Number Eight

Number Eight
[[Image:File:Bsg-valerii-2.jpg|200px|Number Eight]]
Human Name	{{{name}}}
Age	20s
Colony	Aerelon, Troy
Birth place	{{{birthplace}}}
Birth Name	N/A
Birth Date	{{{birthdate}}}
Callsign	Boomer
Nickname	{{{nickname}}}
Introduced	[[{{{seen}}}]]
Death	Resistance (Galactica Valerii)
Parents	alleged: Abraham Valerii (deceased, father), Catherine Valerii (deceased, mother)
Siblings	None
Children	1 ("Caprica" Valerii's unborn daughter)
Marital Status	Single (Galactica Valerii);
Family Tree	View
Role	Cylon Infiltrator; Raptor Pilot (Galactica Valerii)
Rank	Lieutenant J.G. (Galactica Valerii)
Serial Number	{{{serial}}}
Portrayed by	Grace Park
Number Eight is a Cylon
Number Eight is a Final Five Cylon
Number Eight is a Human/Cylon Hybrid
Number Eight is an Original Series Cylon
Related Media
		@ BW Media
Additional Information
[[Image:|200px|Number Eight]]

Sharon Valerii appears to be a woman in her mid-twenties of apparently "Asian" extraction. She is initially encountered aboard the Battlestar Galactica, where she is integrated into Colonial military life, serving as a Raptor pilot with the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade). Other variants of the Valerii model are active on Cylon-occupied Caprica and are also aboard the Cylon basestar orbiting Kobol.

Galactica Copy

Lieutenant Junior Grade Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, serial number T-990429, appears to be a young pilot recently-assigned to shipboard operations. Assigned to flying the Raptor reconnaissance vehicle. Her inexperience is demonstrated through repeated heavy landings aboard the Galactica (Mini-Series).

The Many Sides of "Sharon Valerii" (credit: Sky One / Sci-Fi Channel)

As a pilot, she is assigned alongside ECO Karl "Helo" Agathon, with whom she has developed a close friendship. She has also formed friendships with other pilot officers aboard the battlestar, sharing off-duty activities, such as regular card games (Mini-Series, Act of Contrition), all of which have helped her integrate into shipboard life and be accepted as a member of the crew. She had been serving on board the Galactica for two years prior to the Cylon attack ("The Farm").

Initially, "Boomer" Valerii is unaware of her Cylon status. As far as she is aware, she was born on the mining colony of Troy, the daughter of a family from Aerelon (Flesh and Bone). Troy itself was destroyed in an unexplained cataclysm, allowing Boomer's background to be established as that of an orphan.

Following her arrival on-board the Galactica, she enters into a relationship with the ship's Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol. Whether this is unintentional, or a subconcious reaction to her Cylon personality program is unclear.

At the time of the Cylon attack, Boomer was flying her Raptor to Caprica with the Galactica's last remaining operational Viper squadron to Caprica when they attempt to engage Cylon Raider fighters. However, the Viper squadron is destroyed, and the Raptor is damaged while trying to escape, forcing Boomer and Helo to make an emergency landing on Caprica.

With the Raptor repaired, they undertake an unexpected rescue operation, lifting a number of children and adults from the planet. However, this is at the expense of Helo, who gives up his place aboard the Raptor so that Doctor Gaius Baltar can be rescued (Mini-Series).

Following this, Boomer works hard within the fleet, initially assisting Laura Roslin's attempts to gather together as many surviving civilian ships within the colonies as possible, finding a number of ships critical to the fledgling fleet's survival (such as a fuel tanker) (Mini-Series); she has also been engaged in other critical acts that have aided the continued survival of the fleet, such as the discovery of a tylium-rich asteroid, replete with an active Cylon mine (The Hand of God). It is her Raptor which also locates a source of water to replenish the fleet (Water).

However, at the same time as she is apparently working in support of the fleet, Boomer's underlying Cylon programming emerges. She is engaged in the sabotage of the Galactica's water tanks which results in the initial water shortage (Water); later she may have assisted the suicide bomber incarnation of Aaron Doral gain access to a munitions store aboard the Galactica and construct a bomb which very nearly kills Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh.

