Do we like Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan?
A character from Farscape (1999-2003)
Our score: 8 out of 10. Mostly yes. She's a healer, a peacemaker and a loyal friend, and she's dangerous when her friends are threatened. You'd want her on your ship, and you'd be careful not to anger her.
Zhaan is a Pa'u (a priest) of the Delvian Seek. Delvians are sentient plant people, and she is deeply spiritual and a champion of peace. In Farscape she is one of the escaped prisoners aboard the living ship Moya, along with the stranded astronaut John Crichton. She acts as the crew's healer and sage adviser, and she often stands between the others when tempers flare.
Her calm is real, but it isn't the whole picture. Beneath it she can be fierce when her friends are threatened. She is also a former radical who fought the regime that the Peacekeepers helped install on her homeworld. Her faith is something she works at, and the show doesn't treat it as a given. She is kind to people who haven't earned it, including the self-serving Rygel. She is also close to Pilot and to Moya herself.
Our score is high because most of what she does is good. She heals the crew, argues for mercy, and holds the group together when the others would split apart. She loses a few points because the darker side of her past is always close by, and she sometimes struggles with it.
Her backstory is a dark one. She assassinated her own lover, the leader who had invited the Peacekeepers in. The act broke her mind, and she spent years in Peacekeeper captivity. In prison she learned to master her anger. Her arc is about keeping that control, and about the cost when she loses it. She does not stay with the crew to the end of the series.