BSG Lt Thorne...?

[p51]

I have bene re-watching BSG from the start, which I hadn't done in years.
One thing I started wondering about in Season 2, was the deal with Lt Thorne. The Pegasus crew loved the guy and considered him quite valuable.
It got me to wondering, he was way too old to be a LT, didn't know how to salute to save his life. I could only assume that he was one of the civilians put into uniform?
I wonder what the idea was for what he'd done in life before then?

 

[Strikerkc]

I just took him to be the classic "hard ass bosun" archetype. There to do the things that "needed doing"; having a disregard for "protocol" being part of the character; his job isn't to look pretty, it's to be brutally effective.

 

[Riceball]

To be fair, Hollywood has long had a hard time in teaching actors how to salute correctly, even main cast members don't mention somebody who only appears every now and again. Since he's only a guest star that doesn't appear regularly, they probably never bothered to teach him how to salute properly and, obviously, the actor never felt strongly enough about the role to learn it on his own.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I notice salutes often too. I forgot the show, but I remember my dad (a Vietnam era Marine) saying the person in some movie we watched (I forget...) wouldn't have made it out of boot saluting that way let alone becoming an officer.

 

[JediG60racer]

Pegasus was in retrofit when it was attacked.
Real world, during retrofits there are a lot of reservists involved, being trained and/or training others on new gear and equipment, while active members of the crew rotate out for leave. Many reservists are older and do not rank up quickly or ever, depending on their billet. I've known a few Navy Lieutenants who are 45 year old professionals with master's degrees and serve their one weekend a month, 2 weeks in the summer. They don't tend to be sticklers for salutes or protocol if they're 18 years in to reserve duty and they're still an 03. So there's a plausible real world answer.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

That man was a dirt bag.

I was glad to see him go.

His “leadership” was indicative of the erosion of the culture of leadership on the Pegasus.

 

[p51]

Good points, all (I'm a former Army O-3, and rarely ever worked with the Navy).
As Pegasus had people they press-ganged into service (like the Chief of the deck, a former aerospace engineer who clearly didn't fit into a military role), I'd always wondered of Thorne might have been one of them as well.
He's a character that could have used a little more development before he got taken out.