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FBI special agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and one of the two protagonists of the Fox television series The X-Files. Dana Scully is played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series. Scully is a Special Agent of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, partnered with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder for the first seven seasons, and in the eighth and ninth seasons partnered with John Doggett. In the television series, they work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files"; as of the second film, Scully had left government employment and worked as a surgeon in a private Catholic hospital. In contrast to Mulder's credulous "believer" character, Scully is the skeptic for the first seven seasons, choosing to base her beliefs on what science can prove. She later on becomes a "believer" after Mulder's abduction at the end of season seven.

She has appeared in all but four episodes of The X-Files, and additionally appears in the 20th Century Fox films The X-Files, released in 1998 (sometimes subtitled Fight the Future), and The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released 10 years later. The episodes she does not appear in are "3," "Zero Sum," "Unusual Suspects," and "Travelers." She appears only briefly in "The Gift," in a flashback which reuses footage from a previous episode.

Television
Dana Katherine Scully was born on February 23, 1964, to William and Margaret Scully, into a close-knit Catholic family. She has an older brother, Bill Jr., an older sister, Melissa, and a younger brother, Charles, who is never seen on the show except in flashbacks. Scully's father was a Navy Captain, who died of a heart attack in early January 1994. Dana Scully grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and later in San Diego, California. As a young girl, Scully's favorite book was Moby-Dick and she came to nickname her father "Ahab" from the book, and in return, he called her "Starbuck." Due to this she named her dog Queequeg.

Scully attended The University of Maryland, and received a B.S. degree in Physics. Her undergraduate thesis was titled Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. Scully earned her M.D. medical degree from Stanford University. While in medical school she was recruited by the FBI; she accepted the agency's offer of employment because she felt she could distinguish herself there. Upon being partnered with Fox Mulder, she maintained her medical skills by acting as a forensic pathologist, often performing or consulting on autopsies of victims on X-Files cases.

In the second season Scully is kidnapped by an ex-FBI mental patient named Duane Barry, and is then taken from Barry by a military covert operation that were working with the alien conspirators, but is later returned. In the third season she finds out that a super hi-tech microchip was implanted in the back of her neck. After having it removed, she developed cancer in the fourth season. She is hospitalized after her cancer becomes terminal. She is saved when Mulder breaks into the Department of Defense to retrieve another chip to be implanted back into her neck. It should be mentioned that, at the time, Scully was also undergoing experimental medical treatments and was having a dramatic renewal of her faith.

At the beginning of the third season, Scully's sister, Melissa, was killed by mistake by Luis Cardinal and Alex Krycek, who were trying to kill her sister, Dana. She was shot in the head as she entered Scully's apartment. Dana eventually caught Cardinal with Walter Skinner's help. Cardinal later died in his cell, his death made to look like a suicide. Some time after her death, Scully began to receive mysterious phone calls from someone sounding mysteriously like Melissa. After discovering Emily Sim, Scully is at first under the impression that the young girl is in fact Melissa's daughter, before discovering that she is in fact the child's mother. Emily had been conceived thanks to harvested ova that had been taken from Scully during her abduction.

After being pronounced infertile in the fifth season, Scully mysteriously became pregnant in the show's seventh season finale, "Requiem". The child, named William, after Mulder's father, was born at the end of the eighth season. The cause of her pregnancy is never formally revealed; however the most probable of theories is that Mulder fathered the child, as growing intimacy in the later portion of the series seemed to propose a sexual relationship between the two (season 7 episode "All Things" is seen as proof due to its opening scene, though the remainder of the episode takes place prior to the opening scene, and the closing scene can also be interpreted as proof against this). Beyond this, the pair had unsuccessfully tried for a child through in vitro fertilization. It was around this time that Mulder was fired from the FBI by Deputy Director Alvin Kersh, and Scully left the field to teach forensics at Quantico. William was given up for adoption during the end of the ninth season after Scully felt she could no longer provide the safety that William needed. William was a "miracle child", of some importance to the alien Conspiracy. He demonstrated extraordinary powers, including telekinesis.

