Dana Scully
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| The X-Files character | |
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| Dana Scully | |
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| Affiliated with | FBI |
| First appearance | "Pilot" |
| Last appearance | "The Truth" |
| Portrayed by | Gillian Anderson |
Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully (born February 23, 1964) is a fictional character on the FOX television series The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson. She is an FBI Special Agent, partnered on the X-Files with Special Agent Fox Mulder. They work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files". In contrast to Fox Mulder's credulous "believer" character, Scully is the skeptic, choosing to base her beliefs on what science can prove.
Work takes up a major part of her life, and she rarely dates or spends time with friends. She lives alone in Georgetown, a neighborhood of Washington, DC.
Dana Scully appeared in every episode of the show except "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects", and "Travelers".
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and education
Scully was born on February 23, 1964, to Margaret and William Scully, into a close-knit Catholic family. She has an older brother, William Jr., an older sister, Melissa, and a younger brother, Charles, who is never seen on the show (except in flashbacks). Her father was an officer in the Navy, and she grew up in Annapolis and later in San Diego. A tomboy growing up, she also rebelled against her parents in high school.
She attended University of Maryland, and earned a B.S. in Physics. Her undergraduate thesis was entitled "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation." While finishing medical school, she was recruited by the FBI, which she accepted, mostly because she felt she could distinguish herself there. Upon being partnered with Fox Mulder, she retained her medical skills by acting as a forensic pathologist, often performing or consulting on autopsies of victims on X-Files cases.
[edit] Faith
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone in her life, although at times a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism. Upon her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic upbringing but remained somewhat entrenched in her faith.
Scully almost always wears a golden crucifix necklace, given to her by her mother either as a Christmas or birthday present (both mentioned but never clarified). Upon her abduction ("Ascension") it was the only item left behind in Duane Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it ("3") in her absence until she miraculously reappeared in a DC hospital. ("One Breath") After she recovered, he returned the cross to her.
The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith, when she began to exhibit symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster ("Irresistible"). This psychological revictimization continues after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him, while Mulder had Pfaster covered. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill Pfaster, or "something else." ("Orison")
About a year after the first Donnie Pfaster incident, Scully was further conflicted when protecting a young stigmatic by the name of Kevin Kryder, whose life was threatened by a psychotic, apparently suffering from Jerusalem syndrome ("Revelations", 3x11). Skeptical of the boy's claims but unable to deny what she has seen, Scully was unable to respond when the boy prophetically asked, "Are you the one who was sent to protect me?", implying Scully's intervention was the direct work of God. As a result of their experiences on the Kryder case, the philosophy of faith and religion caused a disagreement between Mulder and Scully that continued through out the duration of their work together.
Some time later, the cancer diagnosis forced Scully to begin contemplating her own mortality. However, she resisted the gentle prodding from her family priest, Father McCue, to resume attending church services. When the severity of her illness increased, and pushed her to the brink of death, Scully finally requested ministry from Father McCue, and chose to accept her remission as a miracle. ("Redux")
Upon the sudden discovery of Emily Sim, Scully gave the little girl her cross to wear while she petitioned to adopt her. Before her funeral, Scully retrieved the cross from Emily's casket.
Sometime after her recovery, Scully began to regularly attend Mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. ("All Souls") After Scully discovered the girl was part of a set of quadruplets and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to D.C., she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death.
Mulder and Scully frequently disagreed on matters of religion. Scully is more inclined to believe that God has a hand in people's actions, while Mulder seems to believe that people are responsible for their own behavior.
[edit] Work on the X-Files
Scully initially instructed at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Mulder's investigations into the paranormal were steadily increasing his profile to members of The Syndicate to the point where his notoriety prevented them from simply killing him. A strategy was devised to invalidate his work, and in the Spring of 1992, Scully was assigned to debunk his investigations by disproving them with science. Instead, she observed the evidence objectively and honestly. The Syndicate soon dropped this endeavor, and Scully remained part of the X-Files office, providing an intelligent, empirical opposite to Mulder's more maverick character. Over the years of working as a team, they exhibited a comfortable working relationship, each bringing important parts to their intriguing, and usually dangerous, investigations.
