death, Starbuck met his father, then-Commander Adama. He realized that Starbuck and Zak had been engaged and brought her under his command as a Lieutenant. Zak's death, however, created a wedge between Adama and his other son, Lee "Apollo" Adama, who blamed his father for Zak's death. After the funeral, Lee broke off all contact with his father and Starbuck.
Starbuck has a natural talent for flying and is considered Galacticas best pilot, although she is also known for being an avid card player and drinker. Adama loves Kara despite her flaws and considers her something of a surrogate daughter. However, Starbuck and Colonel Tigh share a mutual sense of loathing.
After the attack
In a card game prior to Galactica's decommissioning ceremony, Starbuck responds to Colonel Tigh's mocking of her call sign and her stint in the brig as a cadet by alluding to Tigh's troubled relationship with his wife. Infuriated, he flips the table over, and she punches him in the face. He sends her to the brig, promising that her career is over. However, Adama tells Tigh that he is probably overreacting: while he agrees to leave Kara in the brig until after the ceremony, Adama says there is no need to ruin Kara's career over the incident. Following the Cylons' attack on the Twelve Colonies, Starbuck is released to join the battle.
Starbuck keeps her secret about Zak buried inside until after the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. Soon after, when Starbuck fears she and the rest of humanity might be wiped out by the Cylons, she confesses her mistake to Lee. He is devastated and would later confront her about it when she is chosen to train new Viper pilots aboard Galactica after several pilots are killed in a freak accident. Starbuck, blinded by guilt, washes all the pilots out for relatively minor flaws. She then admits her secret to Adama who is furious and heartbroken; he orders her to reinstate the trainees.
On the next training mission, Starbuck and the trainees are ambushed by a small group of Raiders. Starbuck engages the Raiders on her own to cover the trainees' escape. With her Viper heavily damaged, she plummets toward the surface of a nearby desert moon, and is forced to eject and take her chances on the surface.
Starbuck is declared "missing in action", and Adama orders a search and rescue operation which strains the Galactica's crew and combat resources. On the surface, Starbuck struggles with a broken knee and near asphyxiation as her oxygen runs out. She discovers a downed Raider and is able to pilot it back to the fleet.
Depressed by her injuries, she initially needs incentive to work on rehabilitation and is soon rubbing people the wrong way again. Even after she is able to move around without a cane, the injury sidelines her from flight for many episodes; when given tactical charge of a mission in one episode, she can not fly the critical role because her knee still can't handle the G-force.
Despite her often crude exterior, Starbuck has a deep-seated faith in the gods. As a result, President Laura Roslin asks her to carry out a dangerous mission: return to Caprica and retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, a religious artifact that supposedly points the way to Earth. She takes the Cylon Raider she had captured, leading Adama to declare that Roslin had suborned mutiny; he sends a detachment of Marines to terminate her presidency.
During her time on Caprica, Starbuck encounters Number Six (who beats her soundly); meets up with Karl Agathon and the Sharon Valerii copy pregnant with his child; and meets a fellow pyramid player named Samuel Anders. He leads a resistance group that had been waging guerrilla war against the Cylons. At one point Starbuck is injured in battle, captured, and wakes up in a Cylon "farm" as part of their experiments to create human/Cylon hybrids. Without her knowledge, apparently one of her ovaries is surgically removed before she escapes, a fact discovered only much later. Starbuck escapes, and plans to return to the fleet; she promises to return to rescue the Caprican resistance group and Anders, with whom she develops a romantic relationship.
Soon after returning from the planet Kobol, the Battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Rear Admiral Helena Cain, is discovered. Cain promotes Starbuck to Captain and assigns her as the CAG of the Pegasus.
After the fleet leadership denies her request to return to rescue the Caprican resistance fighters, Starbuck is depressed and guilt-stricken: she has broken her word, failed her duty, and assumes the man she is "hung up on" is either dead, or will be soon. As Pegasus CAG, she also feels responsible for the pilots who have died on her watch, or died because she has not yet killed the Cylon's "top gun", "Scar". She recklessly maneuvers to take out Scar, but at the last moment pulls away, setting up the kill for Louanne "Kat" Katraine and giving up her own status as "Top Gun". Although this marks the beginning of a new resolve and the end of her self-destructive depressive behaviours, tensions between her and Apollo flare up again after she shoots him in a friendly fire incident during a hostage stand-off.
After Lee Adama's promotion to Commander and appointment as commander of the Battlestar Pegasus, Starbuck transfers back to the Galactica and assumes the role of its CAG.
New Caprica
The complication of Starbuck and Lee's relationship was furthered when a drunken night on the newly found planet, New Caprica, ended with Starbuck and Lee having a one-night stand where they both expressed their love for one another. When Lee woke up alone the next morning, he soon discovered that Kara had proposed to and married Anders. Lee soon marries then-Petty Officer Anastasia Dualla while Starbuck moves planetside with Anders.
