William Adama
William "Bill" Adama is a fictional character in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series produced and aired by the SyFy cable network. He is one of the main characters in the series and is portrayed by Edward James Olmos. The character is a reimagining of Commander Adama from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series, originally played by Lorne Greene.
Character biography
Childhood
In the Caprica spinoff series, Markus Towfigh plays Bill Adama as a young boy. Adama was born on Caprica, the son of Joseph Adama and Joseph's second wife, Evelyn Adama. He is named in honor of his deceased older half-brother William "Willie" Adama in accord with Tauron tradition. Both were named after their grandfather, who along with their grandmother Isabelle was killed during the Tauron Uprising.Bill was the only child of Joseph and Evelyn, though he is Joseph's third child, a half-brother to Joseph's children Tamara and Willie with his first wife Shannon, who died in the year YR42 on the Colonial calendar. Bill Adama had at least three uncles: Joseph's brother Sam Adama, Sam's husband Larry, and Evelyn's brother on Tauron who owned a ranch near a river and used trained dogs to drive foxes into the river. Shannon Adama's mother, Ruth, was also part of the Adama family during Bill's childhood, though not related to him by blood.
Military service
Admiral Adama's Military service record is shown in the dossier prepared by Billy Keikeya in the episode "Hero". It lists the following events in his service history:- D6/21311 – First commission: Battlestar Galactica air group
- E4/21312 – Commendation for shooting down Cylon fighter in first viper combat mission
- D5/21314 – Mustered out of service post-armistice
- R6/21317 – Served as Deck Hand in merchant fleet and as common aboard inter-colony tramp freighters
- D1/21331 – Recommissioned in Colonial Fleet
- D6/21337 – Major: Battlestar Atlantia
- R8/21341 – Colonel: Executive Officer: Battlestar Columbia
- C2/21345 – Commander: Commanding Officer, Battlestar Valkyrie
- C2/21348 – Commander: Commanding Officer, Battlestar Galactica
First Cylon War
As depicted in Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, Adama is a new Academy graduate during the tenth year of the First Cylon War. He is assigned to the Galactica, the newest battlestar in the Colonial fleet. His aviator call sign is "Husker", originally bestowed on him by his copilot Coker Fasjovik. The name is an Aerilon term for farmboy or hick, but Adama was actually raised in Caprica City. His first mission is to pilot a Raptor, taking a civilian software engineer into hostile Cylon territory. Following that mission, he is assigned a Viper and assigned to a joint special ops unit of fighter pilots, infantry and marines.In Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashbacks, Adama becomes involved with a Raptor pilot named Jaycie McGavin. Arriving on the hangar deck for his first Viper combat mission, he finds McGavin has been mortally wounded in combat after her Raptor's control console explodes. He receives a commendation for this mission. Adama was aboard the Galactica during the last week of the war when a Cylon boarding party attempted to kill the crew by depressurizing the ship. Adama later recalls that "two thousand men bought the farm."
During a battle on the last day of the First Cylon War, Adama became enraged by the destruction of the Battlestar Columbia and pursued two Cylon raiders into a planetary atmosphere. His Viper was damaged in a collision and he was forced to eject; he engaged a Cylon centurion in a gunfight whilst free-falling. Upon landing, he discovered a Cylon lab where experimentation on human subjects was taking place. Unable to rescue the humans held captive in the lab, Adama watched helplessly as the Cylons evacuated the base. When he radioed for rescue, he was told that an armistice had been made with the Cylons. With the hostilities at an end, the Cylons carried away whatever they were developing, unopposed.
After the war
After the war ended, Adama married his wife Carolanne Adama and fathered two sons with her: Zak and Lee. Adama later relates to Captain Louanne "Kat" Katraine how, during both her pregnancies, Carolanne was convinced that she was carrying a daughter, and was surprised by the arrival of a son. Adama himself would have liked a daughter, saying that "three's a good round number".Like many servicemen Adama was released from military career after the war ended. He found himself serving on a commercial freighter on the Caprica-Tauron run, where he met a fellow former Viper pilot, Saul Tigh. The pair forged a lasting friendship.
Return to the Fleet
During this period, Adama used his wife's family's connections in the Defense Council to get himself reinstated in the Colonial Fleet as a captain. Once he had been promoted to the rank of major, he secured Tigh's reinstatement in the Fleet as well. He later divorced Carolanne; she was engaged to be married at the time of the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.As a major, Adama served on the Battlestar Atlantia, where he had an ongoing feud with the ship's landing signal officer that inspired a celebration of his thousandth landing. He later served as the executive officer of the Battlestar Columbia, presumably as a colonel, and skippered three Colonial escort vessels before earning his own command, the Battlestar Valkyrie. Adama brought his old friend, Saul Tigh, with him as his XO. At some point during this phase of his career, Adama either served aboard or visited a Mercury class battlestar.