In 1994, after two years of working together, the Syndicate decided the agents were getting too close to the truth and the X-Files investigations were closed. Mulder and Scully were sent to work in different sections.
In "Ascension" Scully was kidnapped by a mental patient named Duane Barry, an ex-FBI agent and multiple alien abductee. To prevent his own abduction, he traded her to a military covert operation. Scully was missing for several weeks before mysteriously turning up in a D.C. area hospital, comatose ("One Breath"). Walter Skinner ordered the X-Files reopened to investigate her disappearance. When Scully awakened, she voluntarily returned to her position almost immediately. Her abduction experience would later come to serve in an important capacity to the X-Files mythology.
In 1995, The Syndicate, seeing that Scully had become as much of a threat as Mulder, attempted to have her murdered, but their assassins inadvertently killed her sister, Melissa. Scully pursued her sister's murder case after the FBI dropped it (from influence by the Syndicate), and tracked down the killer. However, the hitman was soon himself murdered by conspiracy operatives, leaving Scully without any justice for her sister, but strengthening her continuing search for the truth. Also that year, Scully discovered a tiny microchip implanted in the back of her neck during her abduction. ("The Blessing Way") She had it removed and subsequently developed an inoperable, cancerous, nasopharengeal tumor. Scully's cancer miraculously went into remission several months later when Mulder broke into The Pentagon to retrieve a replacement chip. Scully also learned that her abduction resulted in her inability to conceive children, as her ova had apparently been harvested.
Scully's convictions were proven while visiting her brother in California during the Christmas holidays of 1997. She received a phone call from a voice that sounded identical to Melissa's ("Christmas Carol") which led her to a house in the middle of an investigation of the hours-old suicide of the homeowner's wife. There, Scully met the deceased's three-year-old adopted daughter, Emily, who looked exactly like a childhood picture of Melissa. Convinced that she was Melissa's biological daughter, she ordered a series of DNA comparison tests. However, Scully was shocked to discover that not Melissa, but she herself was actually Emily's mother. ("Emily") When the adoptive father was killed by Alien Bounty Hunters, Scully immediately petitioned for custody. Unfortunately, Emily was terminally ill with a rare form of anemia, and died shortly after Scully discovered her existence. In actuality, Emily was one of several alien/human hybrids created using alien DNA and harvested ova from other abductees.
In the X-Files movie Fight the Future, Scully was infected by the Black Oil Virus after being stung by a carrier bee, and taken to a secret laboratory in Antarctica. Mulder located her, administered a weak vaccine, and rescued her.
Despite her previous diagnosis, Scully was unwilling to accept her infertility, and decided to attempt in-vitro fertilization. She asked Mulder to be the donor, but initial results were negative. However, in the Spring of 2000, Mulder was abducted at the same time Scully discovered she was pregnant. It was later revealed that she and Mulder had begun a sexual relationship shortly before these events.
Special Agent John Doggett was brought assigned to find Mulder. The search soon proved fruitless, and Doggett was assigned to work with Scully on the X-Files. After eight years of investigating unexplained phenomena, Scully had slowly become more open to believing in the paranormal, and Doggett took her place as "the skeptic". Scully worked late into her pregnancy. However, even after Mulder's return, she remained anxious and fearful of her unborn child's origins and fate. Hunted down by agents of the conspiracy, she fled with the help of Doggett and Monica Reyes, shortly before giving birth in a remote area of Georgia. She named the boy William after his grandfathers. (Fox Mulder is presumably the child's father; see his and William's entries for more information).
After William's birth, Mulder voluntarily went into hiding, believing that his living with Scully and William put them at risk. Scully also left fieldwork to teach Forensics, turning over the X-Files division to Doggett and Reyes. Shortly after, she learned that she and William were being surveiled by the New Syndicate. In 2002, after William was kidnapped but eventually found safe, Scully felt she could no longer provide the safety he needed, and gave him up for adoption. (See his entry for more information.)
In the series finale, Scully helped Mulder escape a bogus imprisonment and death sentence, and the two ran away as fugitives to New Mexico, and had a final confrontation with Cigarette Smoking Man. Scully and Mulder are currently on the run from the New Syndicate, to protect themselves and expose the truth about the government conspiracy to cover up the threat of alien colonization.