At some point during her time on New Caprica, she and Tigh were able to put their differences behind them, even greeting each other fondly following Tigh's demobilization and arrival at the colony. Her relationship with Lee, however, worsened to the point that he had little interest in speaking to her, or in helping her.
After the Cylon invasion of New Caprica, she is imprisoned inside a house, where a Leoben model tries to convince her that they are destined to be lovers. For four months Starbuck denies his advances, killing him several times despite knowing he would be back. Then she is presented with a young girl named Kacey that Leoben claims is their daughter, created with the ovary that was removed when she was in the egg farm. Initially she refuses to believe it and wants nothing to do with the girl, but when Kacey is badly injured in a fall down a staircase, she calls on Leoben for help and seems to grow more attached to both of them.
In the episode "Exodus" Part 2, it is revealed that Kacey is not Starbuck's child; the Cylons had abducted her. Kacey and her real mother are reunited on the Galacticas flight deck after the flight from New Caprica. Starbuck is left there alone on the flight deck, stunned and in disbelief.
Back with the fleet
After her situation on New Caprica and the truth about Kacey, she becomes distraught and destructive toward herself and the rest of the crew, almost killing herself in a Viper training exercise. After being removed from flight status by then-Major Lee Adama, she takes up residence in the pilot's mess along with Colonel Tigh, drinking and lowering the morale of Galacticas pilots by attempting to draw divisions between New Capricans and those who stayed with the fleet. Rear Admiral Adama gives her an ultimatum; either straighten up and act like an officer, or 'get the hell off his ship' and find another ship to live on. Starbuck changes her attitude after Adama literally knocks her on her rear after she thumbs her nose at him.
Starbuck's relationship with Lee Adama takes another dramatic turn after she challenges him to a brutal and emotional sparring contest aboard Galactica. Their intense feelings for each other soon lead to an affair that draws resentment from their respective spouses. However, when Lee asks Starbuck to divorce Sam, she refuses due to her strong religious beliefs on the sacrament of marriage. Lee argues that she is breaking her vows just by being with him, but Starbuck states that she's merely bending the rules. Lee then decides that he can no longer cheat while still married to Dualla. Later, Lee and Anders begin to voice their dislike for each other just as Starbuck's Raptor is shot down by the Cylons and she is reported missing. Anders vows to find her, but their position is outnumbered; Lee orders Anders at gunpoint to stay put and help defend their outnumbered position. Anders remains defiant.
Starbuck suffers severe hand burns in the crash and is rescued by Dualla. After they escape the doomed algae planet, Starbuck makes one final effort to have a relationship with Lee, this time offering to leave Anders if he will leave Dualla. Lee chooses to try and make his own marriage work instead.
Kara's experiences with Leoben, as well as her troubled childhood, eventually come back to haunt her. She has nightmares involving both Leoben and the mandala that is supposedly connected to her "destiny". She asks an oracle about her dreams and is told that Leoben understands her better than she understands herself, and that he will show her her "destiny".
During a patrol over a gas giant where the fleet is refueling, she sees a Cylon Raider and pursues it into a storm system which resembles her mandala. She is forced to abandon pursuit when her Viper is at risk of implosion from the pressure. Although she felt several impacts during her pursuit, then-Chief Galen Tyrol finds no damage to her Viper and gun camera footage showed no evidence of any Raider, leading many to believe that Kara had been hallucinating.
Adama is concerned that Kara might have burned out, but he leaves the decision to ground her up to Apollo as CAG. Apollo decides to give her another chance, and offers to fly as her wingman on her next patrol. During the patrol, Starbuck sees another Raider and again pursues. Her Viper is hit by debris and she is knocked out. She experiences a conversation with an avatar with the appearance of Leoben set in her apartment on Caprica. The avatar forces Kara to confront her past, the abuse she received from her mother and the guilt she feels for leaving her mother to die alone. The avatar comments that Kara has been running from her past just as she has been running away from death for her entire life, and implies that eventually she will have to confront her fears and her "destiny". Moments before regaining consciousness in her Viper, Kara realizes that the person she is speaking to is not the Cylon Leoben Conoy, and states, "You're not Leoben." The avatar grins and says, "Never said I was." She awakens in her Viper cockpit as Apollo is calling for her to break off and ascend, or the atmospheric pressure will kill her. Around this time Lee witnesses the same raider Kara has been chasing. Starbuck keeps flying into the storm, and tells Lee to leave her. She is encompassed by a white light and a certain calmness. Apollo witnesses her Viper exploding, with no sign that she survived.
In the cliffhanger Season 3 finale, "Crossroads, Part II", Starbuck reappears in a Viper and is discovered by Apollo, appearing to be alive and well, but the reason for her sudden resurrection has yet to be revealed. She tells Apollo not to "freak out" that it is really her and that she has been to Earth, and will show them the way.
