Scully

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Facts and figures / Life before the X-Files / Character Traits

Updated: Requiem

Facts and figures

Full Name: Dana Katherine Scully

Date of Birth: February 23rd 1964 (date from "Lazarus," year from "One Breath")

Family: (see page on Scully's family) Parents: Bill Scully (died late December 1993 or early January 1994) and Margaret Scully.

Older sister Melissa, born 1962. Older brother Bill Jr. (born 1963?) and younger brother Charles.

Childhood Address: Brought up, at at least some part of her childhood, in Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego ("Piper Maru") One of her school friends was Richard Johansen, son of Commander Johansen who experienced the oily alien in the submarine. The family home on the base was a little red-bricked house, as seen in "Piper Maru." Either this house or another one they lived in in San Diego, where she shared a room with Melissa , was like the one her brother is staying in in "Christmas Carol."

Click here for more information on growing up on a military base.

A photo of Melissa ("Christmas Carol") shows that the family went to Japan at some point, though it's not known whether this was a vacation or a more long-term posting.

At time of her smallpox vaccination ("Paper Clip") her address is given as 3170 W 53 Rd, Annapolis, Maryland. Whether this is her childhood address or a later address is not known.

Current Address: Apartment 35, number 1419 on an unknown street. (This number is clearly seen above the door in "Ascension" and again in "Colony," even though the color of the front door has changed in this time.

Now, fanfic normally puts her as living in Annapolis, Maryland. In the movie, however, Mulder asks the cab driver for "Georgetown," en route of Scully's. That she lives in Georgetown is confirmed in "Milagro" - where we also learn that she's lived in Georgetown since at least 1993. So we can't even say that she moved from Annapolis to Georgetown in the course of the show.

However, this whole Annopolis thing seems to be based on a misreading of the evidence. The screen caption says "DC" for her apartment at the very end of "Erlenmeyer Flask," and her license places are also DC ones (though she and Mulder to drive rental cars, or use FBI ones (as in Jersey Devil), so often, that it's not clear at all what her own car looks like), as is her area code on her phone number (202). In fact, the Annapolis address comes only from her smallpox vaccination certificate in "Paper Clip," and she would have had that done as a child, therefore it is likely to be one of her childhood addresses.

She worships in Alexandria, in St Johns' Church.. Her family's favourite priest, Father McCue, is at this church, so this is not necessarily her local one.

Scully has a key to Mulder's apartment ("End Game," where we see that she has labelled it "Mulder" - and other episodes), and we can assume that he has a key to hers, though we don't see it. He managed to get into her apartment in "Redux" without breaking down the door, as he has to do at the start of season 1 ("Squeeze")

Phone number: Home: (202) 555 6431 ("Ghost in the Machine," where she also seems to have more than one phone number, quite apart from her cell phone. One line is being used by the modem, which she can also hear through the phone at the side of her bed, but she can pick up another phone on her desk and make a call). Her cordless phone at home is white and chunky.

Cell Phone: 555 3564 ("Blood") 555 0113 (The movie) [202 555 0194: the game]

Answering Machine message: Heard frequently in "Colony: "Hi. This is Dana Scully. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

Badge Number: 2317-616 ("Ghost in the Machine" and "Christmas Carol.") This is in a different format from Mulder's. In "Teliko" she has a badge number in same format: JTT0331613.

Email Address: D_Scully@fbi.gov ("End Game"). Not known what her computer password is, but she knows Mulder's.

Car: We normally see Scully (and Mulder) driving FBI cars or rental cars, so it's not even clear which car actually is Scully's own. But, whatever it is, we learn in Milagro that she's driven the same car since at least 1993.

Dog: Queequeg, acquired September 22nd 1995, eaten sometime in March or April 1996. Named after a character in "Moby Dick," a novel special to her and her father, who, ironically, also did some cannibalistic things.

Eye Color: Blue [Blue/green in the computer game]

Handedness: Scully is seen writing with her right hand, as in EBE (before her pen is "borrowed")

Weight: [100 pounds, in the computer game] There is a reference in "Quagmire" to Scully having lost some weight recently. She seems pleased that Mulder has noticed, suggesting it was intentional.

Pregnancy: In "Requiem," which aired May 21, 2000, Scully discovered that she is was pregnant. From her behavior and the context of the scene where she announces this fact, it seems clear that she believes Mulder is the father. Whether she is correct in this belief remains to be seen, of course.

Mulder's abduction: Mulder was abducted by aliens at the end of "Requiem," and has not been returned. Scully had only one brief scene after the abduction, but it's a given that she will be deeply affected by this.

Life before the X-Files

Childhood: See the page on Scully's family for the general information about where they lived etc

Scully was a tomboy as a child, preferring to prove to her father that she was the equal of her brothers. For example, she went with them when shooting in the woods, and joined them in shooting at a snake. When she realised that she'd killed it, she cried, holding it in her hands even though deathly afraid of snakes.

Once she crept down at night and smoked one of her mother's cigarettes, feeling very scared and excited. ("Beyond the Sea"), half hoping her father would find her and be angry. ("Never Again")

She had a grey pet rabbit, which she accidentally killed when she hid it in a lunch box to save it from her brother's threats to stew it.

Her childhood ambitions did not include wanting to be an astronaut, but she did want a pony and to learn how to braid her own hair. ("Space")

She was given a gold cross by her mother, either at Christmas or on her 15th birthday, depending on what episode you believe ("Christmas Carol" or "Ascension.")

According to Scully, in "Small Potatoes," the "12th grade love of my life" was called Marcus. They went to their senior prom together, she wearing moire taffeta, he wearing a tux with a kelly green cumberbund. At 2 am, they were off together, likely making out, because Scully said it was the "now or never" moment for Marcus. Then, they heard a siren. The friends they were with (Sylvia and Burwood) apparently let their campfire get out of control. The fire department arrived, and everyone rode back on the pump truck.

Education: Scully studied physics at the University of Maryland. Her senior thesis is, rather implausibly, "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation," published by the University of Maryland on May 15, 1986 ("Musings....," in which her thesis seems to include references to MJ-12 and the establishment of a "super-secret" operation during the Eisenhower administration). In "Jersey Devil" we see Dr Diamond, one of her professors. His speciality is anthropology.

[Kevin Anderson's novel "Ground Zero," which is officially approved so may or may not be taken as X-File canon, has Scully spending her first year of College at Berkeley, California, before her father was posted East and she transferred to Maryland. As an undergraduate she would have laughed at someone in a suit - someone like she has become. She was a good student, working hard with her physics, aware of how much money it was costing her father, but had flirted with activism. She read lots of leaflets about nuclear weapons, and had nightmares about them. While she didn't actually join a protest, she did argue with her father about nuclear weapons - the first subject they'd disagreed on, though they'd later disagree on her joining the FBI]

On the subject of her thesis, the twin paradox is a fairly simple explanation of what happens in time travel, if one twin goes a-travelling in time and comes back younger than the one who stayed. She could hardly have reinterpreted this, without challenging the whole of the theory of reletivity. However, it is a nice allusion to all the time stuff we see inthe X-Files, such as Mulder's two stop-watch trick ("EBE") and the fact that Samantha could well still be a little girl. Mulder keeps citing Scul;y's thesis in "Synchrony".

After that she went to medical school, though we don't know where. She decided not to practice it, but joined the FBI instead, saying that she thought she could "make a difference" there. Her father disapproved of this decision, and her stubborn determinination to succeed could well be an attempt to prove to him that she made the right choice. Maybe to prove to herself, too, for in "Christmas Carol," we see her struck with doubts. Despite the fact that Melissa urges her to remember that it is not her father's life she is living, Dana says that she fears she'll regret it. When she started medical school, she says, she thought it was what she wanted to do, but later realised it wasn't. What if she ends up feeling the same about the FBI?

By the end of the movie, though, she seems reconciled. She will be a doctor within the FBI, and the X-Files, she says. She has found viruses and vaccines to study, and lives to save.

In "all things," we learned that while she was in medical school she had an adulterous affair with one of her professors, and this apparently was the catalyst for her decision to give up the practice of medicine. Presumably the other issues are still there, and Scully does reiterate in "all things" that she finds her work with the FBi important and fulfilling.

