Sharon Valerii

This article concerns the copy of the humanoid Cylon model Number Eight first seen on Galactica who was in love with Chief Tyrol and shot by Specialist Cally.

For information on Sharon "Athena" Agathon first seen on Caprica, who marries Helo and becomes a Colonial Officer, see Sharon Agathon. For information on the various copies, see Number Eight.

Sharon Valerii
Human Name	Sharon Valerii
Age
Colony	None (supposedly Aerelon)
Birth place	{{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name
Birth Date	{{{birthdate}}}
Callsign	Boomer
Nickname	{{{nickname}}}
Introduced	Miniseries
Death	Shot by Cally and reborn ("Resistance", "Downloaded"), Neck snapped by Caprica-Six (Rapture)
Parents	None (supposedly Abraham and Catherine Valerii)
Siblings	None in the traditional sense (supposedly one, per photo in "Downloaded")
Children
Marital Status	Single, was in relationship with Galen Tyrol
Family Tree	View
Role	Cylon infiltrator, saboteur; Raptor pilot
Rank	Formerly a Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Serial Number	{{{serial}}}
Portrayed by	Grace Park
Sharon Valerii is a Cylon
Sharon Valerii is a Final Five Cylon
Sharon Valerii is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Sharon Valerii is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
		@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Sharon Valerii]]

Sharon "Boomer" Valerii is a copy of the humanoid Cylon model Number Eight who is initially planted as a "sleeper" agent in the Colonial Fleet. She is unaware of her Cylon nature and serves for two years as Lieutenant Valerii on Galactica, where she is assigned as a Raptor pilot and also engaged in a secret relationship with Chief Tyrol. After the Cylon attack, her underlying programming repeatedly emerges which leads her to unconscious acts of sabotage. Growing confusion about her true self result in a deep depression and a failed suicide attempt. After Valerii returns from a successful mission to destroy a Cylon basestar, she shoots Commander Adama in the chest, wounding him critically. She is incarcerated in the brig and soon afterwards killed by Specialist Cally.

Her consciousness is downloaded and she is reborn in another body. Subsequently, she experiences severe problems integrating into Cylon society and long considers herself more human than Cylon. She eventually works together with Caprica-Six in an attempt to change Cylon popular opinion about humans and she emerges as one of the Cylon leaders jointly responsible for the end of the occupation of the Twelve Colonies and later the Cylon occupation on New Caprica. Following the failure on New Caprica, Valerii abandons her hopes for coexistence with humans and she denounces her past on Galactica.

Biography

Life on Galactica

Valerii is a "sleeper" agent, unsuspecting of her Cylon status. As far as she is aware, she was born on the mining colony of Troy, as the daughter of a family from Aerelon (Flesh and Bone). Troy itself was destroyed in an unexplained cataclysm, allowing Valerii's background to be established as that of an orphan. Following her arrival on board Galactica, she enters into a relationship with the ship's Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol, which is against military protocols concerning fraternization between officers and non-officers. Whether this is unintentional or a subconscious reaction to her Cylon programming remains unclear.

At the time of the Cylon attack, Valerii is flying her Raptor to Caprica with Galactica's last remaining operational Viper squadron, when they learn of the attacks and attempt to engage two Cylon Raiders. However, the Viper squadron is destroyed, and the Raptor is damaged while trying to escape, forcing Valerii and her ECO Karl Agathon to make an emergency landing on Caprica. After repairing the Raptor, they are mobbed by desperate civilians and undertake a rescue operation, lifting a number of children and several adults from the planet. Agathon chooses to give up his place aboard the Raptor so that Dr. Gaius Baltar can be rescued (Miniseries).

After being found by Laura Roslin's group of stranded military and civilian ships, Valerii works within the new civilian Fleet, assisting Roslin's attempts to gather other stranded civilian ships in the space surrounding Caprica. She finds a number of ships critical to the fledgling Fleet's survival, such as a fuel tanker. After the new assembled Fleet, led by Galactica, leaves the solar system of the Colonies, Valerii aids in other critical acts, including the discovery of a tylium-rich asteroid, replete with an active Cylon mine (The Hand of God), and locating a source of water to replenish the Fleet's lost supply after the sabotage of Galactica's stores (Water).

Acts of sabotage

Valerii and Chief Tyrol.

At the same time as she is supporting the human Fleet, Valerii's underlying Cylon subroutines periodically emerge. Her Cylon programming is the cause of the sabotage of Galactica's water tanks (Water). Later, she likely assists a copy of Aaron Doral to access a munitions store. The Doral copy constructs a suicide bomb which nearly kills Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh.