[edit] Relationships
[edit] Family
- Captain William "Bill" Scully - Scully's relationship with her father was fairly close, but could be tense at times, in part due to his no-nonsense attitude and sense of military professionalism. Examples of this include her desire to prove to her father that she was every bit the equal of her brothers, including one instance in which she shot a snake with a BB gun at the prodding of her brothers, only to feel wracked with guilt afterwards ("One Breath"). On one occasion as a child she stole one of her mother's cigarettes and smoked it, half hoping that her father would find out and be angry ("Never Again"). Another sore point for Scully was her father's insistence that they take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas ("Beyond the Sea").Their relationship suffered when she decided not to pursue a career in medicine, and joined the FBI. By 1994, the two seemed to have reconciled before her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Only after he was gone did Scully realize that, despite their differences, her father was indeed proud of her ("Beyond the Sea"). Following her abduction while lying comatose, Scully sees an apparition of her father. Clad in his official Navy whites, he delivers to her a message full of love as he encourages her to live ("One Breath").
- Margaret "Maggie" Scully - Scully's mother provides support for her daughter's frequent health crises, but sometimes expresses quiet disapproval in Scully's choices. Margaret Scully is frequently seen meddling into Scully's life. She vigorously encourages Scully to rekindle her Catholic faith, often expresses her disapproval in Scully's dangerous job, and insists on hiring a baby nurse for Scully towards the end of her pregnancy. After William's birth, Margaret is extremely protective of Scully and William. In her final appearance, ("Provenance"), she is also seen as reluctant to find the truth because of the danger involved.
- Melissa "Missy" Scully - Scully was extremely close to her older sister, who was first introduced when Scully lay dying in Georgetown Memorial Hospital following her abduction. Unlike her skeptical younger sister, Melissa was a free spirit who encouraged Scully to look beyond the realms of science and fact, and trust intuition and nature. Scully was deeply affected by her death, and championed hard to keep her murder investigation active ("Piper Maru").
- William "Bill" Scully Jr. - Scully's relationship with her older brother, also a Naval officer, seemingly mirrors the disapproval she felt from her father ("Gethesmane"). His childhood relationship with Scully could veer from typical sibling rivalry to outright bullying, in one case causing Scully to accidentally kill her pet rabbit in her attempts to hide it from Bill ("Christmas Carol"). Further complicating their relationship is his own steadfast refusal to validate her work, and belligerence towards Mulder (he feels that Mulder is directly the reason for Dana's illness and Melissa's death, and called him "a real piece of work" and "one sorry son of a bitch" to his face.) Bill's wife is named Tara, and they have one son, Matthew.
- Charles "Charlie" Scully - Scully's younger brother who was referred to, but only seen as a boy in flashbacks in episodes such as "One Breath".
- Emily and William - Scully's two children. Emily, who died shortly after Scully's finding her ("Emily"), was conceived during Scully's brief abduction several years earlier. William, to whom Scully later refers to as "our [her and Mulder's] son" ("The Truth"), was carried to term and lived with his mother from birth. However, after a brief time with her son, Scully was forced to give William up for adoption in order to protect him ("William").
[edit] Romance
Scully was given a reporter boyfriend named Ethan in the original edit of the Pilot episode, but he was subsequently edited out and removed from the storyline.
According to Scully in "Small Potatoes," the 12-grade "love of my life" was a young man named Marcus, with whom she went to senior prom. After the prom, she, Marcus, and some friends went out in the woods and built a campfire, after which Scully and Marcus went off alone, presumably to make out (Scully referring to this as a "now or never" moment). However before they got far, their friends let the campfire get out of control and they were driven back to town in the Fire Department's pump truck ("Small Potatoes").
While in medical school, she carried on an affair with her married instructor, Dr. Daniel Waterston ("all things"). The end of her relationship with Waterston came about following her decision to go into the FBI. After her entrance to the FBI's Academy at Quantico, Scully began a year-long affair with her older instructor, Jack Willis, with whom she shared a birthday ("Lazarus").
In the episode "En Ami," the Cigarette Smoking Man says that she is attracted to "powerful men," to which Scully retorts that he is practicing "pop psychology," a reaction which seems to be more one of discomfort than actual disagreement. Considering her past associations with instructors, mentors, and father figures, this seems plausible.
