Number Eight
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| Number Eight | ||
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[[Image: |200px|Number Eight]]
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Human Name |
{{{name}}} | |
| Age | 20s | |
| Colony | Claimed to be from Aerelon (by way of Troy) | |
| Birth place | {{{birthplace}}} | |
| Birth Name | ||
| Birth Date | {{{birthdate}}} | |
| Callsign | Boomer | |
| Nickname | {{{nickname}}} | |
| Introduced | [[{{{seen}}}]] | |
| Death | Resistance (Galactica Valerii), another copy killed on Caprica (Colonial Day) | |
| Parents | alleged: Abraham Valerii (deceased, father), Catherine Valerii (deceased, mother) | |
| Siblings | None | |
| Children | 1 ("Caprica" Valerii's unborn daughter) | |
| Marital Status | Single (Galactica Valerii); In a relationship with Lt. Karl Agathon (Caprica Valerii). | |
| Family Tree | View | |
| Role | Cylon Infiltrator, Saboteur; Raptor Pilot (Galactica Valerii) | |
| Rank | Lieutenant (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. 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 have been seen active on Cylon-occupied Caprica and are also aboard the Cylon basestar orbiting Kobol before its destruction. There are presumably other copies stationed throughout the Cylon space fleet and forces occupying the other Colonies.
Sharon Valerii, of all the Humano-Cylon models witnessed thus far, appears to behave with the strongest or genuine human qualities. This may be the cause of this model's tendency to have conflicts between its latent Cylon or active human personalities, or turn against its own kind.
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 Galactica (Mini-Series).
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 Galactica for two years prior to the Cylon attack ("The Farm").
Agent in Disguise
Initially, "Boomer" 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 Boomer'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, Boomer was flying her Raptor to Caprica with Galactica's last remaining operational Viper squadron to Caprica when they are notified 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 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).
The Sleeper Awakens
However, at the same time she is apparently supporting the fleet, Boomer's underlying Cylon programming periodically emerges. Her Cylon programming sabotages Galactica's water tanks, which results in the initial water shortage (Water). Later, she may have assisted a copy of Aaron Doral in access to a munitions store aboard Galactica to construct a bomb which very nearly kills Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh.
Having "awoken" shortly after the bombs used to destroy Galactica's water tanks were planted to find herself soaking wet (Water), Boomer'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).
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. She takes the Cylon detector test created by Dr. Gaius Baltar. Baltar hides the true results to cover himself from recrimination from other Cylon agents and lies to Boomer, telling her she is not a Cylon (Flesh and Bone). Boomer finds short solace in his test results and now deals with accusations from others 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 suicide, 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).
Boomer's Dark Discovery and Demise
After Starbuck absconds with the captured Raider intended for an attack on a basestar orbiting Kobol, Commander Adama orders Boomer and ECO Racetrack to use an Cylon Transponder in their Raptor to infiltrate the basestar 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, Boomer exits the ship and into the expanse of the basestar's interior, where she encounters a dozen copies of herself, confirming her worse fear. Boomer 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 presumably forces Boomer's Cylon personality to emerge once more. She visits CIC to accept thanks from Commander Adama, then shoots and seriously wounds 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. Sharon's human and Cylon personalities appear to stonewall him (Scattered). Chief Tyrol is later thrown in the same brig cell by Col. Tigh because he is wrongly suspected of being a Cylon. While imprisoned together, Boomer 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 later enters the cell, austensibly 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 did this to interogate Boomer, because he knew she loved Tyrol and wouldn't want him to die. Baltar interrogates Sharon, demanding to know how many other Cylons were in the Fleet. Boomer, near hysterics, protested that she didn't know. Baltar insists 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 forward. At the last second, she cried out that there were eight other Cylons in the Fleet. Baltar revives Tyrol. Subsequently, Baltar intended to perform numerous mental and physical tests on her, like a "lab rat".
Soon after, while being transferred to a new reinforced cell in the brig built to hold Cylons, as 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 Boomer at point blank range. Dying in Tyrol's arms, her last words were "I love you, Chief" ("Resistance").
