Number Eight

Number Eight
[[Image:|200px|Number Eight]]
Human Name	{{{name}}}
Age
Colony	Falsely 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	Falsified: Abraham Valerii (deceased, father), Catherine Valerii (deceased, mother)
Siblings
Children	1 Pending ("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, Junior Grade (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 initially appears as a young officer with a bright future in the Colonial Fleet. She is initially encountered aboard the battlestar Galactica, where she is integrated into Colonial military life, serving as a Raptor pilot (callsign of "Boomer") with the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade).

But "Boomer" Valerii is Cylon operative in hiding, a "sleeper agent." She has many copies. Other variants of the Valerii model are active on Cylon-occupied Caprica and were also aboard a Cylon basestar orbiting Kobol before its destruction. Of all the Cylon agents witnessed thus far, Sharon Valerii 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 even 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 rough landings aboard Galactica (Miniseries).

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 (Miniseries, 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 is flying her Raptor to Caprica with Galactica's last remaining operational Viper squadron to Caprica 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 Boomer and Helo to make an emergency landing on Caprica.

With the Raptor repaired, they are mobbed by desperate civilians, where then Helo and Boomer 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, Boomer 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, Boomer 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).

The Sleeper Awakens

However, at the same time she is apparently supporting the Fleet, Boomer'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. 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, he later ends their relationship following the arrest of Specialist Socinus (Litmus). 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 positive test results to cover himself from recrimination from other Cylon agents and lies to the young lieutenant (Flesh and Bone). Boomer 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).

Frightened 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 Dr. Baltar who, rather than discouraging her, essentially gives her his blessing on her attempt. Following his departure from the bunkroom, Boomer succeeds in shooting herself, but her Cylon personality apparently interrupts the attempt. 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 fears. 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 apparently forces Boomer's Cylon personality to emerge once more, with astonishing reprocussions: on accepting hanks from Commander Adama for the mission, she shoots and seriously wounds him (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II).

Boomer 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, Boomer 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.

Sharon dies in Tyrol's arms.

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 interrogates Sharon, demanding to know how many other Cylons were in the Fleet, using the dying Tyrol to blackmail her. Boomer, 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 Boomer at point blank range. Dying in Tyrol's arms, her last words were "I love you, Chief" (Resistance).

Boomer'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 Boomer was merely yet another enemy Cylon to be destroyed (The Farm).

Spoiler follows, highlight to read.
According to an interview with Ron D. Moore, Boomer is not dead. When Cally shot "Boomer" Valerii, Galactica was close enough to one of the Cylon ships near Kobol that her consciousness was downloaded into another body. The episode dealing with Boomer's transferred "soul" be shown later in Season 2.

Caprica Copy

File:Cshva.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 copy of Valerii, with copies of Aaron Doral and Six acting as overseers for the experiment. This second Valerii "rescues" Helo from capture by Six and Cylon Centurions. 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, 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" is 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 the two having sex (Six Degrees of Separation), an accomplishment 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 - 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 the way 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, Valerii and Helo break into the Cylon facilities to reach the spaceport. When Helo encounters yet 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). Helo is only able to wound her, and takes her with him to use her to somehow get off Caprica. While Helo keeps her at gunpoint, she leads him to the Delphi Museum. Waiting out a storm in a nearby ruined building, 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 lands near the museum to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, Thrace realizes instantly that Valerii is a Cylon and attempts to shoot her. Helo, \ stops Thrace and reveals to her that Valerii is pregnant (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II). Starbuck is convinced that Caprica-Valerii must be a Cylon copy of the "real" Sharon on Galactica. Caprica-Valerii 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 and The Resistance

After Thrace attempts to kill Valerii, she escapes in Thrace's Cylon Raider to save the life of her unborn child (Scattered). After tracking them for several days, Valerii returns to Helo and a Caprica resistance movement to aid them in finding the missing Thrace (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 Valerii 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 murderous Valerii copy exists. Helo immediately places his gun against Adama's head, but President Roslin urges both men enough to drop their weapons, and orders Valerii to be ejected out the airlock. Valerii pleads for her life, telling Roslin she knows the precise location of the faction's objective: The Tomb of Athena. Roslin reconsiders and places Valerii in the brig. Roslin later confirms that the Cylon is actually working on their side because Valerii wants her child and Helo to remain safe from what Roslin constitutes as a mothering instinct.

Valerii accompanies Roslin's party to Kobol. Valerii recites the specific passages of the Tomb in the scriptures of the Sacred Scrolls and plots the group's path along a ridge nearby. As priestess Elosha examines a gravestone marker along the ancient trail, the handcuffed Valerii senses danger but 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 just as Lee Adama thinks she is about to shoot him, 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 is aware she is a machine.

