Samuel asked Matt Fulton:

Hello Matt. Re - Reading Active Measures part 1, something came to mind. Nina Davenport. Driven, dedicated case officer. She is a realistic portrayal of a modern day spy. My question, was she intended to be a foil for Carrie Matherson of Homeland fame? Carrie is everything Davenport isn't. Gifted but horrific and unfit for her job and the sort of person most intelligence services would not touch with a barge pole.

Matt Fulton The creation of Nina Davenport as a character predates Homeland's first season by about 9 years, so I wouldn't say Nina is meant to be a response to Carrie Mathison (full disclosure: I've never watched Homeland). Rather, while I'd say Nina and Carrie are certainly cut from the same cloth--i.e. that group of methodical, driven counterterrorism analysts and targeting officers who came to prominence in Langley after 9/11--they differ widely in personal qualities. That's not to say Nina has no character flaws (she definitely does) but hers are more more subtle, more internal. Nina focuses on her target to the point of obsession, neglecting nearly everything else around her, and this is something she's done for years now. As she takes a moment to stop and look around at the personal wreckage of her life, she's beginning to realize the cost of that obsession. Yet more than that, I think there's something much deeper to her that needs to be explored--there's a reason she obsesses over this rogue's gallery; there's something else she's trying to avoid by hunting ghosts.

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