Boomer'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 discharging a weapon without authorization, and she was never tried for murder since Boomer was merely yet another enemy Cylon destroyed ("The Farm").
| Spoiler follows, highlight to read. |
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| According to an interview with Ron D. Moore, Galactica-Boomer is not dead. When Cally shot her Galactica was close enough to one of the Cylon ships near Kobol that her consciousnes was downloaded into another body and she woke up. The episode pretaining to this storyline is rumored to either have been moved to the end of Season 2 as a special episode, moved back to Season 3 or terminated altogether. Time will tell whether anything actually comes of this plotline. |
Caprica Copy
When Helo is left on Caprica, the Cylons use him in an elaborate experiment. Key to this experiment is another variant of Valerii, with copies of Aaron Doral and Six acting as overseers for the experiment. She is initially encountered "rescuing" Helo from capture by Six. Unaware of Valerii's true nature, Helo genuinely believes this Valerii copy to be the "Boomer" he knew from Galactica. Following his rescue, Valerii 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 received 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 Experiment
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 realization 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 ravenous appetite (Colonial Day).
Helo's Discovery
On reaching Delphi, she and Helo attempt to break into the Cylon facilities and reach the spaceport, but when Helo encounters another copy of Valerii, he draws the initial 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 that she challenges him to shoot her (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I). However, Helo is only able to wound her. He takes her with him in the hope she can help him get off of Caprica. While Helo keeps her at gunpoint, she 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.
Valerii's Resistance
After Thrace attempted to kill Valerii, she escapes 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 Valerii walks aboard the Astral Queen, Lee Adama spots her, grabs Valerii and places his gun to her head, obviously angry that another Sharon copy (like the one that shot his father) exists. Helo immediately places his gun against Adama's head. Roslin manages to calm both enough to drop their weapons, and 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 examines a gravestone marker along the ancient trail, the handcuffed Valerii senses danger. She is too late to warn anyone; two "Bouncing Betty"-style antipersonnel mines detonate, killing Elosha. At the same instant, a group of Centurions open fire. As others hide or return fire, Valerii vaults away, with Lee Adama in pursuit, believing 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"). At camp, Adama and Thrace are perplexed that Helo now still loves Valerii, although he knows she's a machine.
While walking she tells Helo she knows that her child is a girl. Commander Adama's search party arrives at Roslin's camp. The warm reunion of the two leaders and family was intterrupted when Adama sees this second copy of Sharon Valerii. Commander Adama immediately tries to choke her to death. He releases her after experiencing terrible chest pains (probably the result of his recent surgery, or from anxiety), as she says "And you asked 'why'?" (mysteriously referencing what Commander Adama said over the body of the dead Galactica Boomer copy).
Tom Zarek's follower, Meier, tries to convince her to help him kill both Adamas. Valerii believed her Galactica counterpart was being held in the brig, but Meier informs her that she was killed. She expresses her outrage to Helo that the crew just let Cally kill Boomer, with Cally receiving only 30 days in the brig as punishment. Valerii tells Helo that Commander Adama and the others don't think Cylons are people; they think she's a thing and not a person -- a thing they may kill once they no longer need her. Valerii pretends to take up Meier's proposal to kill Commander Adama and Lee Adama, but after they all draw their weapons she shoots Meier instead, saving the lives of both Adamas. She announces to Commander Adama that she is not the same Sharon that shot him, and that she is not a sleeper agent with hidden protocols waiting to activate; she makes her own choices. She surrenders the weapon to Commander Adama, to everyone's surprise.
The Cooperative Cylon
Subsequently, Valerii was brought aboard battlestar Galactica and imprisoned in a new reinforced cell designed to incarcerate Humano-Cylons, built originally to hold the copy known as Boomer. Number Six tells Dr. Baltar that Sharon's baby will be born in that cell. Number Six considers Sharon and Helo's biological child to be hers; she says that she will be its "mother" and Baltar will be it's "father" (Home, Part II).
While in her cell Sharon nearly has a miscarriage, and has to be rushed to Sickbay where Dr. Cottle succeeds in saving her baby's life. The humanoid Cylon known as D'anna Biers, posing as a reporter for the Fleet News Service, stumbles upon Valerii while filming her documentary in Sickbay. D'anna threatened to expose that Adama harbors a Cylon aboard Galactica which may turn the Fleet against him, but he confiscated what he believed was Biers' tape of Valerii. In reality, D'anna secretly switched tapes and kept the real one. This critical information was not broadcast in the final cut of her documentary distributed to the Fleet, but it was broadcast back to the Cylons on Caprica (by way of two Raiders that attacked Galactica in order to get within transmission range). The humanoid Cylons watching in on Caprica (including a copy of D'anna and yet another Valerii copy) were surprised yet overjoyed that Helo's Valerii copy 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).
