Bio: Captain William Scully, father of Dana Scully and her siblings is portrayed as a loving father and a good husband to Margaret Scully. While seemingly uncompromising and rock-solid, his spontaneity emerges in his spur of the moment proposal and marriage to Margaret. Dana Scully seemed to have shared a special relationship with her father who called her his "baby girl". Scully felt that he disapproved of her unusual aspirations and her joining the FBI instead of continuing in the mainstream medical profession. Captain Scully seemed to believe that her act of joining the FBI was more a way of rebelling than the fulfillment of an ambition. Mrs. Scully maintains though that inspite of their differences, the captain was always proud of his daughter. Scully herself always tried doubly hard at the Bureau, anxious to prove herself to her father. Their personal bond though was very strong displaying itself in the private joke they shared based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Scully referred to her seafaring father as "Ahab", the stern captain of the ill-fated Pequod; while Bill Scully in turn called her "Starbuck", Ahab's upright and trusted lieutenant. Scully was deeply influenced by her father and seems to have inherited her red hair stubbornness and her strong ethics from him (and his sea-legs if you believe Mulder). He played a crucial role in her life and his sudden death due to a coronary attack (Beyond The Sea) in December 1993 affected her deeply. Visions of him after his death shook the scientific base she turned to for explanations. She again sees him as she lay dying in One Breath, however this time his pep-talk played a crucial part in giving her the will to survive.

• "Hello Starbuck. It's Ahab. People would say to me. 'Life is short. Kids, they grow up fast. Before you know it, it's over.' I never listened. To me, life went at a proper pace of many rewards. Until the moment that I knew, I understood, I would never see you again, my little girl. Then my life felt as if it had been the length of one breath, one heartbeat. I never knew how much I loved my daughter until I could never tell her. In that moment I would have traded every medal, every commendation, every promotion, for one more second with you. We'll be together again, Starbuck. But not now. Soon." (One Breath)