Kara Thrace

Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was a Viper pilot in the Colonial Fleet and, by most reckonings, the most gifted flyer of her generation. Her brilliance in the cockpit was matched by a volatile temperament that repeatedly stalled her career and strained her closest relationships, among them William Adama, who came to regard her as a daughter, and Lee Adama, with whom she shared a turbulent love. After she flew to her apparent death over a gas giant, a figure bearing her appearance and memories rejoined the Fleet and ultimately led humanity to its new home. (Battlestar Galactica, "Act of Contrition"; "Maelstrom"; "Crossroads, Part II"; "Daybreak, Part II")

Early life#

Thrace grew up in the years after the first Cylon War and attended Caprica Ridge High School. Her father, Dreilide, was a pianist and composer who left the family; her mother, Socrata, a former Colonial Marine sergeant major, was convinced her daughter had a special destiny. Socrata beat Kara so often that she came to accept pain as a way of life. Before her flying career, Kara was a talented Pyramid player. (Battlestar Galactica, "Flesh and Bone"; "Resistance"; "Maelstrom"; "Someone to Watch Over Me")

The Fall and escape from Ragnar#

On the day of the Fall, Thrace was in the brig but was released to fly the museum-piece Viper Mark IIs, which survived because they lacked the compromised navigation program. She kept two of three nuclear missiles from hitting Galactica in the first Cylon sortie, and in the breakout from Ragnar Anchorage she saved Lee Adama's crippled Viper with an improvised manoeuvre. In the sleepless days that followed she flew patrol after patrol on stims, the ordeal at the heart of the episode "33". (Battlestar Galactica (2003 miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "33")

Later, after a deck accident killed a group of pilots, she was ordered to train a class of new recruits, came down hard on them, and confessed to Adama the truth of Zak's death: she had passed him through his final check flight despite his inability to fly. Adama was furious. During the training flights she was jumped by Raiders, forced to eject, and stranded on a small moon with an unbreathable atmosphere and a broken knee; she survived by repairing the downed Cylon Raider she found and flying it back to the Fleet. The injury sidelined her from flight for a long stretch. (Battlestar Galactica, "Act of Contrition"; "You Can't Go Home Again")

The mission to Caprica#

Assigned to interrogate a captured Number Two named Leoben, Thrace revealed a deep-seated faith in the gods even as she brutalized him, and was genuinely saddened when President Laura Roslin ordered him airlocked. Roslin then sent her on a dangerous mission to recover the Arrow of Apollo from occupied Caprica, persuading her to go by admitting that Adama did not in fact know the way to Earth, a revelation that shook her trust in him. (Battlestar Galactica, "Flesh and Bone"; "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I")

On Caprica she reunited with Karl "Helo" Agathon and the Sharon Valerii copy carrying his child, fell in with a resistance cell led by fellow Pyramid player Samuel Anders, and was briefly captured and experimented upon at a Cylon "farm" before escaping. She promised Anders she would return with help, then carried the Arrow to Kobol, where it opened the Tomb of Athena and yielded a rudimentary map to Earth. Helo, Anders and Sharon all have their own entries in the Battlestar Galactica character list. (Battlestar Galactica, "Valley of Darkness"; "Resistance"; "The Farm"; "Home, Part II")

New Caprica and after#

Admiral Helena Cain of the Pegasus was impressed enough by her reconnaissance flight to promote her to Captain and make her Pegasus's CAG, and she later served as CAG aboard Galactica. Her bond with Lee Adama deepened into a single night together on New Caprica, after which she abruptly married Anders while Lee married Anastasia Dualla. During the Cylon occupation she was imprisoned in a recreation of her Caprican apartment, where a Leoben model tried to convince her they were destined to be lovers and presented a child he claimed was hers; the girl, Kacey, proved not to be her daughter after the Exodus. (Battlestar Galactica, "Pegasus"; "Unfinished Business"; "Precipice"; "Exodus, Part II"; "Torn")

Back with the Fleet she grew reckless and destructive, and Adama confronted her over it. Her affair with Lee resumed and collapsed again over their respective marriages and her refusal to divorce Anders. She was badly injured defending the Temple of Five on the algae planet, where the temple's mandala matched a symbol she had painted in her apartment. (Battlestar Galactica, "Torn"; "Unfinished Business"; "The Eye of Jupiter"; "Rapture")

Destiny and death#

Thrace's troubled past and her experiences with Leoben returned as nightmares tied to a mandala connected to her supposed destiny. While refuelling at a gas giant she pursued a Cylon Raider into a storm system that resembled the mandala, but found no evidence of any Raider afterward, leading many to think she was hallucinating. On a later patrol she pursued another Raider, was knocked unconscious, and experienced a confrontation with a figure wearing Leoben's appearance who forced her to face her past, her mother's death and her fear of dying. Realising the figure was not the Cylon Leoben, she flew on into the storm and told Lee to leave her. He watched her Viper implode with no sign she had survived. She dies in "Maelstrom" and reappears at the end of "Crossroads, Part II", three episodes apart in the Galactica episode list. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom"; "Crossroads, Part II")

After her death, a figure assuming Thrace's appearance and memories joined the Fleet, insisting she had been to Earth. Though her certainty caused friction, she ultimately input the numerical sequence that jumped Galactica to the world the Fleet would name Earth, having guided humanity to its new home. (Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II"; "Daybreak, Part II")