At medical school, she seems to have decided to specialise in forensic pathology pretty quickly. Certainly, as we learn in Agua Mala, she has never delivered a baby, and it also seems as if her bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired - though the stressful circumstances of the delivery may have something to do with that.

Unlike Mulder's mess, her pre-X-Files FBI career is simple, as long as we forget real life training needs. Just two years teaching at the Academy - a position she went back to in the summer of 1994 when the X-Files were closed down. She lectured on pathology to new agents, teaching them what to look out for on dead bodies and such like.

Of course, this doesn't fit in with real life. A forensic pathologist would go to college, then medical school, then have four to five years of residency and two years' fellowship, and this all before joining the FBI. After that, she would have needed to have spent at least two years in the field before getting the Quantico job.

She was assigned to the X-Files in March 1992, but see the Timeline for all the problems with this.

Character traits

Does Scully ignore the evidence of her own eyes?
Does Scully take "little notes" on Mulder?
Is Scully always getting kidnapped?
Does Scully suffer from sexism within the Bureau?
What are Scully's religious beliefs?
Scully's sexual morality
Is Scully the emotionless Ice Queen?
What does Scully like to eat and drink?
Scully's men
Does Scully have a life?
Scully's dog
Is Scully psychic?
Scully's abduction
Scully's cancer
Other stuff

Does Scully ignore the evidence of her own eyes?
There are plenty of things Scully has seen that she appears to take no notice of - plenty of fuel for Mulder to say "Scully, remember such and such" in fanfics.

However, quite often she manages to run up just after the exciting thing has happened (like in the Pilot, or in "Shadows," where she is conveniently locked out of the room in which things are being thrown around by a ghost.) A lot of Mulder's "evidence" can, with some justification, be dismissed by her as unreliable, based on subjective impressions.

Here are just some of things she's actually seen or experienced.

"Pilot" - missing nine minutes of time - well, according to Mulder's watch. She didn't check the time herself. Also saw a bright light in the distance, and turned up in time to see a boy last seen in a persistent vegetative state, standing in the middle of a wood.

"Deep Throat" - planes manoevring very fast - fast enough for her to be open-mouthed in amazement. This is later dismisses as lasers reflecting off clouds.

"Squeeze" - sees Toom's nest, and has first-hand experience of him squeezing through an impossible space. At least she seems to accept this one. Why else would she, in "Tooms," go to excavate a 60 year old body to find out if Tooms killed it.

"Conduit" - sees Kevin receiving binary signals from the television, and sees the resulting picture of Ruby. Explains it away as a "statistical aberration," though admits it's not much of a theory. She blasted trees and sand fused into glass is explained as an electrical storm.

"Shadows" - ignores the fact that people have been killed by being strangled from the inside and that rooms and people keep getting destroyed when no-one is there to do it. She doesn't really have a theory here. Instead she laughs. ("They're here!")

"Ice" - Hey! She's learning! This time it's Scully's weird theory that gets laughed at by Dr Hodge.

"Space" - Scully was there when Colonel Belt did his odd morphing into the Mars face. Michelle Generoo saw it. Why didn't Scully?

"Eve" - she manages to put all that happens (two identical girls doing identical things) to being a random coincidence.

"Beyond the Sea" - the first time she really comes close to believing. She even tells Boggs she believes, but by the end she is beginning to rationise it all away. "I'm afraid to believe," she admits.

"Lazarus" - manages to put everything down to stress or instrument malfunction. However, at the end seems to be wondering what to believe, doubting her own theories.

"EBE" - although she hears of a lot of odd things in this one, the only one she actually experienced was that odd light thing that stopped their car (some high-tech sonic weapon, she says.) "Why don't you just admit it," Mulder says. "You're determined not to believe."

"Shapes" - sees Lyle Parker go into the bathroom, stands outside the locked door as he makes odd noises, then is attacked by a beast that bursts through the locked door. Refuses to accept this means he's a werewolf. It was the mountain lion in the cage in the yard, of course.

"Born Again" - finds burn marks called by "an intense concentration of electrothermal energy" on the dead Detective's body, but never addresses where they came from. When the girl starts acting as if she's the dead detective it all comes down to her remembering a photo of the man on the wall of the police station. "Why is it still so hard for you to believe, even when all the evidence suggests extraordinary phenomena?" Mulder asks. When he pushes his ideas, she evades them, simply saying they wouldn't hold up in court so there is no reason to pursue them. And what about the exploding fish tank at the end?

"The Erlenmeyer Flask" - as well as actually holding an alien foetus, Scully also hears from a scientist (Dr Carpenter) that the subtance in the flask is not of this earth. Will she remember this? However, to her credit, she does admit to Mulder earlier that she doesn't know what to believe and that she could be wrong about her earlier beliefs.

"Firewalker" - The odd behaviour of the team is put down to post-traumatic stress. What does she make of those rather nasty things in people's necks? She sees one explode. Still, parasites like that she can presumably fit into her world view without much trouble.

"Red Museum" - refers to the Erlenmeyer Flask and tells Mulder it's not been proved to origninate from off the earth.

"Die Hand Die Verletzt" - she looks shaken at the falling toads, and most relieved when the weather people report that it can possibly be explained by meteorological means. Even she admits that the man with the gun at the end looks as if someone was controlling him.

"Fresh Bones" - she went though a rather odd ordeal in the car at the end, which she ended by reaching out and grabbing the talisman. We never hear what she has to say about this one.

"Colony and End Game" - Oh dear. She actually watches as someone who looks just like Mulder morphs into the Bounty Hunter. She sees this. She also sees the Samantha clone corrode into green goo. Even so, though she admits at the end that some of the things she's seen have challenged her beliefs, she says she is now even more determined to understand them via science.

"Humbug" - Scully comes up with a weird theory before even Mulder does!

"The Calusari" - Scully is thrown across the room by an invisible force and sees Mrs Holvey being held against the ceiling by the same force. Does she believe this or incorporate what happened into her world view? Need we ask?

"Anasazi" trilogy - In "Paper Clip" Scully sees little alien type figures running past her in the tunnels. Even so, she insists that the Project had nothing to do with aliens. However, she does show herself more open to psychic things, accepting it when Mulder talks to her in a dream.

"DPO" - a sign that she's learning. She takes a stand against the sheriff and tries to convince him there is more to this than simple lightning strikes.

"Clyde Bruckman" - he is just lucky with his guesses, she says. What about the fact that everything he says comes true? Has she forgotten the fact that she nearly believed Boggs?

"Nisei and 731" - perhaps the first indication that some of Scully's objections to Mulder's theories could actually be right.

"Revelations" - one in which she believes.

"Coprophages" - she has a whole host of explanations here, most of which turn out to be correct.

"Syzygy" - how does she explain the fact that tables fly around the place and all the guns go off? Surely this isn't all down to rumour panic too?

"Piper Maru and Apocrypha" - although, to the viewer, this seems to be a reaffirmation that the Mulder view of the world is the correct one (a position rather weakened by "Nisei" and "731") Scully doesn't actually see any of the oily alien stuff.

"Pusher" - another one in which she eventually seems to agree with Mulder, and tells Skinner so.

"Jose Chung" - now, I know the alien wasn't an alien, but Scully looked very calm when doing the autopsy on what looked very like a thing that she was sure doesn't exist - not like someone whose whole world-view has just crumbled. Just a thought. Maybe she's coming round to believing these things.

"Tunguska" and "Terma" - She tells a Congressional committee that she believes the rock contains something of extraterrestrial origin. In this one, there seems to be little difference between her own views and Mulder's.

And by the time of "Chinga," she is the one actually proposing the paranormal theory, against Mulder's phone-in rational one. She does seem very embarrassed about this, though, and the following week , "Kill Switch," she is sceptical beyond all reason, calling Artifical Intelligence "a load of crap"

For a while, in "Patient X," she was the first to believe in aliens, and that he own abduction was by aliens. Despite remembering aliens while under hypnotic regression, though, she is now on the verge of doubting again.

So, why doesn't Scully believe?

