Pegasus (TRS)

For the second-season episode, see Pegasus (episode). For the Original Series Pegasus, see Pegasus (TOS).

Battlestar Pegasus

Pegasus is a Mercury class battlestar commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, that was stationed at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards during the Cylon attack. Presumed lost with the rest of the Colonial military fleet, Pegasus actually managed to escape the destruction of the Colonies when Cain ordered a blind jump. While saving the battlestar, about 700 of her crew died in the initial attack. Although the Pegasus was advanced enough to have the Command Navigation Program which the Cylons used as a backdoor, Pegasus had just checked in for a three-month refit at the time of the Cylon attack, and as such, almost all of its networked computer systems were offline.

Fleet Details

Designation: warship, battlestar type, Mercury class battlestar

Deployment: Formerly an element of 62nd Battlestar Group

Current Status: One of two remaining Colonial military units, commanded by Admiral Helena Cain.

History

At some point, a Cylon infiltrator was discovered onboard - a woman named Gina. She killed seven men when apprehended, and was then incarcerated, brutally interrogated and gang-raped by many of the crew.

After the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, Pegasus occupied itself with hit-and-run attacks on various Cylon assets. It participated in a bold assault on a staging area filled with fifteen squadrons of Raiders. When Cain's long-time Executive officer expressed hesitancy to launch the ships' fighters against such odds, Cain publically executed him on the bridge and promoted Colonel Jack Fisk to replace him. This, according to Colonel Fisk, who told this story (and later recanted) while drunk to Colonel Tigh, which Tigh believed to be true when he recounted it to Commmander William Adama.

Some time later, Pegasus discovered that a Cylon fleet it was tracking appeared to be jumping, not randomly, but to systems with natural resources. The battlestar then accidentally encountered the fleet led by battlestar Galactica when Pegasus jumped ahead to scout the Cylon target's projected next position (as it turned out, the Cylons were jumping to systems Galactica had been in). Cain assumed command of the fleet and began transferring supplies and many personnel between the two battlestars, including Captain Lee Adama and Lieutenant Kara Thrace. Cain appeared unconcerned with the needs of the civilians and their ships, a problem noted to Commander Adama by President Laura Roslin.

Chief Tyrol mentioned during his interrogation by Colonel Saul Tigh that he served aboard a number of battlestars in his military career, including Pegasus (Resistance). If Admiral Cain ever knew him during this time, she made no mention of it, and had no reservations sentencing him and Karl Agathon to death when they inadvertently killed Lieutenant Thorne, Cain's chief "Cylon interrogator". William Adama, commander of Galactica, refused to permit the execution, precipitating an armed standoff between the two ships (Pegasus).

It was later revealed that Pegasus originaly had its own small fleet of 15 civilian ships which it found about a week after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, which actually had FTL drives and weapons. However, rather than defending them (as Galactica had at Ragnar Anchorage), Admiral Cain saw them as potential spare parts that could be Pegasus, and decided that Pegasus' military needs were a priority over them. The civilian ships were stripped for parts, taking their weapons and FTL drives, marooning them and leaving them completely at the mercy of the Cylons when Cain left. However not all of the civilians were left to die: after looking over the passenger lists Cain seleted those civilians who she thought would be of value (such as Peter Laird, an aeronautical engineer), forcibly drafting them into her crew. However, 15 'selectees' aboard the civilian transport Scylla were traveling with their families and refused to leave without them. Admiral Cain ordered her marines to kill two families (men, women, and children) to shock the rest into submission. Pegasus then abandoned the civilians ships to pursue Admiral Cain's campaign of hit-and-run attacks against Cylon forces. ("Resurrection Ship, Part I")

Admiral Cain looked over the passenger list and she made a decision about who was valuable and who wasn't. Scylla was the toughest. Laird and 15 other men and women, they were all traveling with their families-- wives, husbands, children. The selectees... they refused to go. There was resistance. So the order came down to shoot the family of anyone who refused to come. So we did. Two families, we put them up against the bulkhead. And we shot them.

Equipment

(Differences between the Mercury-class battlestar design and that of the original class of battlestar (to which Galactica belongs) will be further elaborated upon in a deleted scene in the episode "Pegasus", which will be included in the upcoming DVD release of "Season 2.5")

Notes

According to David Eick's video blog, it would have been impossible to afford creating new sets for the entire interior of Pegasus on the budget of an episodic television show. This expense was circumvented when a year beforehand Ron D. Moore and David Eick bought (for next to nothing) the abandoned sets of the failed pilot for the FOX network's "Lost In Space" remake, directed by John Woo. The production team then held onto the sets hoping to find some later use for them, until later using them for Pegasus. The sets were then radically redesigned and painted to give them the aesthetic look of Galactica, but sleeker and more advanced.

Links

• Pegasus (from Wikipedia)