Having "awoken" shortly after the bombs used to destroy the Galactica's water tanks had been planted to find herself soaking wet (Water), Boomer's human personality becomes increasingly concerned that she is not all she appears. This worry is increased when she experiences a degree of "attraction" 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, the Galactica's Master-at-Arms, Sergeant Hadrian suspects her and Tyrol of Cylon complicity (Litmus).

Isolated from Tyrol following this event, when he ends their relationship following the arrest of Specialist Socinus (Litmus) and facing Tyrol's own suspicions concerning her activities immediately before the bombing, Boomer finds herself emotionally isolated and stressed. Despite assurances from Doctor Baltar that she is not a Cylon (Flesh and Bone), Boomer finds short solace in his test results, and also facing an accusation from another source when she finds the word "CYLON" written on the mirror of her locker (Six Degrees of Separation).

Confused and isolated, Boomer withdraws into herself, and attempts to take her own life, but finds herself initially unable to do so. During her second attempt, she is interrupted by Doctor Baltar who, rather than discouraging her, essentially gives her his blessing on her attempt. Following his departure from the bunkroom, Boomer does shoot herself. However, her Cylon personality apparently interrupts the attempt, and Boomer can only severely wound herself in the face (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I).

Following this, and with the Galactica having dispatched a Cylon basestar in orbit above Kobol, Boomer is subsumed by her Cylon personality and visits CIC, shooting William Adama and seriously wounding him (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II).

She is summarily restrained by guards and is jailed in the brig. During her emprisonment, Tigh attempts to forcibly extract information from her -- only to stonewall him. (Scattered) Chief Tyrol is later thrown in the same brig cell by Col. Tigh because he wrongly suspected that he was a Cylon. While imprisoned together, Galactica-Sharon tries to convince Tyrol that her feelings for him were real and important, but he rejects her utterly and said he would kill her if she touched him. Dr. Gaius Baltar then entered the cell, austensibly to collect a blood sample from Tyrol to prove his innocence using the Cylon detector, but instead Baltar injected Tyrol with a potent toxin that would kill him in a matter of seconds if Baltar didn't give him the antidote. Baltar did this to interogate Sharon, because he knew she loved Tyrol and wouldn't want him to die. Baltar asked Sharon how many other Cylons were in the Fleet, even though she protested that she didn't know. Baltar insisted that somewhere in her subconscious mind, underneath all of her programming and false memories, she truly did know and with a stressful enough stimulus such as placing Tyrol's life in danger it would come foward. At the last second, she cried out that there were eight other Cylons in the Fleet, and Baltar revived Tyrol. Subsequently, Baltar intended to perform numerous mental and physical tests on her, like a "lab rat".

Soon after, while being transfered to a new reinforced cell in the brig built to hold Cylons, as a large crowd of crewmembers jeered at ther and called her a traitor, the enraged Cally broke through the crowd holding a gun and shot Sharon at point blank range. Dying in Tyrol's arms, her last words were "I love you Chief". ("Resistance")

Sharon's body was then moved to the morgue, and autopsied. The now recovered Commander Adama visited her corpse, asked "why?" aloud, and wept over her body. Commander Adama gave Cally a slap on the wrist by sentencing her to only 30 days in the brig for killing Galactica-Sharon, and she was never tried for murder ("The Farm").

Caprica Copy

File:Bsg-valerii-3.jpg

"Caprica Valerii" (credit: Sky One / Sci-Fi Channel)

When Helo is left on Caprica, the Cylons use him in an elaborate experiment. Key to this experiment is another variant of Valerii, with variants of Aaron Doral and Six acting as overseers for the experiment. She is initially encountered "rescuing" Helo from capture by Six. Following this, she leads Helo to "her" Raptor, now in the hands of Cylons, thus convincing him that they have no direct way off of the planet (Water).

Following this, and having recived a "Colonial signal" on the radio receiver they are carrying, she leads Helo to a city where they find a fully-equipped "fallout shelter" in which two people can live in reasonable security, hidden from above-ground Cylon operations, and with sufficient supplies to last a considerable period of time (Act of Contrition).

The purpose in establishing this "nest" appears to be to elicit an emotional response in Helo towards Valerii. When this fails, and he continues to express a desire to get off the planet, the Cylons arrange for Valerii to be "captured", determining that if Helo does not seek to rescue her, the experiment has failed, and he must be killed (You Can't Go Home Again).