"There has to be some scientific explanation for all this" (Scully in "Detour")

In the "Pilot" she answers Mulder's question about the existence of extra-terrestrials by saying that, logically, she doesn't believe in them as the distances are too great. In other words, she's not saying they can't exist, but rather that they are unlikely. This world view would not be shattered by proof of the existence of extraterrestrials, but she would presumably need some pretty good scientific explanation of how they came here before she would accept them.

Then, in "End Game" and "Herrenvolk," she explains how her thinking has evolved. In both of these she gives closing speeches in which she admits that things have happened that she can't explain, but that she belives science is the way forward to explaining them. She won't go out on a leap of faith, like Mulder, but will believe if she thinks science supports the belief. So far, she hasn't got much of a scientific explanation for what she's seen, but she seems to be holding out for one.

In one of the many "Redux" voice-overs, Scully reflects on the irony that, while science is still her guiding light - the tool she has come to depend on so absolutely, she is now using it to support Mulder's claims, rather than, as she was originally assigned, to debunk them. "If my work with Agent Mulder has tested the foundation of my beliefs, science has been and continues to be my guiding light. Now I'm again relying on its familiar and systematic methods to arrive at a truth, a fact that might explain the fate that has befallen me." Clearly, even though she is now actively supporting Mulder's claims, we must remember that she is still approaching them from a different viewpoint - trying to approach them through science.

Moreover, for some of the storylines, Scully has her own belief in an alternative truth that she believes in as much as Mulder believes in his truth. This is seen most clearly in "Nisei" and "731," where Scully's belief could well be the truth. Certainly, some of the abductions Mulder is so ready to see an alien seem to be human instead.

Then we have, in "Beyond the Sea," her admission that, sometimes, it is plain fear that keeps her from believing. This is echoed in "The Beginning," when Gibson, the boy mind-reader, says, when Scully asks him what it is that he can communicate with, "You already know. You just don't want to believe it." When she is indeed confronted with a ghost in "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas," she seems terrified, screaming, shaking and even fainting. At the end, she has to tell herself that the whole thing never happened.

At other times, her lack of belief could be seen as a simple reaction to Mulder - an attempt to provide a counter-balance to his extremes so they can work as partners. While it's unduly harsh to say, as the ghost did in "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas," that her only joy in life is proving Mulder wrong, it is, quite simply, her job not to believe, and to make sure that Mulder considers all possibilities before jumping at the first extreme one taht comes his way. She always takes his theories seriously enough to try to put them to test of science, rather than dismiss them outright.

Mulder says much the same in the movie, when he says that he needs her science to keep him grounded, and to made him question his assumptions. "If I change now," she says to him in "The Beginning," "it wouldn't be right, or honest." To doubt, to demand scientific proof, is her job.
This next bit is necessarily interpretative, and subject to argument. However, looking back on Seasons 6 and 7, it appears that Scully's belief system has been evolving. In a nutshell, she has become more open to believing in paranormal phenomena, and less likely to dismiss what she sees with her own eyes. Towards the end of Season 7, we even see her advancing paranormal phenomena as possible explanations. Here's a brief look at some of the evidence:
The End: In this episode, we first meet Diana Fowley, Mulder's old girlfriend. Fowley is portrayed as being a "believer," and is very supportive of Mulder's paranormal beliefs. Scully appears to feel threatened by this, and responds by pursuing the possibility that Gibson Praise may be telepathic through scientific avenues. Significantly, she goes to the Lone Gunmen for help in her investigation, rather than more mundane sources. They are visibly surprised by her inquiry; Frohike remarks, "Ooh. A walk on the wild side."
The Beginning: At the end of this episode, Scully insists on continuing to rely on the scientific method, but does advance the possibility that all human beings may have alien DNA in their genetic code.
Tithonus: Scully ditches her temporary partner, Peyton Ritter, and spends an evening with Arthur Fellig. By the end of the episode, she seems to have come to believe that Fellig was a century and a half old, and that he could tell when someone was about to die. When he orders her not to look at what he claims is Death, after she is shot, she obeys him.
Trevor: Scully advances the idea of spontaneous human combustion as a possible explanation for the condition of a body she must autopsy. Mulder is startled by this, but pleased.
Milagro: Scully advances the theory that Padgett is able to predict the murders in the case in this episode by "getting into the head" of the killer, and compares it to Mulder's profiling ability. Mulder goodnaturedly accuses her of taking his "usual side" in the argument they have.
Field Trip: During Scully's hallucination, we see her arguing with Skinner, when he embraces the most mundane of several explanations that she offers for Mulder's death. Granted this is a hallucination, but the fungus did seem to work on the real hopes and fears of both Mulder and Scully in creating their hallucinations, so this may reflect her growing willingness to explore the paranormal.
Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction/Amor Fati: And now we come to the meat of it. At the end of "Biogenesis," Scully is confronted with what can only be an alien spacecraft. Subsequently, in "Sixth Extinction," she is forced to study the ship and the things engraved on it, as the only available course of action that might save Mulder -- apparently, she has accepted that exposure to rubbings from this spacecraft are causing his illness. In "Amor Fati," she resorts to praying with Albert Hosteen, a Navajo, in order to find and help Mulder. Finally, at the end of the episode, she tearfully admits to Mulder that she no longer knows what she believes.
Millennium: After being attacked by a zombie, Scully admits to Skinner that she saw a dead man come back to life. In a discussion with Frank Black, she appears to have some fear that the Millennium Group splinter faction may actually be able to bring about the end of the world.
The Goldberg Variations: At the end of this episode, Scully suggests that perhaps Harry Weems' string of luck was actually directed, although she doesn't say who or what was directing it.
Orison: Scully repeatedly hears a song that she hasn't heard since high school, and which she attaches personal significance to. She is quick to assume that there is some significance to hearing it now, despite Mulder's skepticism. At the end of the episode, she appears to be concerned that she may have been possessed when she killed Donnie Pfaster.
Theef: At the end of this episode, it is found that the string of murders in the case were committed by a practitioner of folk medicine whose daughter had been euthanized some years earlier by an emergency room doctor. Scully remarked that she would have done the same thing if she had been the patient's doctor, but by the end of the episode, she seems to be having second thoughts. When Mulder asks her whether she thinks the girl's father could have saved her through his folk medicine, she refuses to answer.
En Ami: Scully is easily persuaded (by CSM, of all people!) that the Consortium may have the cure for all human illness on a computer disk. She ditches Mulder and goes off with CSM in pursuit of this information. Even after it has become pretty clear that it was all a set-up, she clings to the possibility that it was really true, right up until the Lone Gunmen demonstrate that the disk is empty.
all things: Scully has a succession of odd experiences, culminating with a vision in a Buddhist temple, which allow her to lay to rest her last doubts that she has taken the right road in life. When Mulder suggests that she heard God speaking to her in the temple, she corrects him, and insists that it was a vision. Scully also accepts the theory of chakras, and arranges for a psychic healer to attend her ex-lover when he is in crticial condition in the intensive care unit.
Fight Club: We see Scully advancing a number of paranormal theories, apparently in jest, at the beginning of the episode. However, once they get in the field, it is Scully who drives the investigation forward, and it is her willingness to accept the idea that having a common father could somehow create two women who are doppelgangers of each other that finally allows the case to be resolved.
Je Souhaite: Scully quickly embraces the fact that she must autopsy an invisible man. She approaches it with apparent joy, telling Mulder that this will make a big difference to the scientific community. She even invites other scientists to observe the phenomenon, and is clearly embarrassed, confused and disappointed when the body is no longer there. Even more importantly, in discussing the invisible body with Mulder, she explicitly acknowledges that during their partnership she's seen a lot of "amazing things." And while Scully doesn't readily accept Mulder's theory that Jenn is causing all this by granting wishes to people, she counters him by offering *other* paranormal explanations, such as mesmerism, rather than resorting to the strict rationalism we've seen in the past.
Requiem: Scully's journey seems to be complete. She openly discusses aliens as if they really exist, not just with Mulder or even Skinner, but with outsiders who are involved with the case in this episode. We assume that she will continue to rely on science in the future, but apparently the accumulation of evidence is finally sufficient for her to take this step.
Does Scully take "little notes" on Mulder?
This was her original assignment. She was assigned, as someone with a scientific background, to make reports on Mulder's work. She, probably correctly, interpreted this as being an assignment to "debunk the X-Files." Mulder, correctly, assumes she is sent to spy on him, but she soon assures him she has no agenda other than to solve the cases.

