Dana Scully

Dr. Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character and one of the two protagonists in the Fox science-fiction, supernatural television series The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson. Scully is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent and a medical doctor (MD), partnered with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder for seasons one to seven and seasons 10 and 11, and with John Doggett in the eighth and ninth seasons. In the television series, they work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files." In 2002, Scully left government employment, and in 2008, she began working as a surgeon in Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital – where she stayed for seven years, until rejoining the FBI. 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. Scully has appeared in all but five episodes of The X-Files, and in the 20th Century Fox films The X-Files, released in 1998, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released 10 years later. The episodes in which she does not appear are "3," "Zero Sum," "Unusual Suspects," "Travelers" and "The Gift" (excluding archive footage). The 11th season marked Anderson's final time portraying the character. Background Dr. Dana Katherine Scully was born on February 23, 1964, in Annapolis, Maryland, to William (Don S. Davis) and Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken), into a close-knit Catholic family with Irish ancestry. 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. In the canonical 2016 comic book series, published by IDW Publishing, the two-part issue "Ishmael" revealed Scully had a paternal half-brother, named Tam Minh Nguyen. 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 in 1986, received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.