Lieutenant Starbuck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Starbuck

Lt. Starbuck as seen in The Return of Starbuck
Race Human
Gender Male
Portrayed by Dirk Benedict
Rank Lieutenant
Affiliation Colonials

Lieutenant Starbuck, played by Dirk Benedict, is a character in the 1970s science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. Starbuck is a Viper starfighter pilot, gambler, womanizer and smoker. He is involved with Lieutenant Athena and Socialator Cassiopeia, and best friend of Captain Apollo. His godson in Galactica 1980 is Doctor Zee.

Orphaned at a very young age, Starbuck never knew his parents. The man known as Chameleon (Fred Astaire in the episode "The Man with Nine Lives") is discovered to be Starbuck's father, but Chameleon does not reveal this fact to his son.

Starbuck is very close to the family of Commander Adama, who refers to Starbuck as a man "he loves like a son" (Galactica 1980: Return of Starbuck).

Starbuck is well renowned as an excellent fighter pilot, but nonetheless manages to crash a Viper several times ('The Long Patrol', 'The Young Warriors', 'The Return of Starbuck') and a shuttle at least once ('Gun on Ice Planet Zero').

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Starbuck returned for one episode, "The Return of Starbuck", in Galactica 1980. This episode (which is Dirk Benedict's personal favourite out of all of his performances) involved Starbuck crashing on a barren planet after fighting off a Cylon attack. Starbuck rebuilds one of the Cylons, 'Cy', who eventually sacrifices himself to defend against a second Cylon attack. Starbuck also rescues a woman, Angela, also marooned on the planet, and constructs a makeshift escape vessel to return Angela to the fleet.

"The Wheel of Fire", an unproduced Galactica 1980 episode, reveals that Starbuck was eventually rescued by the beings from the Ship of Lights and that the entire affair was set up by them, to test whether Starbuck was worthy to join them. Starbuck passes the test and becomes one of the Ship's crew.

The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series episode You Can't Go Home Again gives a nod to this episode. In the episode, Lt. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace crashes on a deserted planet and must repair a Cylon Raider to rejoin the fleet.


This article about a character from a science fiction book, story, film, or game is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.