Quite a lot of the early cases end with Scully writing her closing report, presumably the one that is sent to her superiors. In "Anasazi" she is reminded that she was assigned to debunk Mulder's work. She says that, yes, she was, and that she has been sending in regular reports ever since. This is born out by the fact that, in "Unruhe," she is seen writing up her report, which she numbers as report number 76. This almost tracks with the number of episodes (Unruhe was aired as episode 77, though it was actually produced as episode 75.)

(Interestingly, this numbering suggests that we actually see all of Mulder and Scully's cases, which asks the question of quite what they get up to over those long summer breaks when there are no episodes. And where on earth did they get that 75 percent solution rate that Scully tells Skinner about in "Tooms," as this is certainly not in all those "status, unexplained" cases we see.)

However, although Mulder, when under the unfluence of the drugged water, says she has been against him from the beginning, taking her "little notes," her little notes don't seem hostile to him, as one would expect. She sticks up for him when called before Skinner in "Tooms," saying that they have a high solution rate and that is all that should matter.

"Gethsemene" seemed to imply - in the title, if nothing else - that Scully was going to betray Mulder. By bringing back Blevins, who originally assigned her to the "X-Files," and referring back a lot to her original orders, we were reminded constantly that Scully was originally the spy. However, while "Gethsemene" showed us Scully telling a whole committee that Mulder's work was wrong, "Redux" showed us the whole picture. She was, in fact, defending Mulder by revealing the lies that he had been fed.
Is Scully always getting kidnapped?
"Lazarus" - held by Jack Willis, her old boyfriend, who may or may not be possessed by the soul of Warren Dupre. It isn't violent. He just makes her put on her own handcuffs than ties her to the radiator. She is rescued by an FBI SWAT team, after Mulder and his colleagues have traced her. By that time, her captors have died anyway. She remains fairly calm all the time, though she tries increasingly desperately to get through to Willis.

"Duane Barry" - grabbed by Barry from her own apartment. He climbs in through the window and takes her while she is on the phone with Mulder - or, rather, with his answering machine. She is bound and gagged and put in the trunk of his car. This is all she can remember of what happened next. Quite what happened to Scully in her missing three months is too complicated to speculate on here. See summaries for "One Breath," "Blessing Way," Nisei," "731" and "Memento Mori".

"Irresitible" - forced off the road by Donnie Pfaster, who has laid an elaborate trap for her. While in captivity, which comes at the end of a case she has found very disturbing anyway, she begins to flash back to her feelings about being abducted. Although very disturbed, she does fight back and has done a good job of rescuing herself before the FBI team find her. At the end she insists she is okay, but then cries in Mulder's arms.

"End Game" - Scully lets Mulder into her motel room, only to find out he is in fact a morphing alien bounty hunter (not that she will ever believe this, of course.) She ends up held hostage, to be exchanged for the Samantha clone. Mulder goes ahead with the exchange, even though he believes the clone is indeed his sister. He arranges with Skinner to have a sharp shooter so both Samantha and Scully can be saved, but it goes wrong.

"Our Town" - nearly gets her head chopped off as a sacrifice by the cannibalistic inhabitants of Dudley, Arkansas. Saved by Mulder on his dashing white charger.

"Herrenvolk" - not really kidnapped, but does spend the whole night held captive by an alien with an icepick at her neck.

"Unruhe" - kidnapped again, this time by Gerry Schnautz. He catches her by stabbing her foot with a hypodermic. She is forced to empathise with him in order to stay alive. Again, she is rescued by Mulder, but has done pretty well herself in the situation.

The Movie - She is stung by an infected bee and goes into anaphylactic shock. Fake EMT's take her away to the Antarctic where she is used as an incubator for an alien lizard thingy. She seems unconscious throughout, so presumably has no memories of this after Mulder drags her out and rescues her.

"Orison" - Not exactly kidnapped, but assaulted in her home by Donnie Pfaster, who binds and gags her and is preparing to kill her when Mulder interrupts. Ultimately, Scully saves herself, though, by escaping her bonds and killing Pfaster.

En Ami. Again, not exactly kidnapped, but she is lured on a roadtrip by CSM, through deception. He claims that she is free to leave at any time, but he also keeps dangling the cheese in front of her ....
Does Scully suffer from sexism within the Bureau?
In "Soft Light," Mulder and Scully are called in by Detective Kelly Ryan, one of Scully's students at the Academy. When Ryan gets into trouble for calling them in, Scully covers for her, backing off from the case. Mulder thinks Scully shouldn't have put Ryan's ambition before solving the case, but Scully gets angry. "She's a woman trying to survive the boys' club," she says, "and, believe me, I know what that's like." "The difference is that you never put yourself before your work," Mulder tells her, "and that's what's happening here."

In "2Shy," Scully runs up against sexism in the police force. As she's preparing to perform and autopsy, Detective Cross, who called them in, expresses his disapproval. He'd never anticipated her being a doctor, he tells her. "It's nothing personal, Agent Scully, I'm just old-fashioned in certain regards." "Old-fashioned?" she prompts, showing no signs of being put off. He says he questions the wisdom of assigning female law enforcement officers to "certain types of cases." The killer has "a definite attitude toward women, right, and this has to be affecting your judgement," he tells her. Calmly but firmly, Scully says she appreciates his concern but it's not necessary. "All I want to do is solve this case," she says, "just like you." He says he's not being sexist, only honest, but she just asks him where to send the autopsy reports. "You can fax them to my office," he says, conceding, but still disapproving.

In "Dreamland," when Mulder's body is inhabited by Morris, the MIB, he is very sexist towards her. He pats her rear, calls her "little lady," tells her to get "her panties on straight," and later says "are you out of your pretty little mind?" She doesn't report him, or anything, but she hardly would. He's her friend, and she's worried about him acting so strangely, but it would ruin his career to report him for it. So, she has a word with him, gets angry with him, and tries to work out what's wrong. If anyone else acted like that to her, she would no doubt act differently.

Just so we don't see only women as victims: In "Detour," Scully brings wine to Mulder's hotel room, but he (jokingly!) accuses her of sexual harrassment, referring to the "Tailhook" case in the Navy, by which female officers were made to run the gauntlet of sexist drunken male junior officers. This is a joke, though, remember....
What are Scully's religious beliefs?
Scully was brought up a Catholic, as she first tells us in "Miracle Man." "I was raised a Catholic," she says, "and have a certain familiarity with the Scripture, and God never lets the Devil steal the show."

In "Ascension," Mulder and Mrs Scully discuss Scully's gold cross. "If she was such a sceptic," he says, "why did she wear this?" Mrs Scully says she gave it to her daughter on her 15th birthday, although "Christmas Carol" shows her unwrapping it at Christmas. Mrs Scully says it will show her how God is always looking after her, whatever happens. When little Emily reaches for the cross, Scully gives it to her. Given that she's worn it for nearly 20 years, this is a very symbolic gift, showing her attachment to the child, even before she knew it was hers. She gets the cross back from the coffin, when Emily has turned to nothing but sand.

(That cross.... She loses it in "Ascension," but Mulder finds it and gives it back in "One Breath." She gives it to Emily, but gets it back. She loses it in the movie, but Mulder finds it. Does it have a homing device or what?)

The episode "Revelations" deals heavily with Scully's religious beliefs, so go to the summary of that episode for more information. It shows that, while she has drifted away from the church, she still retains quite a strong religious faith. [In the computer game, written by Chris Carter during the third season, and set at the end of that season, there is an open Bible in Scully's motel room, showing that she was reading about Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. Hmm...]

In "Gethsemane" Mrs Scully gets Dana to talk to the family priest, Father McCue. He encourages Scully to return to her faith, to return to the church. Mrs. Scully has told him that she is sick and the church, Fr. McHugh believes, will be a great source of strength in her time of need. Scully explains that she is being treated for her cancer, she has inner strength and has not felt the need to return to the church. With her doubts, she feels returning to the church when she is ill is hypocritical.