While walking, Valerii casually tells Helo that their child is a girl. Commander Adama's search party arrives at Roslin's camp. The warm reunion of the two leaders and family is 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 body of "Boomer" Valerii).

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 Cally killed Boomer with only a minor punishment. Valerii deduces that the Colonials don't see humanoid Cylons are people; she is a thing they may destroy 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 is brought aboard battlestar Galactica and imprisoned in a new reinforced cell designed to incarcerate the copy of Sharon known as "Boomer." Number Six tells Dr. Baltar that Valerii's baby will be born in that cell. Number Six considers Valerii's 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 Valerii nearly has a miscarriage, and is rushed to Sickbay where Dr. Cottle succeeds in saving the fetus. D'anna Biers, a reporter for the Fleet News Service, stumbles upon Valerii while filming her documentary in Sickbay. D'anna threatens to expose that Adama is harboring a Cylon aboard Galactica, but he confiscated what he believed was Biers' tape of Valerii. In reality, D'anna secretly switches tapes and keeps 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 other Cylons on Caprica (by way of two Raiders that attacked Galactica in order to get within transmission range). The Cylons on Caprica (including another copy of D'anna and yet another Valerii copy) are surprised yet overjoyed that Helo's Valerii is still alive (they are apparently unaware that she had survived). They are incredibly concerned that her hybrid child survives, saying that it must be protected at all costs (Final Cut).

Valerii in trance while disabling the Cylon logic bomb

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 take control of the ship and kill off the crew 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 holocaust, 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 Alistair 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 a summary court-martial 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). Valerii's attempted rape results in a hairline fracture in one of her ribs and minor bruising. Still in shock for the incident, Commander Adama personally appologizes to Valerii that it happened aboard his ship ((Resurrection Ship, Part I).

Valerii is happy to see that both Helo and Tyrol have been released after Adama resumes full command of the Fleet (Resurrection Ship, Part II). Weeks later, President Roslin, on her deathbed, recommends that Valerii's fetus be aborted, fearing dire consequences for the Fleet. On hearing this news, Helo is terrified, but Valerii, having cooperated fully to aid the Fleet both to save herself, her child, and to show that not all Cylons are dangerous, is enraged. Marines sent to inspect her and later to take her to sickbay for the procedure are forced to restrain the angry Cylon. At the last minute (spurred by threats from his virtual Number Six), it is Gaius Baltar who learns of an astonishing ability of the fetal blood of Valerii's baby: it destroys cancer cells. Taking a small blood sample, he injects it into the dying Laura Roslin. Moments later, her cancer is "gone", according to Dr. Cottle. The abortion procedure is cancelled. The recovering Roslin visits Valerii in her cell and smiles at the sight of Valerii stroking her belly, just as a human female would (Epiphanies).

Future episodes

Spoiler follows, highlight to read.
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 possibly 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 inconsistent 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. It should be noted that Boomer from the original Battlestar Galactica predates this usage.
• As a matter of trivia, neither copy of Sharon refers to her lover by his first name onscreen. Galactica-Sharon calls Chief Tyrol "Chief" instead of "Galen" even when dying in his arms, and Caprica-Sharon has yet to call Lt. Agathon "Karl". Ron Moore explained in his blog that "Galen" is an unusual, even funny-sounding name, and hearing Sharon say it would have distracted from the emotional impact of her death. As for Agathon, everybody just seems to call him "Helo" anyway.
• 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".

According to SkyOne, Sharon's memories were of growing up on the mining settlement of Troy.

Here is SkyOne's summary of Valerii:

Sharon's first memories are vivid and she occasionally revisits them in her dreams. As far as she knew she grew up with a happy, normal childhood, the product of loving parents on the mining settlement of Troy. Troy was a small, barren world of the Colonial system.

Sharon always wanted to leave and seek a grander life. After passing the Colonial Acedemy's exams she left aboard a commercial transport ship.

During the flight, her hometown was wiped out in a series of titanic explosions caused by volatile methane gas, which had ignited in a mining operation. The disaster stunned the colonies.

She later applied for flight school and was accepted over more qualified candidates. Flight school was rough on Sharon. Not a born pilot, she laboured long and hard. By the time she had graduated. she managed to earn the second chances that she seemed fated to be given. Her first assignment was aboard the Battlestar Galactica, and by the time of the Cylon attack, she had been there for almost a year.

As this information does not come from the official Scifi.com website, it's authenticity is questionable. Further, it is blatantly contradicted by Sharon's statements that Troy was destroyed when she was a little girl, not in flight school, and Adama's comment in "The Farm" that she had been on Galactica for nearly two years, not almost one.