Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)

[brynnmck]

Title: Crazy Enough to Follow Her
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (new version)
Character: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
Author: brynnmck
Spoilers: Through the final episode of Season 2, including deleted scenes.
Notes: Many, many thanks to danceswithwords, for her thoughts on this essay in particular, and for sharing my frequent need to rhapsodize about Starbuck in general.

Comments

[indigo419]

what a wonderful round-up of all things Starbuck! Thanks for the trip down memory lane - I kept smiling to myself as I read through your essay.

that apartment is Kara's heart, all passion and turmoil and beauty and conflict, all locked away where no one knows about it. There's nothing practical there-not much food, the power frequently turned off-but it's just full of everything that's going on beneath her cocky exterior. And that, at the end of the day, is what I love about Kara: that great heart, that great capacity for love and fear and joy and courage.

No words - you said it all, ever so eloquently. I <3 Kara Thrace!

[brynnmck]

I <3 Kara Thrace!

Pretty much says it all, doesn't it? :) Thank you!

[jadengreen36]

Very well done! I'm forwarding a link to this to my (newly converted) BSG friends.

[brynnmck]

Thank you! And go you with the conversion. :)

[asta77]

On the other hand, they have several subscriptions' worth of issues

LOL! I love that line and it perfectly fits both. :)

The Kara/Adama scene in 'Hand of God' is not just a favorite scene of theirs for me, but one of my favorites of the series. I loved seeing her get a dose of hard reality. I understood how she was struggling with being sidelined and having to listen to her comarades die and wondering of she was there could she save them? But she had to realize she wasn't just a pilot anymore. She, like everyone else, now had to shoulder the burden of responsibility. And I think she had a little more respect with what Adama and Lee had to deal with every day in this new world of theirs.

[brynnmck]

But she had to realize she wasn't just a pilot anymore

Yes, exactly. It's a pretty big kick in the ass for her, and a necessary one.

Re: Lee and Adama... I'm not so sure it's a matter of respect (it's clear to me she has an enormous amount of respect for Adama and for what he does, and in my interpretation, the same for Lee, at least by that point in the series), but I do think it's a matter of her seeing herself that way. I think she respected the leaders that she felt were worthy of her respect, but she never wanted any part of that for herself, for various reasons.

It is a fantastic scene, though. And on a tangential note, it struck me that while so many characters on BSG are learning to lead, learning to step up, Adama's task is being able to share that leadership, listening to other voices besides his own. Kind of cool.

[musesfool]

Cool essay. I especially like the bits about her relationships with Helo and Bill Adama.

Just one thing: “Starbuck” (which doesn’t appear to mean anything more than “the original creators thought it sounded good, and now we’re stuck with it”)

Starbuck was the first mate on the Pequod, in Moby Dick, and the only one who was opposed to Ahab's crazy quest.

So while its meaning internal to the text is still unknown, extratextually it has resonance.

[brynnmck]

Yeah, I did mainly mean that what Starbuck's callsign means to her and the other characters hasn't been addressed (yet), but you bring up a good point. How do you think that BSG's Starbuck aligns with the Starbuck in Moby Dick? In some senses, I can see her being the opposite--she's typically cast as a believer, more so than many of the other characters. She does split from Adama at the end of S1, but only to follow another crazy quest... I guess it depends on who you see as Ahab. :) How do you see it? I've never read Moby Dick, so it's quite possible there are neat parallels that I'm missing.

[musesfool]

For me, I think it's kind of an ironic nickname - I don't remember Moby Dick all that well - it's been probably 15 years since I read it - but iirc, Starbuck is pretty steady - open, honest, stable, a good man. I mean, I'm not sure the original BSG writers weren't being ironic themselves when they created the character, or if they thought it was fitting that if Adama was the Ahab on the crazy quest for earth, and Apollo was his Ishmael, then Starbuck as the rebel kind of fills the role of being in opposition, even though personality-wise the characters are nothing alike.

Kara is a believer, as you note, and I believe Melville's Starbuck was a Quaker (I could be wrong) and fairly devout? But I'm not so sure about the Adama-Ahab parallels. I'd have to think more on it. And possibly read up on Moby Dick (rereading it isn't on the agenda). I mean, if the Cylon are the whale, that's one thing, but if it's the quest for earth... that kind of makes *Roslin* the Ahab, doesn't it?

Huh.

[brynnmck]

Sorry to be so late in responding to this, but yeah--I think Roslin is a definite contender for the Ahab role, quite possibly more so than Adama. And while the current set of writers could certainly choose to assign their own allegorical significance to Starbuck's callsign--as you say, maybe it's meant to be ironic--I think it does depend, to a degree, on whether the original writers intended for it to have any significance. And I'm on the fence about that. From what I know of Moby Dick and of the original series (which is not a whole lot in either case), I do have to wonder if part of it was just that "Starbuck" sounded cool and manly, and had the added advantage of being a literary allusion, and they didn't look too much further into it. I could be totally off track, though.

In any case, thanks for some interesting discussion! :)

[hushpuppy22]

Just when I thought that I'd read everything Kara and had figured her out you come up with this great analysis! This essay was dead-on, incisive and well organized.

[T]hat apartment is Kara's heart, all passion and turmoil and beauty and conflict, all locked away where no one knows about it. There's nothing practical there-not much food, the power frequently turned off-but it's just full of everything that's going on beneath her cocky exterior.

This is beautifully insightful and your essay made my day :-)

[brynnmck]

Oh, yay! I'm so thrilled. It was really fun to write. :)