However, she later regrets her coldness to the priest. When on the point of death, in "Redux II," she looks at her cross, asking herself why she wears it. After discussing miracles with her doctor (who admits that he has seen patients recover in ways he could never explain, but still refuses to call such events "miracles") she asks the priest to come to her room. Although she seems to anticipate finding the meeting difficult (she grabs for Mulder's hand as the priest enters her room) she does join the Father in prayer.

It is too early to say yet, of course, but there is even the possibility that Scully will attribute her cure to the power of prayer.

"All Souls," though, shows that she has returned to the Church. She attends Easter Mass, goes to confession, and goes as far as to believe in angels and her visions of Emily. Like in "Revelations," she comes to believe that she is "meant" to save a girl who is being threatened by the devil. When Mulder asks how she can believe in God with all the evil there is in the world, she says "I was raised to believe God has his reasons, no matter how mysterious."

At this point, her church is shown to be St. John's Church, Alexandria, though this seems quite a way from her home.
Scully's sexual morality
"Avatar" reveals her to have an unforgiving attitude to any man who would sleep with a prostitute. "If an otherwise stable man is capable of going out and hiring a prostitute, what else is he capable of?" she asks, rather oddly, implying that a man who hires a prostitute is necessarily capable of murder.

However she always seems very untroubled by Mulder's interest in pornography. Her lovely "anti-gravity is right" comment in "Jersey Devil" isn't the action of someone who's shocked.

In "Genderbender" she wonders why anyone in this day and age would have sex with a stranger. However this disapproval could be more to do with the risk of sexually transmitted diseases than morality.

And what about "Never Again". What did she do there but (nearly?) have sex with a stranger. Admittedly the episode presented this as some wild rebellion and acting out of character.

In "all things," we learn that when she was in medical school, Scully engaged in an adulterous affair with one of her professors. We don't know how long the affair lasted, but we do know that Scully was the one who broke it off. Also, this experience was apparently the catalyst that caused her to give up the idea of practicing medicine.
Is Scully the emotionless Ice Queen?
Well, of course not, but it is the question I'm most often asked: "Is there a basis in the show for the Ice Queen nickname used in fanfic"?

In short, no. It's a pure fanfic thing (though it got a mention on the "Saturday Night Live" sketch that DD did in May 1998). In "Squeeze" she gets called "Mrs Spooky," but that's the only nickname we ever hear from the Bureau.

As to whether she is emotionless: Well, of course not. She doesn't like showing emotion, but feels it, clearly. I won't even bother citing specific moments, except this:

In "The Red and the Black," when Scully is hypnotised, she remembers a scary moment when aliens were coming to kill her. In her memory, she was utterly utterly terrified. When we saw the beginning of this scene, in reality, as it were, she showed very little emotion. Which is, of course, a very nice illustration of how much Scully might well be feeling in the way of fear or pain, even when her face is composed. She feels it; she doesn't show it. (And what a justification for angst writers everywhere...)
What does Scully like to eat and drink?
Fanfic often portrays Scully as eating health food. Is this in the show?

Well, we don't often see what she eats. In "Red Museum" she polishes off a full plate of barbecue something or other in a steak house. In "Jersey Devil" she goes on a date in a nice retaurant. Her date eats a lump of meat, but Scully's plate isn't shown. From looking at the food she conveys to her mouth, she's eating lumpy stuff - a casserole? She's also drinking a glass of something that looks like water but is probably white wine. After the meal she has coffee. In "EBE" her coffee is with cream but no sugar, while "Eve" shows that she likes diet soda - though she complains afterwards that it's too sugary (though the poison in it might have something to do with this!)

As for healthy stuff, in "Ghost in the Machine," Mulder and Scully both buy sandwiches. Both look like white bread, but Scully (and not Mulder) also has a plate of greenery. She's also seen eating a plate of green stuff in "War of the Coprophages," though later in the same episode she's dipping into a simply massive bowl of ice cream - though it might be the "non-fat tofutti rice Dreamsicle" that she eats in "The Unnatural" . She eats malted chocolate things in "War of the Coprophages" and she considers that half a low-fat cream cheese bagel is not a sufficient lunch ("Bad Blood"). The low-fat part of it seems to annoy her most.

In "Bad Blood," Scully reveals herself to be fond of pizza, espcially with mushrooms on it (I assume very fond, if seeing the remains of a pizza in the stomach of a murder victim is enough to make her want one), though she appears not to have cheese on it. There are also pizza crusts among the leftovers on her bed in Chinga. And she and Mulder are eating pizza out of what looks like a chicken bucket in Aubrey.

She eats seafood in "Chinga," though seems intimidated by the lobster, and chicken in "Our Town"

Scully drinks alcohol (wine) in Small Potatoes, Tempus Fugit, Never Again and Detour.

In "Dreamland," Mulder reveals that Scully has recently taken to putting bee pollen in her six-ounce cup of plain yogurt at lunch. (Note: eating bee pollen is thought to possibly reduce an allergic reaction to bee stings, so this is not as silly as it might seem, in light of the movie.) He says "you're on some kind of bee pollen kick, even though I tell you you're a scientist and you should know better."

In "The Unnatural," we see Scully eating "ice cream" that is made from a low-fat substitute.

In "Je Souhaite," Scully insists on having popcorn without butter on it.

The great Chinese take-out debate: Many people have asked why Mulder and Scully always seem to eat Chinese food in fanfic, although this is not in the show. Well, it is in "Ground Zero" [Mulder orders steamed rice, kung pao chicken, and dry-fried string beans with pork. The kumg pao chicken is for Scully, since he's found out it's her favourite, even though they've never had Chinese food together before. When they've finished, he dumps all the left-overs in one dish and says he'll have them for breakfast when he gets back, mixed with scrambled eggs. Scully thinks this is "spooky." ]

[Some more novel food: In "Goblins" she has toast and coffee, bran cereal and orange juice for breakfast. In "Whirlwind" she criticises Mulder's burgers and fries, saying they're bad for him. Later, she eats a jalapeno pepper, on its own, with relish, while Mulder looks daunted by them. In "Ground Zero," though, she doesn't feel that a green pepper chilli burger is very appetising, though she ends up liking it. In "Ruins," she has fish marinated in annato-seed sauce and baked in banana seeds and drinks a margarita. ]
Scully's men
As a teenager: According to Scully, in "Small Potatoes," the "12th grade love of my life" was called Marcus. They went to their senior prom together, she wearing moire taffeta, he wearing a tux with a kelly green cumberbund. At 2 am, they were off together, likely making out, because Scully said it was the "now or never" moment for Marcus. Then, they heard a siren. The friends they were with (Sylvia and Burwood) apparently let their campfire get out of control. The fire department arrived, and everyone rode back on the pump truck.

In "Lazarus" we see Jack Willis, her Academy Instructor, with whom she had a relationship some time in the past. He's older than her, born in 1957 to her 1964, and has diabetes. We don't know much about what happened during their relationship, except that they once spent a weekend up in the mountains at his parents' cabin. It was very cold and they had to snuggle in front of a fire to keep warm. We're also told nothing about how they split up, though it seems to have amicable, judging from the fact that they are still friends in early 1994 when she helps him catch the bank robbers. They have the same birthday (February 23rd) that they used to celebrate at "some dive in Stafford that had a slanty pool table." They were still together "three years ago" (1991) when Scully gave him a watch for his 35th birthday (actually his 34th, if you believe the birthdate given earlier.) He died in early 1994.

When Scully, in "Aubrey," tells BJ Morrow "I've had feelings for people I've worked with," does she mean Jack Willis? I'm sure there are thousands of people who hope otherwise.

In "Jersey Devil" Scully light-heartedly asks her friend Ellen if she knows any men. Ellen soon has her fixed up with Rob, a divorce with an eight-year old son. They go one one date, during which Rob talks about his feelings about his ex-wife, then seems to run out of conversation when he realises she won't be interested in his financial work, and that she's unwilling to talk about her work. She seems quite relieved when Mulder calls her, interrupting the date. Rob later asks her on another date (to Cirque de Soleil with the boys) but she declines. Instead she goes to the Smithsonian with Mulder, despite telling him earlier to get a life.