Kara returns in Season 4 believing she had only been absent for six hours, but her husband Sam informs her that she was really gone for two months. The crew is wary of her return except for Lee, who greets her with an enthusiastic and long hug, and is so grateful for her return that he is willing to overlook the possibility that she is a Cylon and that he may be willing to accept her even as a Cylon. This becomes evident in Lee's questioning his father whether if it had been his son, Lee's brother, who returned, would it have made a difference whether he was Cylon or human. She experiences frustration upon her return to Galactica as no one believes it is really her, and because of President Roslin's refusal to be guided by what she believes is a Cylon trick. The crew continue on the course Roslin had previously decided upon, and move further away from the area Kara believes is Earth's true location. She attempts to encourage Adama to follow her suggestions but when he refuses she fears that his being romantically linked to Roslin has unjustly influenced him. Feeling hopeless and fearing that as they make more jumps further away she will lose the "feeling" of Earth's location, she becomes desperate and holds President Roslin at gunpoint.
During her standoff with the President, she tries to reason and appeal to the President's emotions. She hands the gun to Roslin and insists she shoot her if she really believes she is a Cylon which Roslin responds to by saying "they made you perfect, didn't they?" and then shoots at her, but misses and hits a framed portrait of herself and Adama.
Starbuck is thrown into the brig and has a hostile confrontation with Adama, who angrily says, "You are so stupid you couldn't wait. You just lost your best ally. Now who is going to save you?" She responds, "Well, it certainly isn't you," and says she will fight to show them Earth's location until her death. She also accuses him of playing "wet nurse" to the president to which he responds by throwing her to the floor and leaving her crying.
Later after Adama attempts to have a conversation with Roslin, which turns into a psychological sparring argument, he rethinks his decision and allows Kara to secretly look for earth on a barge called Demetrius.
Aboard Demetrius - Looking for Earth
After taking command of Demetrius to find a way to Earth, Thrace finds herself at odds with the crew when her orders cause them to doubt her command ability. With only two days remaining until the ship must return to the Fleet, her command is further compromised by her refusal to explain her actions and her decision to bring the Cylon Leoben aboard after having found him in a damaged Cylon Heavy raider. Eventually, she finds herself torn between following Leoben's advice to forge an alliance with the fragmented Cylons, or distrusting him because of what the risk entails. The tension with the crew leads to a mutiny, after which Kara acknowledges her errors and instead takes a small crew with her in a Raptor to visit the base ship. There, she meets with the base star's hybrid and is told, "You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end." This echoes the warning given by the first hybrid to Kendra Shaw at the conclusion of Razor.
Earth
In "Sometimes a Great Notion," Thrace and Leoben look for the Colonial beacon that led them to Earth. They find wreckage of a Viper with Thrace's tail number and what appears to be Thrace's charred corpse. Both Kara and Leoben are shocked by this discovery and do not understand what it means. Thrace removes the dog tag and wedding ring from the body, then cremates it. It has yet to be explained how and when Thrace's Viper and corpse got to Earth, or how she was revived and returned to Galactica.
Mutiny
In "The Oath," Captain Thrace discovered civilians and a few mutinous Marines and crewmen arming themselves for battle. Thrace immediately rushed back to her quarters to prepare for battle, grabbing her sidearms and ammunition. Kara then found Lieutenant Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson, Charlie Conner, and a few others preparing to execute Lee Adama. Thrace killed a Marine holding Adama and wounded Lieutenant Hamish "Skulls" McCall. Along with Lee Adama, Kara ran into several other loyal Colonials including President Roslin, Rear Admiral Adama, and Colonel Tigh. While searching for Adama, Kara and Lee free loyalists found in the brig which include Anders, who is then shot by a mutinous marine upon leaving. Kara, refusing to leave his side, pressures Lee and those who escaped to leave her in order for them to search for Adama.
Cylon song
In the episode "Someone to Watch Over Me", Starbuck encounters a pianist in Joe's Bar who is trying to compose a new song. At first she becomes annoyed by his repetitious playing, stating he reminded her of her father when he did nothing but play the piano and she mentions how her father left her and her mother to pursue it as a career. Over the course of the episode, Starbuck befriends and ends up working with the pianist in trying to finish his song.
Toward the end, the piano player writes down the notes Starbuck starts humming, out on a sheet of paper. The pattern reminds Starbuck of a drawing of colored dots the Cylon-Human child, Hera Agathon had given to her earlier. She lines the child's drawing up with the notes the composer had drawn and they match exactly.
When Starbuck and the pianist play the notes, the song is instantly recognized by Saul Tigh and Tory Foster – who are sitting at a nearby table with Ellen Tigh – as the song ("All Along the Watchtower") they heard in their heads when they learned they were the final Cylons. A bewildered Saul asks Starbuck where she heard the song. Starbuck responds that she played it as a kid and begins to mention her father, but stops short when she realizes that the piano player was a figment of her imagination.
Critical response
Slate magazine named the character as one of the reasons they were looking forward to the return of the show in fall 2007.
External links
- Kara Thrace at the Battlestar Wiki
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