Following Helo's "rescue" of Valerii, genuine concern and mutual need result in them making love (Six Degrees of Separation), which she reports to Doral and Six. A new hideout, a cabin in the woods, is being constructed for Helo and Valerii, and she is instructed to lead him there and have him stay with her there - or kill him if he attempts to leave (Flesh and Bone).

Faced with this, and the realisation that she has herself fallen in love with Helo, Valerii disobeys her instructions and attempts to lead Helo to Delphi, where they hope to steal a vehicle and get off the planet (Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down). On route to the spaceport, Valerii shows signs of being pregnant: she is sick (The Hand of God) and develops a ravening appetite (Colonial Day).

On reaching Delphi, she and Helo attempt to break into the Cylon facilities and reach the spaceport, but when Helo encounters another variant of Valerii, he draws the conclusion that she is a human clone created by the Cylons, and goes on the run alone (Colonial Day). When Valerii catches up with him, her emotional condition is so confused, she challenges him to shoot her (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I). However, Helo is only able to wound her, then he takes her with him in the hope she can help him get off of Caprica. While Helo keep her at gunpoint, she then leads him to the Delphi Museum. While in a nearby ruined building for a storm to pass, Sharon tells Helo that her love for him is real and that she is pregnant with his child.

When she and Helo come across Starbuck, who has landed at Delphi to extract the Arrow of Apollo, Thrace discovers that Valerii is a Cylon and attempts to shoot her. It is Helo, unable to bring himself to kill the Cylon, who stops Thrace and reveals to her that Valerii is pregnant. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II) Starbuck is convinced that Caprica-Sharon must be a Cylon copy of the "real" Sharon on Galactica. Caprica-Sharon tries to convince her that they are both Cylons and both of them is just as "real" as the other, by remembering the first time they met, to no avail.

After Thrace attempted to kill Valerii, she escaped in Thrace's Cylon Raider, likely attempting to save the life of her unborn child. (Scattered) After tracking them for several days, she returns to Helo and the Caprica resistance to aid them in finding the missing Kara (The Farm). Valerii steals a Cylon Heavy Raider and arrives at the rescue scene to destroy several Centurions and rescue the entire resistance group. Convinced that this Sharon copy can be sufficiently trusted, or at least give useful information on Cylon activity, they allow Caprica Boomer to join them as they take the Heavy Raider back to the fleet.

When Caprica Boomer walks aboard the Astral Queen, Lee Adama spots her, grabs Valerii and places his gun to her head, obviously angry that another Sharon copy exists. Helo immediately places his gun against Adama's. Roslin manages to calm both enough to drop their weapons, and then orders Valerii to be ejected out of the airlock. Valerii pleads for her life and tells Roslin she knows the precise location of the faction's objective: The Tomb of Athena. Roslin reconsiders and places Valerii in the brig. A later discussion by Roslin with Valerii confirms for Roslin that the Cylon is actually working on their side because Valerii wants her child and Helo to remain safe; Roslin believes what constitutes as a mothering instinct and love for Helo in Valerii is currently driving her motivations sufficiently to trust her.

Valerii accompanies Roslin's party to Kobol. Valerii knows the specific passages of the Tomb in the scriptures of the Sacred Scrolls by memory and, based on the passages, plots the group's path along a ridge nearby. As Elosha examples a gravestone marker along the ancient trail, The handcuffed Valerii senses danger but is too late to warn anyone; a group of Centurions open fire. At the same instant, two "Bouncing Betty"-style antipersonnel mines detonate, killing Elosha. As others hide or return fire, Valerii vaults away, with Lee Adama in pursuit, thinking she is trying to escape. Valerii scoops up a grenade launcher lying ahead, and Lee Adama thinks she is about to fire on him when she aims for the last Centurion and destroys it ("Home, Part I"). Sharon then continues to guide Roslin's party toward the Tomb of Athena. Apollo and Starbuck and perplexed that Helo now still loves Sharon, even though he knows she's a machine. While walking she tells Helo she knows that her child is a girl. Then Commander Adama and Chief Tyrol arrive, so that Adama can reconcile with Roslin and those who followed her and join the search for the Tomb. Upon seeing Caprica-Sharon, Adama immediately tries to choke her to death. When he releases her, she says "and you asked 'why'?". Tom Zarek's follower Meier then tries to convince her to help him kill Commander Adama and Apollo. Saying that she thought Galactica-Sharon was being held in the brig, he informs her that she was killed. She then expresses her outrage to Helo that the crew just let Cally kill Galactica-Sharon, and that she wasn't given a trial and only 30 days in the brig. Caprica-Sharon tells Helo that Commander Adama and the others don't think Cylons are people, and they think she's a thing and not a person and might kill her when they no longer need her. She the pretends to take up Meier's proposal to kill Adama and Apollo, but after they all draw their weapons she shoots Meier, saving Commander Adama's life. She then announces that she is not the same Sharon that shot Adama, in that she is not a sleeper agent with hidden protocols waiting to turn on them at any minute. She then drops the weapon, to everyone's surprise.

