Sharon Valerii

This article concerns a copy of Cylon Model Number Eight first seen on Galactica, who loves Galen Tyrol and is shot by Cally. For the Number Eight first seen on Caprica, who marries Helo and becomes pregnant, see Sharon Agathon. For information about 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")
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	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 Cylon human model Number Eight who is initially planted as a "sleeper" agent in the Colonial Fleet. She is unaware of her true 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 Galen 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 an ultimately 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 jailed 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.

Biography

Life on Galactica

Initially, Valerii is a "sleeper" agent, 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 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 subconcious reaction to her Cylon personality program is 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 (their ships powered down by their tainted CNP), and the Raptor is damaged while trying to escape, forcing Valerii and Helo to make an emergency landing on Caprica. After repairing the Raptor, they are mobbed by desperate civilians and undertake an unexpected rescue operation, lifting a number of children and adults from the planet. However, Helo 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 hard within the new civilian Fleet, assisting Laura Roslin's attempts to gather other stranded civilian ships within the space surrounding Caprica as possible. She finds a number of ships critical to the fledgling Fleet's survival (such as a fuel tanker). After the Fleet (with Galactica leading it) leaves the solar system of the Colonies, Valerii aids in other critical acts, such as 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 a sabotage of Galactica's stores (Water).

Acts of sabotage

Valerii and Chief Tyrol.

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

Having "awoken" to her human personality shortly after the bombs used to destroy Galactica's water tanks were planted, she finds herself soaking wet. Valerii's human personality becomes increasingly concerned that she is not all she appears. Her worry increases when she experiences a certain "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, Galactica's Master-at-Arms, Sergeant Hadrian, suspects her and Tyrol of Cylon complicity (Litmus).

Valerii is isolated from Tyrol following this event, and he later ends their relationship following the arrest of Specialist Socinus (Litmus). Facing Tyrol's own suspicions concerning her activities immediately before the bombing, Valerii finds herself emotionally isolated and stressed. She takes the Cylon detector test created by Dr. Gaius Baltar. Baltar hides the positive test results to cover himself from recrimination from other Cylon agents and lies to the young lieutenant (Flesh and Bone). Valerii finds short solace in his test results but deals with increasing anonymous accusations from others when she finds the word "CYLON" written on the mirror of her locker (Six Degrees of Separation).

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Frightened and isolated, Valerii withdraws into herself and attempts suicide, but finds herself 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 attempt. Following his departure from the bunkroom, Valerii succeeds in shooting herself, but her Cylon personality apparently interrupts the attempt. Valerii can only severely wound herself in the face (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I).

After Starbuck absconds with the captured Raider intended for an attack on a basestar orbiting Kobol, Commander Adama orders 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. However, 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 while her copies caress the weapon just before it detonates and destroys the basestar. Back on Galactica, her encounter with her copies on the basestar apparently forces Valerii's Cylon personality to emerge once more, with astonishing repercussions: on being congratulated for the mission, she shoots Commander Adama in the chest, critically wounding him (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II).

Imprisonment and death

Valerii is quickly restrained by guards and jailed in the brig. During her emprisonment, Tigh attempts to forcibly extract information from her by gunpoint. Sharon's human and Cylon personalities appear to stonewall him (Scattered). Chief Tyrol is later thrown in the same brig cell by Col. 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 Tyrol's arms.

Dr. Gaius Baltar later enters the cell, ostensibly to collect a blood sample from Tyrol to prove his innocence using the Cylon detector, but instead Baltar injects Tyrol with a potent toxin that would kill him in a matter of seconds if Baltar doesn't give him an antidote. Baltar interrogates Sharon, demanding to know how many other Cylons were in the Fleet, using the dying Tyrol to blackmail her. Valerii, near hysterics, protests that she didn't know. Baltar insists that somewhere in her subconscious mind, underneath all of her programming and false memories, she truly does know and with a stressful enough stimulus, the information would come forward. At the last second, she cries out that there were eight other Cylons in the Fleet. Baltar revives Tyrol.

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

Valerii's body is sent to the morgue and autopsied. The recovered Commander Adama visits her corpse, asking "Why?" aloud, and weeps over her body. Commander Adama gives Cally a slap on the wrist by sentencing her to only 30 days in the brig for discharging a weapon without authorization. Cally is never tried for murder since Valerii wasn't human (The Farm).

Rebirth and life among Cylons

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However, Valerii's consciousness does not die. When Cally shoots Valerii, Galactica is close enough to the then-unknown Cylon Resurrection Ship so that her consciousness is retrieved for download into another body. Her resurrection occurs in the Caprica city of Delphi (Downloaded). 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. A copy of Number Three, representing the status quo of the Cylons, is deeply disturbed by this, going so far as to suggest that Sharon be "boxed."

Another "Hero of the Cylon", Caprica-Six, protests vehemently, and Three advises her to get Sharon to change. When Sharon laments the loss of Tyrol, Six tells Sharon of her own love for Baltar, which prompts Sharon to inform her that Baltar is still alive. Realizing that Three has an ulterior motive, the two play along. After a Caprica Resistance bombing, Three, Sharon, and Six are trapped in a garage with Samuel Anders. Listening to the dry conversation, Six suddenly reveals the truth: "Sharon" and "Caprica" are celebrities in a culture of unity, and, through their love for human individuals, have realized the true horror of the Cylons' actions. Using their celebrity status, they could therefore convince a large portion of the rest of Cylon society of their new belief that the Cylon genocide of humanity was wrong. Valerii stops Anders from killing Three, and is shell-shocked when Six smashes Three's skull. After telling Anders to escape, Six begs Sharon to help her reveal the truth of the genocide to the other Cylons. Sharon eventually agrees, and a new path is forged (Downloaded).

Valerii starts to work with Caprica-Six and they 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 imprisoned 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, along with Caprica-Six and a Number Five (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II). Though her influence among other Cylons appears to have decreased 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 month (Exodus, Part II).

Notes

• This Sharon is still referred to as the Galactica copy ('Galactica-Sharon'), even though she is now with the Cylons, because she was first encountered on Galactica. Fans also refer to her as 'Tyrol-Sharon' (as opposed to 'Helo-Sharon') or just as 'Boomer' (as the callsign is more closely associated with her than with Caprica-Sharon, who is usually just called 'Sharon').
• Number Six rhetorically asks Baltar in "Flesh and Bone" why he thinks that Valerii got her callsign, "Boomer."
  • As shown twice in "Water" and by her destruction of the basestar in "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II," the Galactica Valerii appeared to have a penchant for blowing things up. This is inconsistent with her namesake from the Original Series.
  • Number Six could have been using sexual innuendo when she rhetorically asked why the Galactica Valerii's callsign was "Boomer." For example, regarding "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 and the like, that when the scene director finished they flat out said their footage would have to be heavily edited.^{[citation needed]}
  • Alternately, this may be a script joke referring to the anime Bubblegum Crisis. 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.
  • 'Boomer' is also a nickname for a ballistic missile submarine. "Helo" is a similar nickname for a helicopter.
• During Season 1, Galactica-Sharon parts her hair on the right side of her head, while Caprica-Sharon parts her hair on the left side of her head.