Scully is my favorite TV heroine. She may very well be the only one. I admire her intensity, her sense of rigidity that is not quite unflexible but is rooted in something more than fleeting emotions and shallow aspirations. As they say, she’s a buzzkill – she is rarely amused, but when she is, finally, sparks fly.
I can attempt to write everything that I appreciated about this character Chris Carter created and Gillian Anderson so masterfully portrayed, despite the fact that her real-life persona will probably giggle over Scully’s repressed personality, but someone else have already done that for me.
Here’s a thoughtful article published on Salon, detailing why Dana Scully, THE “smart-girl icon who was (and would still be, alas) a rare television bird: professional, independent, unsentimental,” became both the cerebral center and the heart of an otherwise formulaic science fiction narrative.