Victoria Skillane is the protagonist who also serves as a hidden antagonist of White Bear. She is portrayed by Lenora Crichlow.
Physical Appearance
Victoria has dirty, unkempt hair and olive skin tone. She usually wears a grey sweater with white trousers.
Overview
Victoria wakes up in a house and realizes she has amnesia. She is surrounded by images of a small girl —whom she assumes is her daughter—as well as photos of herself and a man and also by a television signal. She leaves the house and notices several people recording her on their phones who ignore her pleas for help. A masked man arrives and opens fire at her with a shotgun. She flees and meets Jem and Damien. Jem and Victoria escape the masked man, who kills Damien. Jem explains that a mysterious signal began appearing on television and over the Internet, while most of the population turned into passive voyeurs who do nothing but record everything around them. Victoria and Jem are unaffected, but they are also a target for the "hunters", unaffected humans who act sadistically. Jem plans to reach a transmitter at "White Bear" to destroy it and stop the signal's effect on the area.
As they travel, a man named Baxter, who is also unaffected, picks them up. He holds them at gunpoint in a forest, where there are crucified and hanged bodies. As Victoria is about to be tortured, Jem kills Baxter. They continue traveling to the transmitter, while Victoria has visions of past events. When they reach the transmitter, two hunters attack them. Victoria wrestles a shotgun away from a hunter and fires at her attacker, but the gun only sprays confetti.
Walls open to reveal an audience applauding; Jem, Damien, and the hunters are shown to be actors. Victoria is strapped to a chair, and Baxter appears and explains the facade. Her name is Victoria Skillane, and the girl in the photo is a six-year-old girl named Jemima Sykes. Victoria and her fiancé, Iain Rannoch, abducted the girl a few miles from her home. Iain tortured and killed the girl before burning her body, while Victoria recorded his actions on her mobile phone. The "White Bear", originally the victim's teddy bear, became a symbol of the nationwide search and the murder investigation. The symbol on the television was identical to the tattoo that identified Iain, who committed suicide in his cell before the trial. Having tearfully pleaded guilty, insisting she was "under Iain's spell", Victoria was sentenced to undergo the daily punishment she has just experienced
Victoria is driven back to the compound past a crowd who, encouraged by the staff, are baying for her blood, and returned to where she awoke. As Victoria is shown footage of Jemima, Baxter places electrodes on her head, wiping her memory of the day's events, a procedure that is agonizing and eventually knocks her out.
Trivia
- In Black Museum she appears on a big screen in the museum.
- In USS Callister, her surname is referenced when the crew decide to fly to the planet Skillane IV, a penal colony known for its horrific treatment of inmates.
- She is referenced three times in Hated in the Nation, twice as trending hashtags #deathtovictoriaskillaine and #freethewhitebearone, and once on a newscast Garrett Scholes is watching near the end of the episode.
- In Shut Up And Dance, a news website references her in a headline "Victoria Skillane to appear before International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity".
- In Smithereens, the address Skillane Street is used
- In White Christmas, her name appears during a newscast.