Lee Adama

Commander Leland Joseph Adama, known almost universally as "Lee" or by his callsign "Apollo," was a Colonial Fleet officer and the sole surviving son of William Adama. A gifted Viper pilot marked early for high command, he served as the Combat Air Group commander of Galactica before turning increasingly to civilian affairs, becoming the Caprican delegate to the Quorum of Twelve and later interim President of the Twelve Colonies.

Early life#

Lee was born and raised on Caprica, a headstrong and scrappy boy who fought older children at school and usually came away the better for it. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he and his younger brother Zak were raised by their mother while their father's service kept him away for long stretches. Both boys grew up worshiping the distant figure who appeared periodically in his blue uniform, but Lee's hero worship curdled into resentment as he grew, and his contact with his father dwindled.

Determined to fly despite his mother's misgivings, Lee aced his Academy entrance exams, graduated third in his class, and rose quickly through flight school, drawing notice as an officer destined for the top commands. He won a plum Viper posting on the fleet flagship Atlantia and was later accepted to test-pilot school, the highest honor open to a pilot.

Zak's death and the rift#

While Lee was at flight school, Zak entered the Academy and struggled there. Lee, who loved his brother, tried to dissuade him from flight training, certain he was not cut out for it, but Zak refused to be the only Adama without wings. When Zak's application was rejected, their father intervened with a phone call that opened a place for him, infuriating Lee. It was during a visit that Lee first met Kara Thrace, Zak's instructor and fiancee, and liked her immediately. Two weeks later Zak was killed when his Viper went down on a routine flight. At the funeral Lee's grief and resentment boiled over and he blamed his father directly; the two did not speak again before the Fall. Lee spent the next two years with no personal life, working to become the perfect fighter pilot.

CAG of Galactica#

Reporting to Galactica for its decommissioning ceremony, Lee was caught in the Cylon attack and became the ship's CAG during the breakout from Ragnar. As Galactica's senior pilot he repeatedly found himself between duty and conscience. When President Laura Roslin confronted a prisoner uprising aboard the Astral Queen, Lee defused it by giving the prisoners control of their own ship in exchange for a promise of future elections, to Roslin's displeasure. During Roslin's arrest and the standoff over her presidency, he ultimately sided with the President against his own father's orders.

His relationship with Thrace ran hot and cold across the years, complicated by his marriage to Anastasia Dualla and her marriage to Samuel Anders, and by a friendly-fire incident in which she shot him. After promotion to Commander he briefly led the Pegasus, and during the Exodus from New Caprica he disobeyed his father to bring the Pegasus into the battle, sacrificing the ship to save Galactica.

From soldier to statesman#

Lee increasingly turned from the cockpit to politics. He investigated and broke up the Fleet's black market, killing its brutal leader Phelan but accepting that some illicit trade could never be eliminated. He joined the Quorum of Twelve as a delegate and served as security adjutant to the attorney Romo Lampkin, then joined the defense team at the trial of Gaius Baltar, arguing that the Fleet had forgiven many for their mistakes out of the simple need to survive; Baltar was acquitted.

During the discovery of the Temple of Five on the algae planet, then-Major Lee pressed the detonator on explosives meant to deny the temple to the Cylons, but the charges had already been disconnected. After the Gaeta and Zarek mutiny, in which most of the Quorum was killed, Roslin appointed Lee Vice President and accepted his proposal for a reorganized Quorum based on representation from each ship in the Fleet, including the rebel basestar.

The new Earth#

When Roslin and Lee both joined the final mission to rescue Hera, Lee served while Lampkin was named acting president. After the Fleet reached the habitable world it named Earth, it was Lee who proposed that the colonists abandon most of their technology and settle in widely separated locations among the planet's primitive humans, a plan his father adopted. He bid his father farewell on the new world, having outlived his brother, his comrades, and the civilization he had been raised to defend.