I'm not sure why they made Lee the hawkish figure, although it seems possible that he was simply there so Helo could be the voice of morality for the Fleet.
Yes, I think you're right about this, and also there's the whole plot arc they were planning for Lee where he was going to recommit to the army and become a lot more militaristic/ruthless/hardcore this season, in reaction to his "soft" stage with the weight problems and his disconnection from any 'warrior' mentality at the start of the season. But ultimately they scrapped that plotline, so his behavior in this episode no longer fits in with anything. It was intended as character development but then it never developed anywhere, so it just looks a bit random and out of character now. Rather like Black Market.
If you're interested, Ron Moore is pretty upfront about how this is just a relic from their abandoned plans for Lee:
"This whole bit of business with Lee leading the Marine team, in some ways is a holdover for an idea that I think I alluded to last week. That we had this idea, as we were dealing with "Fat Lee", as it were, and what we're gonna do with "Fat Lee", and one of the notions that came up was that "Fat Lee" would rededicate himself to being much more of a Spartan, in the truest sense of the word. He and Dualla were going to become Marines. He was going to leave flight/leading the pilots altogether and he and Dualla were gonna go into basic training as Marines and eventually become more ground soldiers to give him a different arc and a different goal for this season. And that didn't really come to pass. We scripted various scenes of putting them in training and getting going on that road, but they just kept getting squeezed out by other ideas, or they didn't play right, or for whatever reason we never really cracked that, and ultimately abandoned it altogether as a story.
But one of the results was this story still maintains the idea that Lee is leading the Marine team. And that's really why he's there. It was scripted as part of his evolution into a Marine officer. He was gonna be leading squads and platoons like this a little bit more often. And that's why he's here to begin with.
....You'll note that Lee, we're positioning here as the hard line, hardliner, of the group. He's in his t-shirt as opposed to in his uniform. Again this is a nod towards the direction of a slight shift in Lee's character. That he's becoming more of the warrior. A little less upright and neat in the way that, say, Helo is playing. This turned out to be, ultimately, a very important episode for Helo."
Yes, I think you're right about this, and also there's the whole plot arc they were planning for Lee where he was going to recommit to the army and become a lot more militaristic/ruthless/hardcore this season, in reaction to his "soft" stage with the weight problems and his disconnection from any 'warrior' mentality at the start of the season. But ultimately they scrapped that plotline, so his behavior in this episode no longer fits in with anything. It was intended as character development but then it never developed anywhere, so it just looks a bit random and out of character now. Rather like Black Market.
If you're interested, Ron Moore is pretty upfront about how this is just a relic from their abandoned plans for Lee:
"This whole bit of business with Lee leading the Marine team, in some ways is a holdover for an idea that I think I alluded to last week. That we had this idea, as we were dealing with "Fat Lee", as it were, and what we're gonna do with "Fat Lee", and one of the notions that came up was that "Fat Lee" would rededicate himself to being much more of a Spartan, in the truest sense of the word. He and Dualla were going to become Marines. He was going to leave flight/leading the pilots altogether and he and Dualla were gonna go into basic training as Marines and eventually become more ground soldiers to give him a different arc and a different goal for this season. And that didn't really come to pass. We scripted various scenes of putting them in training and getting going on that road, but they just kept getting squeezed out by other ideas, or they didn't play right, or for whatever reason we never really cracked that, and ultimately abandoned it altogether as a story.
But one of the results was this story still maintains the idea that Lee is leading the Marine team. And that's really why he's there. It was scripted as part of his evolution into a Marine officer. He was gonna be leading squads and platoons like this a little bit more often. And that's why he's here to begin with.
....You'll note that Lee, we're positioning here as the hard line, hardliner, of the group. He's in his t-shirt as opposed to in his uniform. Again this is a nod towards the direction of a slight shift in Lee's character. That he's becoming more of the warrior. A little less upright and neat in the way that, say, Helo is playing. This turned out to be, ultimately, a very important episode for Helo."
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