Valerii finds herself soaking wet, after she awakes to her human personality shortly after the bombs used to destroy Galactica's water tanks were planted. She becomes increasingly concerned and starts to question her true self. Her worry increases when she experiences a certain attachment to a captured Cylon Raider, and is able to give insight into how it can be properly assessed and understood (Six Degrees of Separation, Flesh and Bone). Her concerns are further elevated when, following the bombing by Doral, Galactica's Master-at-Arms, Sergeant Hadrian, suspects her and Chief Tyrol of Cylon complicity (Litmus).

Tyrol distances himself from Valerii after this incident, and he later ends their relationship following the arrest of Specialist Socinus (Litmus). Facing Tyrol's suspicions concerning her activities immediately before the bombing, Valerii finds herself emotionally isolated and stressed. She takes the Cylon detector test created by Dr. Baltar, but he hides her positive test result in fear that once discovered, she might immediately retaliate and kill him (Flesh and Bone). Valerii finds short solace in Baltar's test, but deals with an anonymous accusation, when she finds the word "Cylon" written on the mirror of her locker; though it is possible she wrote it herself, unknowingly (Six Degrees of Separation).

thumb

Frightened and alone, Valerii withdraws into herself and attempts suicide, but is initially unable to do so. During her second attempt, she is interrupted by Dr. Baltar who, rather than discouraging her, essentially gives her his blessing on her suicide. Following his departure from the bunkroom, Valerii succeeds in shooting herself, but her Cylon personality apparently interrupts the attempt. Valerii can only wound herself in her right cheek (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I).

After Kara Thrace absconds with a captured Cylon Raider intended for an attack on a basestar orbiting Kobol, Commander Adama asks Valerii and ECO Racetrack to use a Cylon transponder in their Raptor to infiltrate the basestar and place a nuclear warhead within to destroy it. The mission is a success, but when the weapon would not auto-release from the Raptor after landing, Valerii exits the ship and enters the basestar. Inside, she encounters a dozen copies of herself, confirming her worst fears. Valerii escapes in the Raptor just before the warhead detonates and destroys the basestar. Back on Galactica, her encounter with the other Eight models on the basestar apparently triggers Valerii's Cylon programming to emerge once more, and she shoots Commander Adama in the chest while being congratulated on her successful mission in CIC, wounding him critically (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II).

Imprisonment and death

After shooting Adama, Valerii is quickly restrained by guards and jailed in the brig. During her imprisonment, Colonel Tigh attempts to forcibly extract information from her at gunpoint, but Valerii stonewalls him and even asks him to shoot her (Scattered). Chief Tyrol is later incarcerated in the same brig cell by Tigh, also suspected of being a Cylon. While imprisoned together, Valerii tries to convince Tyrol that her feelings for him were real and important, but he rejects her and threatens to kill her if she touched him.

Valerii dies in Chief Tyrol's arms.

Dr. Baltar later enters the cell, ostensibly to collect a blood sample from Tyrol to prove his innocence using the Cylon detector, but he instead injects Tyrol with a potent toxin that would kill him in a matter of seconds if Baltar does not give him an antidote. Baltar interrogates Valerii, demanding to know how many other Cylons are in the Fleet, using the dying Tyrol to blackmail her. Valerii first protests that she does not know, but as Tyrol is about to die, she reveals that there are eight other Cylons in the Fleet and Baltar then revives Tyrol.

Soon after, while being transferred to a new reinforced cell built to hold Cylons for later experiments and long term incarceration, a large crowd of crewmembers jeers at her and calls her a traitor. Specialist Cally who considers Valerii responsible for Tyrol's imprisonment breaks through the crowd holding a gun and shoots Valerii at point-blank range. Valerii's last words are "I love you, Chief" and she dies in Tyrol's arms (Resistance).

Valerii's body is sent to the morgue and autopsied. Later, the recovered Commander Adama visits her corpse, asking "why" aloud, and weeps over her body. Adama pronounces a very mild reprimand for Cally, sentencing her to 30 days in the brig for discharging a weapon without authorization. Cally is never tried for murder, since Cylons are not seen as people (The Farm).

