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Name: Dana Katherine
Scully, M.D. Rank: Special Agent, FBI Background: B.S. in Physics from University of Maryland, 1986. Medical degree from unknown institution Resident in forensic pathology Instructor at FBI Academy, Quantico, VA Specialty: Science of all kinds, especially medical; post-mortem analysis; abnormal psychology |
Holmes had his Watson, Batman his Robin. Fox Mulder is often leading Dana Scully down roads equally bizarre, equally counterintuitive, but she is his mental equal, at the very least, able to reason in a way Mulder disdains. Scully fires her gun about three times as often as her partner, for a very good reason: most of the time, Mulder gets jumped by the bad guy because his curiosity gets the better of him, and Scully has to save them both. Good thing for him she's around; whether Mulder's company is good for Scully is another question altogether.
Scully was a doctor who joined the FBI straight out of medical school in 1990. She taught at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia for two years before being assigned to the X-Files as a combination spy and psychiatric observer. Section Chief Scott Blevins (and the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who said nothing during the whole interview) were worried about Mulder's mental health and wanted Scully to "reality-check" Mulder's wild hypotheses. As it happened, reality was closer to Mulder's worldview than Scully's; despite the lack of physical evidence (what little survives a suspicious motel fire is stolen by the Cigarette-Smoking Man) her report admits she believes Mulder's theory that aliens abducted children and kept track of them through implants in their noses ("Pilot").
Scully comes from a Navy family. Her father, Captain William Scully, died of a heart attack in 1994. Scully had a dream at the same moment, in which her father came to her and spoke words she couldn't hear; she accepts this as a dream, and notes the implications of the time she had it, without going overboard and buying into the psychic powers of convicted murderer Luther Lee Boggs, whose tricks are no more mysterious than any carnival mentalist. Besides, as she tells Mulder, she's afraid to believe in a world where anything can happen ("Beyond the Sea").
Scully has had boyfriends, including FBI agent Jack Willis, who had the same birthday as she does, February 23, 1964. Willis was killed in a bank robbery and possessed by the spirit of critically wounded bank robber Warren Dupre ("Lazarus").
She has been captured by the bad guys in "Lazarus", "Duane Barry", "Irresistible", "End Game" and "Unruhe" among others. In fact, after the "Duane Barry" episode, she is abducted by aliens and missing for some weeks, with no memory of what happened. Scully is not interested, or not willing, to inquire into what happened, since it left no ill effects.
Scully discovered that most Americans, if not most humans, were biologically bar-coded under the guise of smallpox inoculation, by parties unknown. She defended her conclusions to Skinner, even though they suggest an alien-government conspiracy, because they are based on hard evidence. "That is why I was brought on to the X-Files , was it not? To put Mulder's theories to the test of science?" she demands ("Herrenvolk).
Scully may not be interested in finding the truth about everything, as evidenced by her comments to Mulder after the events of "Unruhe." Mulder wonders why the killer got started, and Scully says she doesn't want to know. But this is a selective blindness; once the facts are known, she doesn't turn away. In her own way, as much as Mulder, she can't.
Scully has become disillusioned enough to tell a panel of Senators that she believes the men who run this country in the shadows are so powerful that they will never be punished for their lawless acts, and against them, the FBI is helpless ("Tunguska").
Text by Steve Johnson
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