In The X-Files: I Want to Believe she is shown working as a medical doctor at the Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital in Virginia. Early on in the film Scully is contacted by the FBI who are looking for Fox Mulder in the hope that he will assist them with the investigation of a missing FBI agent. In exchange for his help the charges against him will be dropped. Unlike Mulder, Scully was apparently not considered a fugitive by the FBI. However, she did continue to maintain her romantic relationship with Mulder throughout the six years that he was on the run from the American government. In the movie they are shown to be living together in a secluded house. Scully appears in every episode of the nine-season series with the exceptions of "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects" and "Travelers".

Literature
Dana Scully also appeared in the comic book continuation of the series, written during the show's third and fourth seasons, as well as after the series aired. The initial comic books were written solely by Stefan Petrucha. According to Petrucha, there were three types of stories: "those that death with the characters, those that dealt with the conspiracy, and the monster-of-the-week sort of stuff". Petrucha cited that latter as the easiest to write. Petrucha saw Scully as a "scientist […] with real world faith." He explained that the difference between [Mulder and Scully] is not that Mulder believes and Scully doesn't; it's more a difference in procedure." In this manner, Scully's viewpoint was often written to be "as valid as Mulder's". Petrucha was eventually fired and various other authors took up the job.

Other appearances
Dana Scully has also appeared outside The X-Files on numerous occasions, the most notable being in the Millennium (also created by Chris Carter) episode "Lamentation," in which the main character, Frank Black, visits the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and Mulder and Scully are briefly seen descending a stairway. In fact, they are Duchovny and Anderson's stand-ins. An animated version of Scully, which featured the voice acting of Anderson, would appear on season 8 of The Simpsons, in the episode "The Springfield Files", as well as Canadian animated series Eek! The Cat, on the episode "Eek Space 9". The animated television series ReBoot featured characters Fax Modem and Data Nully, obvious spoofs of Mulder and Scully, in the episode "Trust No One". Anderson provided her voice work for the episode, but co-star Duchovny declined.

Concept and creation
Chris Carter named Scully after his favorite sportscaster, Vin Scully of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John Doggett was likewise named after Vin Scully's longtime broadcasting partner, Jerry Doggett. Scully's character was also inspired by Jodie Foster's portrayal of Clarice Starling in the film The Silence of the Lambs. The casting for Scully caused a conflict between Carter and the Fox network. Carter had chosen 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, who Carter felt was perfect for the role. Of her audition, Carter said, "she came in and read the part with a seriousness and intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have and I knew [...] she was the right person for the part". However, Fox executives had wanted a more glamorous "bombshell" for the part, hoping that this would lead to the series involving a romantic element. This led Carter to insist that he did not want the roles of Mulder and Scully to become romantically involved. Carter decided Scully would be the skeptic to play against established stereotypes; typically on television the quality was attributed to a male.

As the series ended its first season, the producers had to deal with the fact that Anderson was pregnant with her first child. Some network executives wanted the role recast, which Carter refused to do. Though they considered having Scully giving birth to an alien child, the producers decided to work around Anderson's pregnancy by having her abducted and appearing comatose several episodes later. This was described by executive producer Frank Spotnitz as "the best thing that ever happened to the series" as it helped form the intricate mythology that would run throughout the show. The writers decided to close the X-Files at the end of the first season and thus separate Mulder and Scully in the earlier episodes of the season. To hide Anderson's pregnancy in the early episodes, the producers disguised it with "very fancy trick angles, trench coats, and scenes where she is seated rather than standing". Anderson was not featured at all in the episode "3", as she was giving birth to her daughter at the time.

The show's producers decided to give Scully cancer early in the fourth season. Series creator Chris Carter initially discussed giving Scully's mother cancer but decided to have Scully suffer from it instead. Carter felt the move would give the show an interesting platform on which to discuss things such as faith, science, health care and a certain element of the paranormal. Some of the writing staff felt that the decision was a poor one to make, citing it as "a cheap TV thing". However, Frank Spotnitz felt that, given the appearances of cancer-stricken abductees in previous episodes, it was an "obligatory" move to have Scully follow suit.

Because Anderson is almost ten inches shorter than Duchovny, the production staff for The X-Files had to create a special device for her to stand on, in order for her to not be "talking into Duchovny's chest". This box, akin to an apple box, was nicknamed the "Scully Box" by the staff of The X-Files, and the "Gilly Box" by Anderson herself. This device was made out of aluminum and carpeting and was laid down so that Anderson could walk in a path. She later noted it was difficult to do some scenes because she had to remember she was standing on a box; she explained, "It's funny: Sometimes I forget I'm on the box. Like, I'll have this very serious moment in a very serious scene and I'll turn to the camera and fall right off the box."

