Tom Zarek

Tom Zarek was a Sagittaron political activist and terrorist who escaped the Fall of the Twelve Colonies aboard the prison transport Astral Queen. Spared by President Laura Roslin's decision to keep every survivor alive, he went on to considerable political success, at one point serving as Vice President and then briefly as President of the United Colonies of Kobol. He was ultimately executed after supporting and co-leading a mutiny aboard the Galactica. (Battlestar Galactica miniseries; Battlestar Galactica, "Bastille Day"; Battlestar Galactica, "Collaborators"; Battlestar Galactica, "Blood on the Scales")

Activism and imprisonment#

Zarek's exact early political activities in the United Colonies of Kobol are unknown, but he made his name by triggering unrest against governments he considered corrupt, illegitimate or acting against the people. He was eventually incarcerated after a terrorist campaign that culminated in the bombing of a government building. (Battlestar Galactica, "Bastille Day")

During his imprisonment he wrote a book intended to counter the negative publicity surrounding his actions, and it succeeded in casting him, in the eyes of many across the Colonies, as a victim of political corruption despite the bombing. The book was banned in many places, military academies among them, which only added to its reputation. (Battlestar Galactica, "Bastille Day")

Freedom aboard the Astral Queen#

When the Cylons struck, Zarek was aboard the prison transport Astral Queen, bound for Caprica with hundreds of other inmates for parole hearings. The ship joined the civilian fleet gathered by the newly sworn-in President Laura Roslin, and when the Astral Queen's captain, Wilkens, suggested killing the prisoners rather than keeping them alive, Roslin refused. (Battlestar Galactica miniseries; Battlestar Galactica, "Bastille Day")

In the days that followed, Zarek worked on his fellow inmates. Disgusted at an unelected President serving out the term of another with no Quorum, he planned a full-scale prison riot and the hijacking of the ship, intending to die as a martyr for democracy when Galactica's marines inevitably boarded. When representatives from Galactica requested laborers in exchange for "freedom points" rather than the promised parole hearings, Zarek initiated his riot, and the rioters took the others prisoner, including Galactica's CAG, Captain Lee Adama. The standoff ended when Adama, holding Zarek at gunpoint, promised free elections once Roslin had served out the rest of President Adar's term, and handed the prisoners the ship as a show of good faith. (Battlestar Galactica, "Water"; Battlestar Galactica, "Bastille Day")

Zarek went on to win Sagittaron's seat on the Quorum and made a failed bid for the vice presidency. When Roslin was arrested, he helped hide her and joined her breakaway fleet to Kobol, where he and his associate Meier plotted to kill Lee Adama. Zarek dropped the plan, though Meier pressed on without him and was killed. (Battlestar Galactica, "Colonial Day"; Battlestar Galactica, "Resistance"; Battlestar Galactica, "Home, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Home, Part II")

Rise to power#

After reuniting with the fleet, Zarek was approached by Lee Adama for information on his shady associates, who controlled a black market in essential goods. Zarek denied being part of the trade but pointed Adama to the Prometheus and to a businessman called Phelan, whom Adama later killed. Shortly afterwards Zarek was seen on the Prometheus with one of Phelan's former henchmen. (Battlestar Galactica, "Black Market")

Judging that he couldn't beat Roslin himself, Zarek pushed Vice President Gaius Baltar to run and became his campaign manager in his bid against Roslin, engineering a winning platform that called for the fleet to settle the newly discovered planet later dubbed New Caprica. When Baltar was elected President, Zarek became his Vice President. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Captain's Hand"; Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

Office and corruption#

A year after the settlement, the Cylons discovered the colony and placed it under occupation, forcing Galactica and Pegasus to flee. When Baltar surrendered the government, Zarek refused to collaborate and spent months in a detention camp. He and Roslin were among some 200 prisoners sentenced to death by the Cylon-controlled Colonial government. Believing themselves doomed, Zarek asked Roslin outright whether she had tried to steal the election. She admitted it, and both agreed they wished she had succeeded. The group was saved at the last moment by the human resistance. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Precipice"; Battlestar Galactica, "Exodus, Part I")

After Galactica returned to rescue the survivors, Baltar was left behind with the Cylons. Zarek became President of the Colonies but chose to step down, believing he could not control the fleet without the military's support. Before resigning he appointed Roslin as his Vice President, and was visibly surprised when she in turn asked him to serve as her own Vice President. (Battlestar Galactica, "Exodus, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Collaborators")

Second Vice Presidency#

Before Roslin resumed the presidency, Zarek, in concert with Saul Tigh, secretly authorized "The Circle" to carry out death-squad executions of those who had collaborated with the Cylons on New Caprica. Roslin was horrified when she learned of it, but Zarek argued that the fleet needed swift justice to prevent chaos. The executions were halted when Roslin declared a general amnesty in her inaugural address. (Battlestar Galactica, "Collaborators")

When Baltar was later returned to Colonial custody, Zarek, fearing unrest, urged Roslin to declare martial law for the length of his trial, behaviour at odds with his lifelong opposition to such measures. When Roslin was carried off by the rebel Cylon basestar, Zarek declared himself Acting President under the Colonial Constitution. Though the Quorum supported him, Lee Adama advised him to step down because the military would not back his administration. Zarek reluctantly invoked a provision allowing an Interim President in a time of crisis, and Lee Adama became Interim President until Roslin's return. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Woman King"; Battlestar Galactica, "Guess What's Coming to Dinner"; Battlestar Galactica, "Sine Qua Non")

After the fleet found the first Earth to be a desolate, irradiated wasteland, Roslin withdrew from public life, leaving Zarek as the government's de facto leader. Tensions soon arose with Admiral William Adama over a plan to install advanced Cylon jump drives on all civilian ships. Zarek regarded it as an illegal military usurpation of civilian authority and a step toward an unwise permanent alliance with the rebel Cylons. He pushed the Quorum to forbid Cylon engineers from boarding any ship whose captain refused them and privately urged resistance. When the tylium ship Hitei Kan jumped away after contact with Zarek, Adama had him arrested. Confronted in the brig with documents purporting to prove his corruption, which turned out to be mere ship laundry slips, Zarek relented and gave Adama the coordinates the Hitei Kan had jumped to. (Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations"; Battlestar Galactica, "A Disquiet Follows My Soul")

Mutiny and death#

Soon afterward, Felix Gaeta visited Zarek in the brig, and the two found common cause against the Cylon alliance. Later Gaeta's people got Zarek out of the brig and down to a waiting Raptor, where the deck chief, Peter Laird, stopped them and tried to call for confirmation; Zarek killed him with a wrench. Back on Colonial One, Zarek walked into a Quorum meeting chaired by Lee Adama and claimed the Admiral had freed him because he had given up on democratic government altogether. Zarek remained in contact with Gaeta throughout the mutiny. (Battlestar Galactica, "A Disquiet Follows My Soul"; Battlestar Galactica, "The Oath")

After Gaeta seized control of Galactica, Zarek met with the Quorum. When it became clear the Quorum would not follow him as President, he ordered the entire Quorum executed. He sat in judgement at Admiral Adama's sham court-martial and ordered his execution. When Roslin, on the rebel basestar, demanded surrender, Zarek refused and wanted to fight, but Gaeta tried to jump Galactica away, was thwarted when Galen Tyrol sabotaged the FTL drive, and ordered all weapons to stand down. Adama and his supporters then retook the CIC and arrested the pair. Zarek was executed by firing squad alongside Gaeta. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Oath"; Battlestar Galactica, "Blood on the Scales")