Lieutenant Starbuck

BSG Character


bgcolor=#f40
fgcolor=#000
name=Starbuck
race=Human
gender=Male
callsign=
rank=Lieutenant
colony= Umbra, Caprica
affiliation=Colonials
portrayed=Dirk Benedict

Lieutenant Starbuck, played by Dirk Benedict, is a character in the 1978 science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. Starbuck is a Viper starfighter pilot, gambler, womanizer and smoker. He is involved with Lieutenant Athena and Socialator Cassiopeia, and best friend of Captain Apollo. His godson in Galactica 1980 is Doctor Zee.

Orphaned at a very young age, Starbuck never knew his parents. The man known as Chameleon (Fred Astaire in the episode "The Man with Nine Lives") is discovered to be Starbuck's father, but Chameleon does not reveal this fact to his son.

Starbuck is very close to the family of Commander Adama, who refers to Starbuck as a man "he loves like a son" (Galactica 1980: Return of Starbuck).

Starbuck is well renowned as an excellent fighter pilot, but nonetheless manages to crash a Viper several times ('The Long Patrol', 'The Young Warriors', 'The Return of Starbuck') and a shuttle at least once ('Gun on Ice Planet Zero'), or get into a difficult situation in a dogfight.

Starbuck returned for one episode, "The Return of Starbuck", in Galactica 1980. This episode (which is Dirk Benedict's personal favourite out of all of his performances, and regarded by Galactica fans as by far the best episode of the short-lived sequel series) involved Starbuck crashing on a barren planet after fighting off a Cylon attack. Starbuck rebuilds one of the Cylons, 'Cy', who eventually sacrifices himself to defend against a second Cylon attack. Starbuck also rescues a woman, Angela, also marooned on the planet, and constructs a makeshift escape vessel to safely send Angela's soon-to-be born son to the colonial fleet. This boy, who would later become the phenomenal, twin-personalitied genius known to the Colonial fleet as Dr. Zee, would later recall Starbuck as being his surrogate father. After her "death", Angela would later appear upon a remote cliffside, looking up the sky and speaking to unseen forces that Starbuck is a good man before disappearing one final time. Though it is never concretely mentioned, it appears clear that Angela is of otherworldly origin, and that more than likely she is one of the "angelic" beings from the "Ships of Lights" that appear in the series episodes "War of the Gods", and "Experiment in Terra".

"The Wheel of Fire", an unproduced Galactica 1980 episode, reveals that Starbuck was eventually rescued by the beings from the Ship of Lights and that the entire affair of Starbuck finding Angela, delivering her child, and sending him to the Colonial Fleet was engineered by them, to test whether Starbuck was worthy to join them. Starbuck passes the test and becomes one of the Ship's crew.

The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series episode "You Can't Go Home Again" gives a nod to this episode. In the episode, Lt. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace crashes on a deserted planet and must repair a Cylon Raider to rejoin the fleet.

Starbuck reappears in Richard Hatchs' original Galactica novels, described as still the best pilot in the fleet, even though over 10 yahren have past since the last episode and the start of the novel series.

Dirk Benedict was cast in the somewhat similar role of Lieutenant Templeton "The Faceman" Peck on the NBC television series The A-Team, after his work as Starbuck. In one episode, the second season's 'Steel', while on the Universal Studios film lot, a Cylon walks past Peck, causing him to double-take. This shot was used on the later second, and third and fourth season opening credits for the series.

External links

* at the Battlestar Wiki