DPP: Fathers and Children

[da-angel729.livejournal.com]

Hello everyone! I'm da_angel729 and I'm doing the DPP this week!

And I was originally going to do something different (I'll use it later this week instead), but in honor of Father's day (which was yesterday here in the US), and this article (linked below) that hit io9 this weekend, I thought it would be an interesting discussion topic because they mention Bill Adama as one of SciFi's best fathers.

Best and Worst Fathers From SciFi

For those of you who don't want to read the whole article, here's what they say about Bill:

WILLIAM ADAMA
Battlestar Galactica
To be fair, much of the reason why Lee and Bill Adama had such a strained relationship is because Lee was a self-important dick. But over the course of the series, Adama the Elder proved his worth, to both his son and his fleet, time and time again.

I don't (completely) agree with the comment about Lee but I nearly choked on my drink when I saw Adama listed as one of the best fathers because I find Bill to be an absolutely terrible father (though I know some of you don't, and I'd love some discussion on that as well). He treats Lee (especially in UB when he tells Lee Kara and Sam got married) and Kara (who he calls surrogate daughter but only when she doesn't have occurrences of PTSD) horribly if they're not playing at being perfect little soldiers, and as a military commander, being too close to your crew (which he is), is a terrible idea because it leads to favoritism and then feelings of personal betrayal when they don't agree with you.

But the article got me thinking. What was Kara's father like? How did he treat her, and why did he leave? What was Adama like when he was younger and his children were younger? How did the way Lee and Kara's fathers treat them impact who they are today? And do you think Adama is a good father?

A lot of this will be speculation and opinion (especially about Kara's father), but please do talk about personal canons and things if you have one.

Comments

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Wow, because not wanting to live up to the example of your emotionally distant father and reacting with irrational blame in the midst of the grief of losing your brother makes you a self-important dick. WTF.

I disagree with a lot of the bashing on Adama that goes on around here. Yeah, there are some times when he borders on being cruel to Kara, but he does it when he doesn't know what else to do. And on more than one occasion, the tough love appears to be the only thing that would work on Kara. If everybody threw her a pity party in "Torn," she would just fall farther into having no motivation for anything. It really sucks that she can't really get a break after going through something pretty traumatic, but if everybody stopped for a breather after New Caprica they all would have fallen off their guard and likely gotten killed. Adama very dickishly exploits his familial relationship with her to get her off her ass and back in the game, and it makes me want to punch him in the face, but I don't know what else he could have done (especially when *cough* another very important influence in her life has her on worse than a silent treatment and isn't going to be any help). No, he is not father of the year (and I can't say I agree with him being included on the list), but he did the best he could in balancing the fact that he loved Kara and Lee as family with the fact that they were his officers.

The only thing I'm really sure about when it comes to Kara's father is that even though he obviously really hurt her, I think he was a positive force when he was around. I think she probably inherited an enthusiasm and sense of humor from him that I can't really imagine her getting from her mother.

[(Anonymous)]

io9 have a thing about Lee, they bash him anytime they get the chance and that for some reason extends to Jamie to. I sometimes think Jamie must have angered them somehow otherwise why go out of your way to insult him all the time?
Anyway I therefore can't take anything they say seriously anymore.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

Despite the awfulness of it, I agree with your thoughts about Bill's reaction to Kara in Torn. I wish he hadn't called her a cancer, (that was pushing it too far) but overall I thought she was pretty out of control (and I understand why). I'm not sure that the hugging and comforting approach would have helped. I can see her rejecting it because she might not be able to find strength there. Adama's harshness gives her something strong and defining to bump up against. I do wish they'd had more joining moments after that, however. She just kind of went back to work.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

I definitely wish we'd had some good moments between them in that season to balance out the harshness. Because of how they are with each other in "Maelstrom," I pretty much assume they got back on the right track at some point, but I would have liked to see that reconciliation happen. And same with S4; he kind of throws Kara back into duty like "Hey, I guess we trust her now" after the Demetrius gets back, as far I remember it going.

[da-angel729.livejournal.com]

I think the reason I react so strongly to the Kara and Bill scene in Torn is because I have PTSD and if someone said that to me it would be the worst possible thing ever. I don't react well to direct confrontation or name calling (even if I think it might be true).

But I'm not that similar to Kara, so maybe she did need it that harsh. It just seems a little too harsh, I think.

But then he tells Tigh that he can have as long as it takes. Why didn't he call Tigh a cancer? That's another thing I hate about that scene.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

That's a good point about Tigh. I presume he just expects Tigh to be able to get himself back into it after some grieving and doesn't feel he can expect the same from Kara. One of the really troubling things about "Torn" and some of the other things that happen after the occupation is that it's hard to tell whether people are sort of trivializing everything Kara went through (and Tigh losing his eye and his wife and everything might seem worse, but you can't really compare or quantify psychological damage like that) or if they just don't know the whole story.

[da-angel729.livejournal.com]

I think it's entirely possible that not that many people know what Kara went through. And it's obvious what Tigh went through, because of the eye and the fact that Ellen's not there anymore.

[ecstaticdance.livejournal.com]

I think Bill hit both Kara and Tigh where it hurt them most.

Tigh worries so much about letting Bill down (See the beginning of S2), and Kara has this insane belief that she destroys everything she touches. Both of them were living that out in Torn, and Bill told them as much. Tigh would have scoffed if Bill had called him a cancer, or agreed and not cared, but saying he wasn't needed shocked him out of the funk he was in, because it was what he feared most. Kara... I'm not convinced calling her a cancer was the most helpful thing in the world, but it definitely hit her harder than anything else he could have said, in a "I see this, but you don't get to go off and feel sorry for yourself" kind of way. Because Kara wouldn't have been destroyed by thinking she was unneeded the way Tigh was.

It's not a good reason, and is barely a thread-bare excuse, but I see where it came from, and I get why he didn't use the same tactic with Saul.