Scully was set up by a friend, and went out on a date with a handsome but boring divorcé in "The Jersey Devil". Several years later, she encountered Ed Jerse while on a case, who showed her a strange tattoo he'd gotten to commemorate his recent divorce. Frustrated over the path her life has taken, she impulsively had drinks with Jerse, and, inspired by his, also got a tattoo of an Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail. She spent the night with Jerse (it is unclear whether she actually slept with him that night), but ergot dyes in the tattoo ink drove Jerse crazy and compelled him to attempt to murder Scully ("Never Again").
In "Milagro", Scully unwittingly became the object of desire for Phillip Padgett, a reclusive writer. He revealed his obsession with Scully to her in the course of an investigation, providing strangely detailed insight into her life, to the extent that he moved into Mulder's building to be near her. He wrote a book in which the two had a passionate love scene, but then burned it before Scully could read it. However, his affections were unrequited; Scully was intrigued but unnerved by his attention.
Towards the end of the series, her relationship with Mulder clearly crossed over into the romantic sphere. When Mulder was injured in a boat crash, he awakened in a hospital and told Scully that he loved her ("Triangle"). By the end of Season 6, Mulder and Scully were increasingly shown doing more light-hearted activities together, such as practicing baseball ("The Unnatural"), using FBI funds for a "night out" during a movie premiere ("Hollywood, A.D."), and enjoying a movie at Mulder's apartment ("Je Souhaite").
After Mulder's abduction, coinciding with Scully's announcement of her pregnancy ("Requiem") there was little doubt that Scully's child was conceived with Mulder. During her pregnancy, Mulder pulled out all the stops to protect her and uncover the plot against her baby ("Essence"). When Jeffrey Spender resurfaced as a disfigured man claiming to be Mulder, Scully was quick to dismiss him, stating, "If that were Mulder, I wouldn't care." ("William") When Mulder actually returned, they shared a passionate kiss, and grieved together over the loss of their son. She and Mulder became fugitives together.
The last scene of the series finale featured Mulder and Scully facing an uncertain future together.
[edit] Trivia
- Scully was inspired by another fictional FBI Agent named Clarice Starling, who is the main protagonist in the academy award winning film Silence of the Lambs.
- Scully is 5'3" (160 cm).
- She has blue/blue-green eyes.
- Scully's personality type is ISTJ, under the Myers-Briggs personality test.
- Given the option of living someone else's life for a day, Scully chooses Eleanor Roosevelt ("Small Potatoes"). This, coupled with her sympathy to the anti-nuclear movement in college and her tenuous relationship with her father may provide some insight into her political leanings, although these are never explicitly stated (Kevin Anderson's official novel "Ground Zero").
- Between her pet dog Queequeeg, childhood rabbit, and remorse over killing a snake with her BB gun as an adolescent, Scully appears to be more animal-friendly than her partner.
- Scully lives in Apartment 35 at number 1419 on an unknown street. Since she lives in Georgetown, this would place her in Northwest DC ("Acension" and "Colony"). In the episode "Milagro" we learn that she has lived there since at least 1993.
- There has been some debate in the fan community as to whether Scully lives in Georgetown or Annapolis (due to her childhood address being latter according to her Smallpox vaccination certificate in "Paper Clip"). However the vast majority of the evidence, including her car with DC plates, Mulder going to see her in "Georgetown" (X-Files: Fight the Future) and the "DC" tile at the end of the Erlenmeyer Flask confirm she does indeed live in DC.
- In "End Game" we discover that Scully has a key to Mulder's apartment, although when she acquired it is unknown. Mulder presumably also has keys to Scully's apartment, as by the time of the episode "Redux" he can gain access without having to break down the door as he did in Season 1 ("Squeeze").
- Scully attends Sunday services at St. John's Church in Alexandria, Father McCue's parish.
- In the episode "Humbug" (2x20), Scully accepts a cricket from Dr. Blockhead and seemingly eats it. After she and Mulder leave, she shows Mulder that she had used a sleight of hand and hands the cricket to Mulder intact. In the scene, Anderson actually did put the cricket in her mouth and chewed it, but did not actually swallow it. A different cricket was used for the later scene.