Rebirth and life among Cylons

thumb

Valerii's consciousness does not die. When she is shot by Specialist Cally, Galactica is close enough to a Cylon resurrection ship so that her consciousness is retrieved for download into another body. On rebirth, Valerii rejects her Cylon nature and continues to call herself "Sharon" instead of "Eight," even going so far as to reclaim her former apartment on Caprica. A copy of Number Three, representing the status quo of the Cylons, is deeply disturbed by this and suggests that Valerii be "boxed."

Caprica-Six who is seen as a war hero among Cylons just as Valerii, protests and Three advises her to get Valerii to change. When Valerii laments the loss of Tyrol, Caprica-Six tells her about her own love for a human, Baltar, which prompts Valerii to inform her that he is still alive. Suspecting that Three has an ulterior motive and wants to box both of them, the two play along and Valerii announces her intent to move out of her old apartment. After a Caprica Resistance bombing, Valerii, Caprica-Six, and Three are trapped in a garage with a member of the human resistance, Samuel Anders. There, Caprica-Six reveals their true intentions and declares that Valerii and herself are celebrities in a culture of unity, and, through their love for humans, have realized the horror of the Cylons' actions. Using their celebrity, they could convince a large portion of the Cylon society of their new belief that the genocide of humanity was wrong. Valerii stops Anders from killing Three, but is surprised to see as Caprica-Six kills Three herself. After telling Anders to escape, Valerii agrees to help Caprica-Six reveal the truth of the genocide to the other Cylons (Downloaded).

Valerii and Caprica-Six are obviously successful in their attempt to change popular opinion among Cylons about the genocide on the human race. According to a Cavil model who is shortly incarcerated on board Galactica, Valerii and Caprica-Six convinced a majority that "the slaughter of mankind was a mistake" which ultimately leads to an end of the occupation of the Twelve Colonies (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I).

One year later, Valerii is one of the leaders of the Cylon force occupying New Caprica. But as other Cylons start to consider the occupation a failure, her influence appears to decrease quickly, most evident when she is unable to help Cally get out of detention, as Cally is about to be executed (Precipice). Their initial plan on New Caprica, "to push past the conflict that separated us from humans for so long", fails and the occupation is ended after four months (Exodus, Part II).

Following the retreat from New Caprica, Valerii is on the same basestar as Caprica-Six and Baltar and responsible for the Cylon-human hybrid child, Hera. At a stand-off with the human Fleet at the Algae planet, Valerii is part of a Cylon delegation to make demands regarding the Eye of Jupiter, but on board Galactica, she is identified as "Boomer" by Sharon Agathon and denied entry. During this first meeting between them, Valerii informs Agathon that her daughter, Hera, is still alive, and she suggests that Agathon will never be fully accepted among humans, because they continue to treat her as a thing. This confrontation seems to imply that Valerii has now accepted her nature and place amongst Cylons (The Eye of Jupiter).

After Agathon downloads into the Cylon fleet to recover her child, it becomes clear that Valerii resents her, possibly out of jealousy for her connection with Hera. Valerii has been growing increasingly frustrated by her inability to make progress with the child. She also states that she is done with her past on Galactica and that the failure of New Caprica has taught her that humans and Cylons cannot coexist. When Agathon insists that Hera is suffering from a blocked intestine and must be brought to a human doctor who knows how to care for an infant, Valerii immediately suspects that it was the other's intention all along to take Hera back to Galactica, although she is forced to admit that the child's belly has become "as hard as a gourd". Suggesting that Cylons were never meant to have children in the first place, Valerii threatens to kill Hera but is knocked to the floor by Caprica-Six and she is killed by her former comrade (Rapture).

Notes

• This Number Eight is often just called "Boomer" colloquially, as that callsign is closely associated with her, while Sharon Agathon is usually called "Sharon" and more recently "Athena". Until season 3, this copy was referred to as the Galactica copy ("Galactica-Sharon"), because she was first encountered on Galactica.
• Number Six rhetorically asks Baltar in "Flesh and Bone" why he thinks that Valerii got the callsign "Boomer".
  • Valerii might have earned her callsign for her loud landings with Raptors (Miniseries, Flight of the Phoenix, Scar).
  • As shown twice in "Water" and by her destruction of the basestar in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II", Valerii appeared to have a penchant for explosions.
  • Number Six could have been using sexual innuendo when she asked about Valerii's callsign.
  • "Boomer" is also a nickname for a ballistic missile submarine. "Helo" is a similar nickname for a helicopter.
• The anime Bubblegum Crisis generally focuses on police in conflict with rogue androids with a human appearance, referred to as "boomers;" some of these are sleepers. It should be noted that Boomer from the original Battlestar Galactica predates this usage.