Subsequently, Caprica-Sharon was brought aboard the Battlestar Galactica and imprisoned in the brig, in a new reinforced cell designed to incarcerate Humano-Cylons, which had originally been built to hold Galactica-Sharon. Number Six told Dr. Baltar that Sharon's baby will be born in that cell. Number Six also considers Sharon and Helo's biological child to be hers; she has said that she will be its "mother" and Baltar will be it's "father" (Home, Part II).

While in her cell Sharon then nearly had a miscarriage, and had to be rushed to Sickbay where Dr. Cottle succeeded in saving her baby's life. The humanoid Cylon known as D'anna Biers, posing as a reporter for the Fleet News Service, stumbled upon Sharon while filming her documentary in Sickbay. D'anna threatened to expose that Adama was harboring a Cylon aboard the Galactica, to turn the Fleet against him, but he made her give him her tape. Actually, D'anna secretly switched tapes and kept the real one. However, it was not broadcast in the final cut of her documetary that was sent out across the entire fleet. It was broadcast back to the Cylons (by way of two Raiders), and the humanoid Cylons watching in on Caprica (including a copy of D'anna) were surprised yet overjoyed that Sharon was still alive (they were apparently unaware that she had survived). They were incredibly concerned that her hybrid child would survive, saying that it must be protected at all costs ("Final Cut").

Other Copies

• At the end of the Mini-Series, a copy of Valerii appears to be leading the human forces who recover the PR Executive Copy of Aaron Doral from Ragnar Anchorage.
  • It is possible that the this is the same individual as the Caprica copy. While, at the time the Mini-Series had been filmed, there were no plans to have Tahmoh Penikett reprise the role of Helo, the ending of the Mini-Series forms a link to 33, establishing that the Cylons have developed a plan for Helo's presence on Caprica.
• A copy of Valerii is witnessed wearing a grey coat at the spaceport at Delphi. However, she is immediately killed by Caprica Valerii. (Colonial Day)
• Multiple copies of the Valerii model were encountered on the basestar over Kobol. It is likey that they were dispatched to the Raptor in order to activate some latent portion of the Galactica Copy's Cylon personality. (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II)
• A copy of Valerii is seen at the end of Final Cut, also wearing a grey coat like other Sharons on Caprica, remarking in surprise that Caprica-Boomer is still alive.

Notes

• Number Six rhetorically asks Baltar in Flesh and Bone why he thinks that Valerii got her callsign, "Boomer." As shown twice in Water and with her destruction of the Basestar in Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II, Valerii appears to have a penchant for blowing things up. This is not coincident with her namesake from the Original Series, who did not show this tendency.
  • Number Six could probably have been using sexual innuendo when she rhetorically asked why Sharon's callsign was "Boomer"; for example, as demonstrated in "Six Degrees of Separation" (Actress Grace Park said in interviews that she was so determined to make an enthusiastic lovemaking scene, i.e. copious amounts of moaning, etc., that when the scene director finished they flat out said their footage would have to be heavily edited).
• In an odd coincidence, the term Boomer is used in the anime series Bubblegum Crisis to refer to synthetic humanoids, some of whom (such as Cynthia in BGC1 Tinsel City) are completely unaware of their nature as synthetically created beings. However, "Boomer" is a term dating back to the original Battlestar Galactica.

Re-imagined Series definition: used to signify a civilian transport vessel over a certain gross weight/mass, i.e. Colonial Heavy 798

Re-imagined Series definition: a nickname used as a substitute for an aviator's given name in wireless communications and in conversation