Approximately three years before the Destruction of the Twelve Colonies, the Colonial Admiralty ordered then-Commander Adama and the Valkyrie to test the Cylons' military disposition with a covert surveillance mission across the Armistice Line. The Stealthstar reconnaissance craft was discovered by the Cylons and damaged; Adama ordered the Valkyrie
Both William Adama's sons chose to follow in their father's footsteps and become Viper pilots. While Lee went on to become an accomplished pilot, Zak was not a natural in the cockpit. While in training, Zak began a secret relationship with Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, his flight instructor. Zak would have failed basic flight training had Kara not passed him based on her feelings for him. During an operational flight, Zak's Viper crashed and he was killed. This tragedy drove a wedge between Adama and his surviving son, Lee, who blamed his father for pushing Zak into military service. It was also during this time that William Adama met Kara, sparking a father-daughter relationship.
After the Cylon attack
Two years after Zak's death, the fifty-year-old Galactica was nearing the end of its service, destined to be converted into a museum ship. On the morning following the ship's decommissioning ceremony, the Cylons launched a surprise attack on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, bombarding the colonies with nuclear weapons and destroying the majority of the Colonial Fleet. The Fleet was unable to mount an effective counterattack due to Cylon infiltration of the Colonial ships' Command Navigation Program.Since Adama fought in the first Cylon War, he knew that the Cylons could use electronics as part of their offensive repertoire. Adama's experiences with the Cylons left him with a healthy distrust of sophisticated computer systems and heavy automation. He therefore decreed that as part of Galactica's standing orders, her computer systems were never to be networked, and even though Galactica had Baltar's CNP program installed on its systems, thanks to Adama's orders it was never loaded into primary memory. As a result, the outmoded, aging Galactica was spared from Cylon infiltration attempts that crippled and subsequently destroyed much of the Colonial Fleet. However, most of Galactica's Viper Mark VII fighters did possess the CNP and were lost early in the attack. Fortunately, as part of its museum display, the Galactica had forty older Mk II Vipers on board, including Adama's personal fighter from the First Cylon War. The CNP was later purged from Galactica's systems as well as the remainder of the Mark VII fighters.
Following the devastating attack on the Colonies, Commander Adama felt that the best course of action was a counterattack, to avenge the deaths of billions, and stand and fight for whatever was left of their civilization. He sent a message into deep space, calling for all remaining Colonial ships to regroup at Ragnar Anchorage, an unmanned munitions depot hidden in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Ragnar. Ragnar was ideal because it was well protected, and Galactica could rearm after being disarmed for her decommissioning. While there, Adama found that no Colonial warships had responded to the call to regroup. Instead, the Galactica encountered a ragtag fleet of civilian vessels bearing around 50,000 survivors, including the former secretary for education and newly appointed president of the colonies, Laura Roslin.
Roslin implored Adama to abandon his plan to fight the Cylons and instead lead the survivors to safety, out of the Colonial system. Initially, Adama believed this idea to be preposterous – after all, he was a military man, bred to fight and not to run. However, after some deliberation, he agreed, realising that the survival of the human race was more important than the pursuit of vengeance in what would almost certainly be a suicidal counterattack against the Cylons; Galactica would only be one ship against an entire Cylon fleet. Galactica and her fleet jumped beyond the "red line", never to return to the Twelve Colonies.
Thus, Adama found himself on the run in uncharted deep space. In order to give his men and the people of the fleet some hope, Adama lied to them, saying that he knew where the thirteenth colony, Earth, was located, and that he would lead them all there to make a new home. Even though ex-wife, Carolanne, was presumed to have died in the Cylon attack, Adama still harbored feelings for her and continued to wear his wedding band and observe their wedding anniversary for a time.
After an incident on the hangar deck that resulted in the deaths of several pilots, Adama became aware of the true details of his son Zak's death after Thrace let her affair with Zak cloud her judgment again by being too harsh on the replacement trainees. Adama was barely able to restrain himself upon learning of the cause of Zak's death from Thrace. Events following the revelation lead Adama and his surviving son Lee to commit a similar act of allowing feelings to cloud judgment after Thrace is shot down and stranded on an inhospitable planet. After Adama is compelled to abandon Thrace by President Roslin, Thrace miraculously rescues herself and returns to Galactica aboard a captured Cylon Raider. Adama forgives Thrace for her indiscretions concerning Zak. The incident also cements the father-son bond between William Adama and his surviving son. Lee questions how long his father would search for him were he missing, to which the elder Adama responds, "if it were you... we'd never leave."
Soon after Galactica and the Colonial fleet discover the lost planet Kobol, Adama is shot by "Boomer", a Cylon sleeper agent, which places him in mortal jeopardy. Although he survives this assassination attempt, the brush with death changes him somewhat: some say that his more emotional leanings are a post-traumatic reaction to the shooting, but Adama jokes to Roslin that he thinks that he is "just a wuss."
After the Battlestar Pegasus encounters the fleet, Adama comes into conflict with Rear Admiral Helena Cain, commander of the Pegasus, over the treatment of two Galactica crew members, Karl Agathon and Galen Tyrol. Cain and Adama come to the brink of firing on each other. Each battlestar commander makes plans to have the other assassinated following the successful conclusion of a joint operation to destroy the Cylon Resurrection ship. Neither plan is carried out, although Cain is subsequently killed by the Cylon agent Gina.
With the death of Cain, Roslin promotes Adama to admiral. Adama is surprised and touched: by this point in his career, he had given up hope of attaining flag rank; he encourages Roslin, battling breast cancer, to remain hopeful of a recovery. There was also a brief, sweet kiss between the two, initiated by Adama, which Roslin smiles at afterwards.