In "Never Again" Scully meets Ed Jerse. He has black hair and blue eyes, is muscular, and (arguably) bears a passing resemblance to Mulder. In the beginning of the episode he has just received a divorce from his wife, and he has a picture with him and his two children, a boy and a girl, both who appear to be under age 7. He is a stockbroker for a firm. He lives in Apt 2G, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but it it not mentioned where in the city. He is a smoker and apparently drinks, as he goes to a crummy bar after the divorce decree, and while drunk decides to get a tattoo. This tattoo is on his right bicep, and is of a woman from the shoulders up. She has black hair, blue eyes, very red lips, and the inscription "Never Again" appears beneath her. She is winking at us. The tattoo speaks to him, making him doubt his sanity. Scully meets him in the tattoo parlour, where she had followed a man on a case. Well, read the episode summary to find out the rest, but whether or not Scully and Ed have sex is a matter of hot debate. You see them in a semi-embrace (contrary to common belief, there is no onscreen kiss), then the door closes and that's all we see. But the next morning when Scully wakes up she has her panty hose on, and Ed seems to have slept on the couch, so draw your own conclusions...

In "Bad Blood" Scully is attracted to the sheriff, Lucius Hartwell, whom she remembers as being rugged and handsome, (though Mulder remembers him as a slack-jawed yokel type.) Both Mulder's and Scully's memories of the case include her attraction to Hartwell, so it must have been true. Mulder deliberately leaves her alone with him, ("Don't say I never did nothin' for ya'.") Shame he turned out to be a vampire.... Now, did anything happen between them in that night Scully can't remember - the one culminating in her waking up in a cemetary clad in the sheriff's coat?

Now, she gives Skinner a kiss in "Triangle," but a, this scene maybe only happened in Mulder's dream (see the Triangle summary for a discussion) and, b, she was totally focused on saving Mulder for the whole scene, and kissed Skinner when he helped. It was probably just gratitude.

In "all things," we learned of her adulterous affair with one of her medical school professors, Daniel Waterston. We don't know how long this affair lasted or why it started. We do know that Scully broke it off, apparently because she realized she was hurting Waterston's family. As of the spring of 2000, Waterston has divorced his wife (apparently many years ago), and wants to resume the relationship. Scully, however, isn't interested, and expresses disbelief to Mulder that she once considered spending her entire life with Waterston. Based on that comment, it seems probable that this was the most important love affair in Scully's pre-XF life. Certainly there is no one else who she considered marrying -- as far as we know.

As for people who like Scully, we have Frohike, Pendrell, as well as Phillip Padgett. See the summary for Milagro for details on Padgett.

She does, though, seem to get very jealous whenever Mulder seems attracted to anyone (Fire, WOTC ("her name is Bambi?"), Syzygy and The End.

As for clues and hints as to whether Mulder is in fact "her man" (to use the header of this section).... Well, many many people have written about this one before, so I'm quitting now.

note being added in May of 2000. Based on the teaser and the final scene in "all things," it is now defensible to argue that Mulder and Scully have slept together at least once. Whether this represents a permanent step forward to a long-lasting love affair -- or even whether it actually happened -- is open to interpretation.

now the last slivers of doubt seem to be gone. In "Requiem," Scully comes to Mulder's motel room in the middle of the night because she's having chills and dizzy spells, and his immediate response is to crawl in bed with her and cuddle her. She accepts this treatment without surprise or question. At the end of the episode, Scully discovers that she is pregnant; from the context of the scene where we are given this information, it seems indisputable that she believes Mulder is the father. Now, given how the Consortium is about sneaky, reprehensible behavior, it's always possible that she's mistaken. But the fact that she believes it is possible should close the issue of the relationship. At least until the next rabbit gets pulled out of a hat.

We may also be able to draw a few generalizations about Scully's taste in men. Her two known adult relationships, with Daniel Waterston and Jack Willis, were both with older men who were authority figures in her life -- Waterston was a professor at her medical school, and Willis was an instructor at the FBI Academy. By her own self-analysis ("Never Again"), Scully asserts that she is alternately attracted to and suffocated by men who she views as father figures. In that episode, she identifies Mulder as such a man, although there is scant evidence in any other episode that she holds this view of him.

In "En Ami," CSM tells Scully that she's attracted to "powerful men"; she turns the comment aside by acusing him of practicing pop psychology. But it's possible to interpret her reaction as being one of discomfort with how closely he hit the mark, rather than actual disagreement. So if she has just embarked on a relationship with Mulder (or is considering it), does this represent a break in the cycle? Or a continuation of it? And which alternative would be preferable? Again, this is open to interpretation.
Does Scully have a life?
"Unlike you, Mulder, I want to have a life." (Scully in "Jersey Devil")

Friends Her friend Ellen is seen in "Jersey Devil," along with her six-year old son Trent, Scully's god-son. It's not said how she met Ellen, though she must have known her for over eight years. They still keep in touch in 1993, as Scully is the only other adult at Trent's party, and has clearly talked to Ellen about her partner, telling he he's "cute."

In "Young at Heart" she has a friend, Kathy, who's giving a cello recital. Whether this friendship will survive the cellist nearly getting killed when Scully and Mulder turn her concert into an FBI stake out is anyone's guess.

Tom Colton was obviously a friend at the Academy, but is no longer a friend after the events of "Squeeze."

"Roland" starts with Scully having just been to a wedding, though we don't know whose. When asked if she caught the bouquet, she just says "might have."

[In the novel "Goblins," Scully has some friends in the West, and has been out to visit them. However , she got bored and came home early. In "Ground Zero" she reflects that she travels so much for her work, and moved house so much when she was young, that her idea of an ideal vacation would be to stay at home with a book.]

Apart from that, we see nothing else about who Scully chooses to socialise with, if indeed she does. We have seen her spending evenings alone in her apartment, such as in "War of the Coprophages" or the end of "Clyde Bruckman," where she's seen reading, watching television etc. In "Never Again," she complains that the X-Files have become her life as much as they are Mulder's.

"Small Potatoes" shows that she doesn't even socialise much with Mulder. She seems amazed when he turns up with wine ready to spend an evening talking ("We never really talk"). In "Detour" she turns up in Mulder's hotel room with wine, remarking as she does so on the Bureau rule against male and female agents spending time in each other's rooms while on assignment, but Mulder makes his escape mighty fast.

In Seasons 6 and 7, this seems to be changing. In "Two Fathers," when Mulder skips work to play basketball, Scully knows where to find him. In "The Unnatural," Scully tries to lure Mulder away from spending a Saturday in the office with the temptation of fresh air and sunshine. At the end of this episode, of course, is the famous batting practice scene.

In "Milagro," we see Mulder and Scully doing paperwork at his apartment rather than at the office. Also in this episode, Phillip Padgett remarks that Scully is seldom at home. Surely this is partly because of working long hours and frequent out of town trips; however, when Padgett cannot find a vacancy in her building, he rents an apartment in Mulder's building, presumably because he knows that he will encounter Scully there.

In "The Goldberg Variations," Scully urges Mulder to turn the case over to the Bureau's Chicago office, so that they can return to Washington. From her delivery of these lines, it's possible to believe that she's suggesting that the two of them will then do something non-work-related together. In "Sein und Zeit," Scully spends the night at Mulder's apartment, in order to comfort and console him as he grieves over his mother's suicide.

In "Hollywood A.D.," she shows up at his apartment in the middle of the night, uninvited, because she can't sleep and wants company. Apparently she knows that he's likely to be awake, and will welcome her presence. The two of them then take a spur of the moment trip to California together, for social reasons, not business. And at the end of this episode, after the premiere of "The Lazarus Bowl," they go out for a night on the town together.

At the end of "Je Souhaite," we see Mulder and Scully at his place, watching a movie, eating popcorn and drinking beer. They seem very comfortable with each other, teasing each other about the choice of movies (Mulder picked "Caddyshack," but promised Scully that when they watched a movie at her place, she could choose "Steel Magnolias").

And finally there's "all things." At the end of this episode, Scully spends a number of hours at Mulder's apartment, talking about her personal life in great detail. Based on the teaser and the final scene of this episode, it is defensible to argue that the two of them slept together. Whether this is the first step in a long term romantic relationship -- or even whether it actually happened -- is open to interpretation.