- One of Scully's favorite movies is The Exorcist ("Miracle Man"). Interestingly, parts of that movie were filmed in Georgetown. She also later reluctantly reveals that her guilty pleasure is The Brady Bunch ("Sunshine Days").
- Her favorite book is Moby Dick. Her father used to read to her from the book when she was young, and she came to nickname her father "Ahab" from the book, and in return, he called her "Starbuck". She later named her dog "Queequeg", also after a character from the book. She also enjoys books by Jose Chung.
- Scully speaks German ("Unruhe", 4x04), which she learned in college, and has a passing understanding of Greek. ("Hollywood A.D.", 7x18).
- Scully made an appearance with Mulder in the "The Springfield Files" episode of The Simpsons, and both Anderson and David Duchovny provided their voices for the episode. In the episode of the ReBoot series "Trust No One", Mulder and Scully were parodied as agents "Fax Modem" and "Data Nully". Anderson provided her voice work for the episode, but David declined.
- Inside the X-Files fan community, Scully has developed her own cult following, named "OBSSE", The Order of the Blessed Saint Scully, The Enigmatic ("The Enigmatic" part most likely comes from a nickname given to her by Max Fenig in the episode, "Fallen Angel").
- Scully has a number of different phone numbers that make appearances on the X-Files. Her home telephone number is (202) 556-6431 ("Ghost in the Machine"), and her cell phone numbers are (202) 555-3564 ("Blood"), (202) 555-0113 (X-Files: Fight the Future) and (202) 555-0194 (X-Files: Resist or Serve game).
- Chris Carter has stated that he named Scully after his favorite sportscaster, Vin Scully. Agent John Doggett was named after Scully's longtime broadcasting partner, Jerry Doggett.
- Scully was portrayed by Tea Leoni, who played as herself, in the movie within the episode "Hollywood A.D." (7x19). Leoni is actuality married to David Duchovny.
- Chris Carter has said that he considers Scully to be the main character of the series.
- In the pilot episode it is stated that Scully wrote her college thesis on Einstein's Twins Paradox. Later in the same episode, she and Mulder both experience nine minutes of time loss. She declares that this is impossible, that Einstein said time is a universal constant. This is completely incorrect - Einstein's breakthrough (and the key concept in the Twins Paradox) was the realization that the speed of light, not time, is constant.
[edit] Quotes
- "What I find fantastic is the notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there, you just have to know where to look." — "Pilot", 1x79
- Mulder: "Unidentified flying objects. I think that fits the description pretty well. Tell me I'm crazy."
Scully: "Mulder, you're crazy." — "Deep Throat", 1x01 - Mulder: "Don't you believe in the next life?"
Scully: "I'd settle for a life in this one." — "Shadows", 1x05 - Mulder: "Whatever tape you found in that VCR, it isn't mine."
Scully: "Good, because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours." — "Excelsius Dei", 2x11 - "I've heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers." — "Paperclip", 3x02
- "Don't you see, Mulder? You're doing their work for them. You're chasing aliens that aren't there, helping them to create the story that covers the shameful truth. And what they can't cover, they apologize for. Apology has become policy." — "731", 3x10
- Mulder: "Modell psyched the guy out. He put the whammy on him."
Scully: "Please explain to me the scientific nature of 'the whammy.'" — "Pusher", 3x17 - "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, just in contradiction to what we know of it." — "Herrenvolk", 4x01
- Mulder: "Dana, if um... early in the four years we've been working together... an event occurred that suggested or somebody told you that... we'd been friends together in other lifetimes... always... wouldn't it have changed some of the ways we looked at one another?"
Scully: "Even if I knew for certain, I wouldn't change a day. Well, maybe that Flukeman thing." — "The Field Where I Died", 4x05 - Priest: "Has it occurred to you that maybe this, too, is part of what you were meant to understand?"
Scully: "You mean, accepting my loss?"
Priest: "Can you accept it?"
Scully: "Maybe that’s what faith is." — "All Souls", 5x17 - "The truest truths are what hold us together, and keep us painfully, desperately apart." — "Trust No 1", 9x08
[edit] External links
- Dana Scully - X-Files Wiki
- [1] - X-Files Deep Background entry on Dana Scully
- Wiki on the X-Files
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