Skeptic
Throughout most of the series, Scully is portrayed as a skeptic of the paranormal activity she and Mulder investigate. According to Television Characters by Vincent Terrace, Scully's defining quality is her knack "to not believe everything she sees". According to Terrace, Scully must find the "logical explanation for the supernatural events she investigates" and that "everything has to be logical and make sense to her". Scully represents a worldview concerned with "scientific naturalism". She also presents modern thought. Scully's scientific and empirical processes come important in many episodes, such as "Ice" and "The Host".

She often has the same facts as Mulder, but interprets them differently. Initially, she places more value in experiences documented and shared by many (interpersonal) rather than personal experiences. She will only accept Mulder's theory if her scientific hypotheses fail, which is part of a standard modern scientific process. However, as the series goes along, she comes to understand that scientific experiences do not work for all phenomenon, and the scientific nature of reality may expand to include unusual occurences. Scully also bears a resemblance to W. K. Clifford, who was also a debunker of the paranormal. However, Clifford was more harsh than Scully, firmly believing it was intellectually and morally irresponsible to believe in things that go beyond science.

Reluctant believer
After Mulder's abduction at the hands of aliens in the seventh season finale "Requiem", Carter states that Scully becomes a "reluctant believer" to Doggett following Mulder's abduction in season 8, she can still be seen as a skeptic, as she only believes what evidence "minimally and rationally requires" of her to understand the situation, and does not share Mulder's faith in aliens. The culmination of her experiences lead her to believe in conspiracy and invasion, as by the middle of the series she cannot dispute evidence she has seen, such as that concerning the Syndicate, black oil, and alien-human hybrids.

Faith
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although at times a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal. Scully has Catholic faith, though she sometimes questions it. She and Mulder both share a theistic view that God may have created everything; however, for Scully science overrides religion, and Mulder is not strictly supportive of organized religion and is open to extreme possibilities that support his beliefs in the paranormal. Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs. Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace, given to her by her mother when she was a teen. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, D.C. hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her.

In the fourth season finale, "Gethsemane", which is partially about debating "the existence of God", Scully tells Father McCue that she has no desire to return to the church even in light of her cancer, feeling that she would be "lying to [herself]". However, two episodes later in "Redux II", she decides to turn back. 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. 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 Washington D.C., she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death.

Fox Mulder
Probably should be expanded to talk about their relationship...and behind-the-scenes stuff (weren't they adament it was going to stay platonic?),

The dynamic between Mulder and Scully can be seen as similar to that of Greek philosopher Plato and his student Aristotle; Plato believed that people "must reach a nonearthly plane in order to unlock the deepest secrets of truth and knowledge", while Aristotle believed truth and knowledge could be discovered through hypotheses made from observations of earthly surroundings. Scully represents Aristotle's belief in "keeping oneself grounded", while both characters see empirical study and scientific testing as important. The views of both characters compliment each other to help them more successfully reach the truth. Scully's views gradually become less strict Aristoteliansim.


 * Trusts him because he puts her interests equal to or above his own, and vice versa (page 88)

Towards the end of the series, her previously platonic friendship with partner Fox Mulder developed into a romantic relationship. When Mulder was injured in a boat crash, he awakened in a hospital and told Scully that he loved her. In the season six episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", a ghost that seems to know the inner workings of Scully's mind suggests that her source of intimacy for Mulder comes from her desire to always prove him wrong. By the end of the sixth season, Mulder and Scully were increasingly shown enjoying more light-hearted activities together, such as practicing baseball, using FBI funds for a "night out" during a movie premiere, and watching a movie at Mulder's apartment. In the season seven episode all things, Scully is shown getting dressed in Mulder's bathroom, while Mulder sleeps, apparently naked, in the bedroom. In another episode, a man reveals to Scully that he works for a "new" Syndicate like-organization, and his job requires him and a few other colleagues to spy on her around the clock. Due to this he knows intimate details of Scully's personal life, right down to her "natural hair color". It is suggested by this man that Scully ultimately initiated a sexual relationship with Mulder, as he remarked that he was very surprised when she invited Mulder "into her bed". The last scene of the series finale featured Mulder and Scully holding each other on a bed, facing an uncertain future together.