At Christmas with her family, she even seems to have lost the ability to relax and have any sort of normal life. She wears black and sits alone at the happy family gatherings, and talks in voice-over (at the start of "Emily") of having to face the future, "alone, as ever." (The following year, she seems to intend to attend family Christmas, but ends up coming to see Mulder instead, after spending the night in a haunted house with him.)

Shortly afterwards, she does at least try to take a weekend off, and goes to Maine to relax. ("Chinga") She manages to stumble over a case, but seems very reluctant to actually pursue it (in contrast with Mulder in "War of the Coprophages" - a very similar scenario, except that Mulder positively leapt at the case) Perhaps the fact that she goes on this vacation, and is reading "Affirmations For Women Who Do Too Much," is a suggestion that she is beginning to feel uncomfortable with her heavy workload, and the effect it is having on her life.

Interests These are not clear. We know she is a fan of the thrillers written by Jose Chung, but the only books we see her reading are Jose's Chungs own book "From Outer Space," in which she appears, and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in "War of the Coprophages." The bookcase beside her bed ("Anasazi") is full of books.

In "Chinga," though, the book she is reading is called "Affirmations For Women Who Do Too Much" Nice light reading, then....

Like Mulder, she's sometimes seen curled up in front of the television. At the end of "Clyde Bruckman" she is watching a Laurel and Hardy movie, and in "Miracle Man" she tells Mulder "The Exorcist" was one of her favourite movies. She also refers to "Carrie" - in "Shadows" - and Poltergeist ("They're heeeere"). She refers to "Child's Play" (the 'chuckie' movies) in Chinga. The last date she went on before Ed Jerse was to see "Glengarry Glen Ross" but the characters in the movie had a better time. Her date with her nephew ("Home") had her watching Babe non-stop, and we know she's seen Star Wars (Small Potatoes) In "Hollywood A.D.," Scully is able to identify the movie "Plan Nine From Outer Space" (one of the worst potboiler science fiction films ever made) after a single glance at one randomly chosen scene. However, in "Je Souhaite," she expresses disdain for "Caddyshack," when Mulder rents it for them to watch together. She was certainly teasing him in this scene, but it's reasonable to assume that it reflects a genuine reaction.

She likes gentle Classical music ("Chinga"), at least when having a bubble bath while on vacation.

Wanting to have a life:

Well, first there's the quotation at the start of this section: "Unlike you, Mulder, I want to have a life." As described above, Scully goes on a date in "Jersey Devil," and does her rebellion bit in "Never Again" when she appears to question to very foundation of her life-style, wanting to break free of authority.

There are also other signs that she is dissatisfied with the way her life is going. In "Christmas Carol" and "Emily" she regrets how her involvement in the X-Files has robbed her of the chance to be a mother. In "Dreamland," she says how she and Mulder seem to spend so much of their life driving down dark roads following shaky leads. She talks about driving though towns "where people are raising families and buying homes and playing with their kids and their dogs. In short, living their lives. While we, we ... we just keep drivin'.... Don't you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car? Settle down and live something approaching a normal life?" (Mulder claims that their life is a normal life.)

However, when she is about to quit, in the movie, it seems as if she's not so much quitting to get a normal life, but because she feels that she is holding Mulder back. She is fed up with "them" being one step ahead all the time, and maybe the presence of Diana has led her to wonder how much better Mulder would have done had his partner been a believer.

In "The Unnatural," she complains to Mulder that they shouldn't be spending a lovely Saturday cooped up in the basement office; they should go outside and enjoy the sunshine. She makes much the same argument in "all things." However, at the end of the latter episode, she seems to have finally concluded that she is where she is "meant" to be.
Scully's dog
The small red pomeranian, Queequeg, was given to Scully by Clyde Bruckman on September 22 1995. It previously belonged to his neighbour, Mrs Lowe. She dies, and the dog started to eat her remains. Scully names if after a character in "Moby Dick" - the novel which also gave her "Ahab," her name for her father. In the novel, Queequag was also a cannibal.

At the end of "Clyde Bruckman," she is seen cuddling the dog while watching television. He then disppears until "War of the Coprophages," when she is shampooing him with "Die, Flea, Die." When Mulder calls she tells the dog to stay, but he runs all soapy into her living room.

"Quagmire" is the only case she takes the dog on. Mulder doesn't like it and calls it "that thing," but Scully says she had to bring it. Her mother is out of town, and it's too late to contact all her usual dog minders - telling us how Scully normally made sure her dog was taken care of when she was away.

Anyway, poor Queequeg got eaten by an alligator, after once more ignoring all Scully's orders.
Is Scully psychic?
There is potential there is you want to exploit it. In "Roland" she admits that she sometimes thinks about one of her brothers just before the phone rings and he calls her. Mulder thinks it shows psychic connection between siblings, but Scully dismisses it as a coincidence. In "Aubrey" she realises that BJ Morrow is pregnant, despite the fact that there really are no signs at all. "A woman senses these things," she tells an amazed Mulder. She has another flash of intuition in "Clyde Bruckman," which Mulder puts down to "women's intuition." (Of course, though, Mulder has amazing leaps of "women's intuition" all the time) "All Souls" also has her having visions, and this time she believes them, saying that she was "meant" to have them.

Plus we have the fact that Scully's mother seems to have had a premonition of Scully being abducted, and the fact that Melissa goes round with crystals and claims to be able to talk to Scully's soul when she is in a coma. Put it all together, and you could come up with a psychic family if you want to.
Scully's abduction
This is an important theme, so use the episode summaries for more detail, in particular: Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Blessing Way, Nisei, Memento Mori, Christmas Carol, Emily

Scully was abducted by Duane Barry, who grabbed for from her apartment when she was on the phone to Mulder. He came in through the window. The date was around August 8th 1994, or so.

He transported her in the trunk of his car as he drove to Slyland Mountain. She was conscious at the time, and may, perhaps, have memories of this - hearing him kill a patrolman, hearing "Red Right Hand" on the radio, perhaps. Her gold cross was left in the car when he removed her.

At the mountain, Barry thought aliens came and took her, and was jubilant, thinking he'd managed to escape being taken himself. Mulder, who was approaching during this time, saw only a helicopter.

She was returned in early November 1994, in a coma due to branched DNA. Her recovery appears to have been because of sheer will power, and being called by the mysterious Nurse Owens and Mulder, rather than intervention by CSM and friends. CSM, though, does tell Mulder that it was his decision to return her.

(Timeline note: In "Emily," Mulder says Scully was missing for one month, but she was definitely kidnapped in early August, and definitely returned in November (the episode "3," before her return, is in November, as is her first case before her return.)

After her return, with three months missing from her mind, she just wanted to get on with her work as soon as possible, and not think about what happened. She found in implant in the back on her neck about 6 months later, but resisted her sister's attempts to persuade her to remember what happened to her. Even when she did go to a hypnotist, (Mark Pomerantz) she walked out with the session incomplete. Later still, when the MUFON women started talking about the "bright white place," she refused to listen, and, when she found out she had cancer, told Mulder that it didn't matter to her where she had got it.

Her own memories are confined to some Japanese doctors looking down at her. In her brief hypnosis session, she remembered an alarm, and a man looking after her. Penny Northern says she was allowed to comfort Scully during the process, but Scully has no memory of this.

According to Kurt Crawford, while she was away, she was subjected to large amounts of radiation to make her produce lots of eggs, which were harvested for hybridisation experiments. The sample Mulder was shown was taken on October 29th 1994. This process left her infertile - a fact she only learnt "a few months" before Christmas 1997, and didn't tell anyone about until then.

Being infertile is a bad blow for Scully. She says she didn't realise how much she wanted children until she found out she could never have them. (As early as "Home," though, she was talking about children, and the feelings of a mother towards her child.) When she had reason to believe that she had discovered Melissa's child, she wanted to adopt her. She was, however, told that she had very little chance of being given custody, due to her time-consuming job that she was committed to.