When Galactica experiences mysterious computer failures and system malfunctions from yet another Cylon virus, Commander Adama orders Helo to show the incarcerated Valerii the strange Cylon code. Valerii identifies it as a very virulent Logic bomb that will disable the crew and turn the ship against them if she does not help. Reluctantly, on advice from President Roslin, Commander Adama brings Valerii to CIC, where Valerii cuts her arm open and connects her body to a fiber optic line to communicate with Galactica's mainframe computer and communication channels. The process is painful both to Valerii and to the crew watching the spectacle. With Valerii now with access, she takes into her a portion of the logic bomb code, then instructs Lieutenant Gaeta to wipe the hard drives of the system computers to erase all Cylon virus traces for good. Galactica is a sitting duck to a massive Cylon fighter force on the outskirts of DRADIS range while Valerii makes adjustments to the code. She resends the code out on the communication channels to the Cylon fleet. In a reversal of the events suffered by the Colonials in the Fall of the Twelve Colonies, every Cylon fighter loses power and weapons. Adama's Vipers have a free-for-all shooting, destroying every Cylon fighter without a single Colonial casualty (Flight of the Phoenix).
The Cylon "Interrogator"
After Galactica reunites with battlestar Pegasus, Admiral Helena Cain sends Lieutenant Thorne to inspect the incarcerated Valerii. He beats her and attempts to sexually assault her while his guards watch. Fortunately for Valerii, both Agathon and Tyrol find out about Thorne and what was done to his previous prisoner and arrive in time to stop him. Tyrol accidentally kills Thorne in the process, and both Agathon and Tyrol are arrested by the Pegasus guards and taken to Cain's battlestar, where an apparently mock trial leaves Agathon and Tyrol pending execution by Admiral Cain. Commander Adama sends a Marine force and his Viper squadrons out and tells to Cain over wireless that he is getting his men. Valerii and all of the fleet await news on the survival of her "past" and current love as a standoff between the battlestars begins (Pegasus). The attempted rape of Caprica-Sharon resulted in her receiving a hairline fracture in one of her ribs, and extensive bruising notably on her wrists when marines were holding her down. She was in a state of shock long after it ended. Commander Adama personally appologized to her that it happened aboard his ship. ((Resurrection Ship, Part I)
| Spoiler follows, highlight to read. |
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| According to an interview with RDM, Caprica-Sharon's pregnancy storyline will come to a 'conclusion' by the end of season 2. Also, during the early episodes of the second half of season 2, the Galactica crew will debate whether or not they should force her to have an abortion rather than allow the Cylon's experiment to conclude and pose a threat to them. |
Other Copies
- At the end of the Mini-Series, a copy of Valerii wearing the Colonial Raptor Pilot Uniform appears to be leading the group of Humano-Cylons 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 Helo's Valerii copy (Colonial Day).
- Multiple copies of the Valerii model were encountered on the basestar over Kobol. It is likely 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-Valerii 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", the Galactica Valerii appeared 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 the Galactica Valerii'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).
- Alternately, this may be an in-joke to the anime Bubblegum Crisis (and its spin-offs). Bubblegum Crisis generally focuses on a futuristic police force in conflict with rogue androids with a human appearance, or "synthetic humanoids", referred to as boomers. Some of these (such as Cynthia in BGC1 Tinsel City) are completely unaware of their nature as synthetically created beings. (Of course, Boomer from the original Battlestar Galactica predates this usage.)
- Valerii is the male plural form of the Roman name of the family Valeria. Valerius is the singular form.
- In an interview for thefandom.com Ron D. Moore stated that "There is no original human Sharon. The idea is not that there was likely an original human model that they were copied from. The idea was that these models of Cylon were sort of developed out of their own study of us. The Cylons on some level looked at humanity and said “You know what? There’s really only 12 of you”. If these are the 12, and sort of if you look at them they each represent different archetypes of what humanity is".