In the film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which takes place six years later, Mulder and Scully are still in a relationship and are now living together in Virginia. Scully was concerned that Mulder's continuing pursuit of the unknown was taking its toll on their relationship and they could not be together if he couldn't "escape the darkness." However, the film ends with the couple sharing a passionate kiss, and in the "secret ending" after the majority of the credits, a happily smiling Scully is seen in a small rowboat with Mulder, both clad in swimwear, in a tropical sea, having taken him up on his offer to run away together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/02/arts/l-the-x-files-a-botched-romance-297232.html
 * Some real-world "shipping" info would be great here too.

As the show grew in popularity, subgroups of fans developed, such as "shippers" hoping for a romantic or sexual partnership between Mulder and Scully, or those who already perceived one between the lines.

Other colleagues
Doggett, Reyes, and Skinner

Other characters
While in medical school, she carried on an affair with her married instructor, Dr. Daniel Waterston who may have been the "college boyfriend" mentioned in "Trust No 1." It is never indicated in the show whether or not the relationship became sexual. According to Anderson in the episode's audio commentary, Scully came very close to having an affair with the married Waterston but left before she could break up his marriage. 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 relationship with her Academy instructor, Jack Willis, with whom she shared a birthday.

"Never Again"?

Reception
Anderson won many awards for her portrayal of Special Agent Scully during the nine season long run of The X-Files, including an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1997, a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series in 1997, and two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996 and 1997.

Film critic Scott Mendelson, writing in The Huffington Post, cited Scully as an example of strong female characters on television, calling her "one of the most iconic characters in the science-fiction genre". Radio Times Laura Pledger also named her as a strong TV woman, placing her at #1. Rebecca Traister of Salon.com opined that Scully had a better character arc than Mulder. She wrote, "The very fact that her character was such a hard sell made her repeated brushes with the supernatural all the more powerful. Mulder's desire to believe was so expansive, his credulity so flexible, that it's not as though he was ever going to have either shaken from him. But Scully's surety was solid, stable, rigid; every time she saw something she thought she'd never see, we saw it crack, sparks fly from it. She was forced to question herself, grow, change". She praised her for being more "rational, resilient, [and] mature" than her partner and for their mature relationship. In a review of "Irresistible", Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that it was a cliché to put Scully in danger, as "Scully is [the show's] heart, and any time she's in danger, it feels like the show itself is about to be stabbed through the heart".

As the show went on, many critics began to criticize the producer's choice to keep Scully as a skeptic of the alien conspiracy, due to all that she saw. Entertainment Weekly wrote, in the third season episode "Paper Clip", that "Scully has literally 'made contact' but will not or cannot open her mouth about it. These complaints grew greater after the events of the 1998 movie. Todd VanDerWerff from The A.V. Club, in his review of the sixth season premiere "The Beginning", noted that "Because [the show's producers] need to maintain the “skeptic/believer” conceit, they need [Scully] to constantly be questioning things she probably would have just given up and admitted were real within the show’s fiction ages ago." He argued that, despite Anderson's acting being "lovely", "When she starts rambling on about how the 'science' doesn’t bear out what Mulder says, it’s too easy to start rolling your eyes."

In 2010, Entertainment Weekly named Scully, along with Mulder, as the twelfth greatest character of the last 20 years. The character of Scully has become something of a sci-fi heroine due to her intelligence and resilience, appearing on lists of important female science fiction characters, such as Dreamwatch's list of "The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi", where she came fourth. TV Squad named her the thirteenth greatest woman on television, while the site also listed her among the most memorable female science fiction television characters. She was also included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters, at number 20, and in The Daily Telegraph list of best TV doctors. She is also often cited as being an unlikely sex symbol, being included in lists of sexy TV characters, such as one published by Maxim. Eric Goldman, Brian Zoromski, and Dan Iverson from IGN named Mulder and Scully the sixth best TV couple, writing "Has there ever been a relationship that people have wanted to happen more than Mulder and Scully?" The three cited the sixth season episode "Arcadia" as the best example of the two as a couple.