Commander Thrace?

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

frolicndetour raised an interesting point in our discussion of Kara's promotions the other day. Apparently the writers planned to make her the Pegasus commander at one point. What avenues do you think that would have lead the show down? What would her time as Commander have been like? Would she be more in the vein of Adama or Cain or her own leader entirely? What would change about canon if the only switch was that she was head of Pegasus instead of Lee (with Dee as her XO? Heh.)

ETA: Tomorrow is Friday and because of that happy reason, we will be having a Kara Love meme here! Bring yo' gifs, Bring yo' toasts, get ready to raise a glass to the incomparable Kara "Starbuck" Thrace!

Comments

[sugarhaven.livejournal.com]

I don't know what would have to change for Kara to became the Pegasus CO. I guess: Lee resigned from the military, Tigh dead, and Adama/Roslin really stoned. The other option would be Cain being the admiral and making Kara the commander of Galactica.

I love Kara but I don't think that she is a particularly good leader. Her leadership style is very similar to Tigh's (even though she wouldn't like to hear it), because she is unstable and gets her own personal feelings and self-doubts get in the way. I think she got really better as the series progressed and I think she is quite good at leading a small group of pilots or marines into action or planning a mission and then successfully executing it or perhaps even being a CAG. Lastly, I don't think she would ever wanted to be a CO of a ship. She likes to work under someone whom she can trust that they will make the right choices (like Lee and Bill or even Cain but unlike Tigh or Gardner) so she wouldn't have to worry too much about consequences of bad decisions.

[frolicndetour.livejournal.com]

Ron and Dave allude to what they had planned a little bit on the podcast for You Can't Go Home Again - at the end they talk about how much they love the Kara/Adama relationship and that how there was a storyline comming up where they were going to put her in charge of the "thingy" (since the Pegasus was still a spoiler at that point) and how she would be interacting with Adama and challenging him in new ways. I think that would have been really interesting - I guess they tried to do that with Lee and Adama, but the fat!Lee thing ended up swallowing (no pun intended) Lee's command storyline IMO.

It would have been fun to see how her relationship with Adama changed. Season three would have been so different, at least in the beginning; I imagine she couldn't have mustered out, and they couldn't have put her on the self-destructive track after having her rise to such a strong leadership level. No captivity with Leoben. I guess she still would have had to fulfill her destiny, but I imagine it would have played differently.

Though there is the obvious question (which was Jamie's question!) of why not Lee. Maybe he would have taken longer to recover from his gun-shot wound, or Adama would have thought he was needed on Galactica. I think if not for Lee, Kara would be the next logical choice; Adama would never have put Tigh in command voluntarily , I don't think, especially not after what happened once he was shot. (And Tigh wouldn't have really wanted that).

Definitely an AU with a lot of potential. :)

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Ok, so let's say that Lee resigns after his space walk, maybe to oppose Roslin politcally (no this doesn't really matter, but go with me...) and Tigh and Fisk are both taken down in the black market scandal. I can believe that Kara would accept command of Pegasus. I think she would accept command because she could immediately go back to Caprica for the resistance, maybe even try to find survivors on the other colonies. I'm not sure it's the best motivation or course of action, but it falls in line with the nobel, romantic but also erratic Kara Thrace.

I'm not sure where things go next, but I'll probably think about it the rest of the afternoon. ;)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I would have enjoyed Kara's promotion to Commander of Pegasus, because it would have provided a very rich source of new material for the show. I think she'd earned a change to prove herself in a command position, but I'd probably see her as an XO before a commander. Maybe Lee's XO? If Lee were not in the picture, I think she could have done an admiral job of commanding the Pegasus, but would she want to? I don't understand how much "command" experience she'd had or how long she'd been CAG and if the duration of that experience would warrant that kind of promotion. But I think I am overthinking this and trying to fit military into fiction. I think she could have made hard calls, but I also think she would have taken more risks than Lee or Adama. On two calls, telling Lee to stay behind and nuke the cylon facility in Razor and jumping the Fleet away when the cylons captured NC, I think Kara might have chosen differently. I always thought Lee's decision to order the nuke strike was unnecessary, so I don't care that much about that one. She could have chosen differently without causing too much harm, IMO. The NC situation seems trickier. I guess I'd see that playing out with Adama making the call instead to Bug Out while Kara would have wanted to stay and fight. That could have been a great dramatic moment.

In short, I do think she was capable, but I think things would probably have not run as smoothly as they did under Lee and Adama, mostly because she has a very different leadership style that may or may not promote unrest and disobedience?? Not sure. I do think she'd have been respected more by the Pegasus crew than Lee was.

[pressdbtwnpages.livejournal.com]

Everyone's comments are really interesting. I came into the post thinking that Kara would make a pretty bad commander because she's not great at seeing the big picture. For better or worse, she's a pretty focused person. But now that I think about it, I'm not sure that Adama is much better at seeing the big picture.

Most of Kara's perceived failings are shared by people in positions of power, so I guess my instinctive rejection of the notion of Kara as Pegasus CO is that I don't think she'd be fulfilled by the job.

I'd love to read -or write- the Kara Commands Pegasus AU, but at the end of the day, I'm not sure she'd want it.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

It could have been a really interesting storyline, and who's to say the writers wouldn't have found a reason why Lee couldn't be the one to go over? Kara is the second seniormost of the pilots after all, it's not impossible though I don't think it's any more unbelievable than Lee's taking command of the Pegasus - if TCH storyline had had Kara going over without Lee and then having to deal with Garner and end up in charge when he goes off, I'd have bought it.

Though OMG, they're SO YOUNG. I know Katee was like 25 during S2 filming, and Lee and Kara are hardly any older than that - imagine a 27-year-old in charge of a Battlestar! Though that used to happen in actual wartime when senior officers got killed off a lot, too.

[winegums.livejournal.com]

And having command would also have given her the resources to go after the Caprican survivors without the need to push quite so hard at Adama and Roslin for it. I always wished we knew how she managed to swing the plan in the end - we never get to see how she convinced them to agree to the rescue mission, though if she was a Battlestar commander in her own right it still has the chance to create some tension in her relationship with Sam, when it comes to her staying in the military and not moving down to New Craprica, AND maybe we'd get to skip the Leoben dollhouse (our girl was messed up already without that).