At the end of "Christmas Carol," we learn that a child (now called Emily Christine Sim) was born in November 1994, and Scully is the mother, genetically. The eggs were taken from her and fertilised, presumably using alien DNA. The foetus was gestated by an elderly woman called Anna Fugazzi - despite the often-seen image of Scully with the pregnant body (seen first as Mulder's imagining of what was happening to her, but later seen in Scully's memory) Scully herself did not give birth. The girl, Emily, thus has green corrosive blood. When some unknown treatment at Transgen Pharmeuticals (administered by a doctor who is himself a hybrid) is withdrawn, Emily dies.

(A little more about Emily can be found on the Scully's family page, since a daughter is family after all) Scully's feelings about the loss of Emily are explored in All Souls

In "Requiem," however, Scully discovers that she is pregnant, and she pretty clearly believes that Mulder is the father. How can this be, in light of her alleged infertility? Well, either the earlier diagnosis was wrong (or the Kurt Crawfords were lying), or it has somehow been restored. Some people have advanced the theory that this happened when Mulder gave her the vaccine in "Fight the Future"; others have suggested that CSM did it during the "missing scene" in "En Ami," where he apparently undressed her and put her to bed while she slept. There is no evidence supporting either of these theories, however.

A third theory being bandied about in May of 2000 is that Scully's infertility was the subject of Mulder's third wish in "Je Souhaite." This is pretty clearly not true, however: Mulder's third wish was to set the genie free. Also, it beggars the imagination that Mulder would make a wish that affected Scully's body, without first obtaining her consent. This is especially true since all of the wishes he had seen previous to that had turned out very badly. Wishing that Scully's fertility be restored could well have led to her dying in childbirth, or some equally horrible consequence.

In "Patient X," Scully is beginning to believe that her abduction was by aliens after all, though Mulder is now firmly on the government cover-up line. Abductees are summoned by their implants and return, en masse, to the place of their abduction, while aliens come out of ships and zap them. I can't begin to explain it here (see the conspiracy section for more on the vastly complex "The Red and the Black"), but, briefly, abductees like Scully are called "the chosen" and are scheduled to be abducted en masse at the start of the colonisation, 15 years in the future. Rebels who want to ruin the colonisation plans obviously believe that killing the abductees is a good way of doing it - a major blow to the colonisation.

Scully has regression hypnosis and remembers stuff that is definitely alien. For a while, she believes. By the end of the episode, she is beginning not to....
Scully's cancer
Just a short section, since it is dealt with in the episode summaries in more detail.

"Nisei" was the first episode to mention the possibility. Scully met a group of women who claimed to be abductees, and who also claimed to recognise her from the "bright white place". They take her to see one of their number, Betsy Hagopian, who is in the last stages of a cancer, and warn her that the same fate will await all of them, "because of what they do to us." Disturbed, Scully tells Mulder, who simply answers "but you're all right, aren't you?" and gets on with his case. Throughout, Scully is fighting the memory of the abduction, and trying to deny what the woman tell her.

"Leonard Betts," a whole year later, was the next to mention the cancer. Mulder and Scully are searching for a killer who apparently feeds off cancer, telling his victims that they have something he needs. When Scully corners him, Betts says to Scully, "you have something I need." This disturbs Scully and she is silent and upset at the end of the case, later waking up in the middle of the night to find blood trickling from her nose.

"Never Again" is questionable. It was produced before "Leonard Betts," but was aired afterwards. It is therefore possible to take it as being Scully's first reaction to her likely cancer - by looking hard at her life and trying to change it by, even if just this once, rebelling.

"Memento Mori" is all about Scully's cancer, so see the episode summary for more information.

No mentions in the next few episodes, until we get a fleeting one in "Max," when Scully's nose starts to bleed in front of Skinner. Skinner warns her that he "has a responsibility for the agents under my supervision Agent Scully and I will not put another agent's life in danger just to keep her in the field". Scully tells him she's fine, but he orders her to the hospital anyway.

In "Zero Sum," Scully doesn't appear because she is, we hear, off having some treatment for her cancer.

"Elegy" tackles Scully's feelings about impending death. She discusses with a counsellor her reasons for continuing at work, and also her denial. See the summary for details.

"Gethsemene," "Redux" and "Redux II" deal head-on with Scully's cancer - her apparent terminal stages and surprise remission. See the summaries for more information, but it is interesting to note how she stayed working in the lab, trying to understand her illness, right up until he final collapse, and how the experience seems to have given her a renewed faith in God.

"Detour" includes a small mention of Scully's successful fight against cancer, when she says how angry she got at the injustice of it all. "When I was fighting my cancer, I was angry at the injustice of it, and its meaninglessness. And then I realized that that was a struggle: to give it meaning, to make sense of it. Like life."

Then, in "Christmas Carol," Scully says how her unexpected remission has given her a new outlook on life. She tells the social worker, "I've started to question my priorities since I was first diagnosed with cancer...and I feel like I've been given a second chance. Ever since I was a child, I've...I've...I've never allowed myself to get too close to people. I've avoided emotional attachments. Perhaps I've been so afraid of death and dying that any connection just seemed like a bad thing; something that wouldn't last. But...but I don't feel that any more."
Other stuff
Singing: Scully can't sing. When Mulder is hurt in "Detour" he asks he to sing to him to let him know she is still awake. She protests that she can't sing, but he insists. Quietly, and tunelessly, she sings "Jeremiah was a bullfrog...."

Sport: In "The Unnatural," Scully admits that she's never ever hit a baseball in her life.

Languages: Scully can speak German ("Unruhe") - or, rather, she studied it at College, which doesn't mean that she can speak it. [In the novel "Ruins," she can't speak Spanish.]

Snakes: She is, or was, afraid of snakes ("One Breath") but held a dying snake after she'd shot it. Interestingly, she chooses a snake as her tattoo ("Never Again"). This is the Ouroboros - a snake biting its own tail - which she chooses, possibly, to symbolise the circles she feels her life is running in - a sentiment she expresses both in "Never Again" and in the opening voice-over in "Emily." (Though the ouroboros has other possible meanings too: death and rebirth, immortality, completion, perfection, and as you said, an endless circle.) She again expresses a revulsion for snakes in "Signs and Wonders," but it doesn't seem to be strong enough to prevent her from functioning in their presence. She just doesn't like them.

She was something of a tomboy as a child. However, despite all this running around in woods that she did back then, she still has immense difficulty lighting a fire when out stranded in the wilds ("Detour"). Neither she nor Mulder seem like rugged outdoor types in this episode.

Smoking: Once she crept down at night and smoked one of her mother's cigarettes, feeling very scared and excited. ("Beyond the Sea"), half hoping her father would find her and be angry. ("Never Again") She is also seen smoking in "Syzygy" but this is supposed to show how she is acting out of character. However she doesn't cough and splutter, as a first time smoker would probably do.

Her apartment: In 'Squeeze' when she realizes there's someone in her house, she runs for her gun. The first place she looks is the kitchen table. When she sees it's not there, she finds the gun/coat/etc over the back of the sofa. This means that she generally puts these things on the table when she gets home. (Thanks to Gabrielle Harbowy for this, and for lots of other snippets of information)

She's been to the liberty bell (Shadows), and watches the discovery channel (Die Hand)

Fanfic often makes her use strawberry shampoo. We have no way of knowing what shampoo Scully uses (though her dog uses "Die, Flea, Die!") but, according to a writer's guide called Scene of the Crime, most pathologists use a lemon-scented shampoo because it helps cleanse the lingering eau de corpse from the hair shaft. In "Chinga," though, we see her deep in a bubble bath, and later towel-drying her hair.

In "Arcadia," we see her with a bright green face mask, just before going to bed. Whether this is her normal routine, or if she was just doing it to discomfort Mulder (when they were undercover as a married couple), we don't know.

While having deep bubble baths, her music of choice is classical. ("Chinga") She prefers baths to showers (Pilot, Squeeze, Chinga), but will take a shower when rushed (Young At Heart).

Her memorial stone ("One Breath") reads "Dana Katherine Scully, 1964 - 1994, Loving daughter and friend. The spirit is the Truth, 1 John 5.07"

[In the novel "Antibodies," Scully has little sympathy with the animal rights cause. She opposes excessive pain or malicious treatment of animals, but thinks that it's okay if human lives are saved. ]

In "Je Souhaite," we find that Scully knows enough about antique furniture that she can tell at a glance that the things in the storage locker are valuable.

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