Children Talking to Children In the Dark

"Chimera"

CARTER: Pete Shannahan, he's a cop.

O'NEILL: Speeding again are we?

CARTER: He's from Denver; he's a friend of my brothers.

O'NEILL: Set-up.

CARTER: Pathetic, I know.

So this doesn't tell us anything about how Mark met Pete, but clearly, despite the fact that Mark is now in San Diego, they've stayed in touch closely enough that Mark wants to set him up with a new woman to stalk and assault a potential girlfriend. We know Pete is divorced, plainclothes, and has FBI contacts; I think at some point canon explicitly says he's a detective.

It just seems to me, based on various nonfiction "tell somes" about police culture and "blue wall" society that it's unlikely that a police detective would maintain a close(ish) interstate friendship with someone not in the same profession. (Granted, that's just me.) And I also think that while rejecting the Air Force as a career, Mark would be looking for a similar "prove himself" helping profession. So... cop, firefighter, EMT...

We're never told explicitly what Mark does for a living: my headcanon has him retiring from the force on disability after being shot and going on to build a software empire in California. But there's no canon to speak to that.

[BTW, what have you got as prop canon for Sam that gives a YOB? Most of my stuff is for Jack. With a birthdate of 1969, she'd be younger than Daniel, which is interesting, as most fanon makes him the youngest member of SG-1. And we have her birth month, since Orlin gives her an emerald, saying it's her birthstone.] [Clearly the woman attracts stalker types.]

Now. Charlie. In "Politics", Senator Kinsey identifies the month the first Abydos Mission was sent as March. The air date for CotG was July 27th, 1997, so First Abydos was probably March 1996, as Daniel says he's been on Abydos for "a year" and we know that the Abydan day is longer than Earth's, so either he's being vague, or the Abydan solar year is longer.

This means Charlie probably died some time in 1995. We know from prop canon that he died some time after his school photo for that year was taken. I have, um, absolutely no idea what time of year that might be, but the trees and so on in the outdoor shots make it look as if it's somewhere in early Fall. It can't be earlier than September, or Charlie wouldn't be in school.

I can't remember why I am so convinced Charlie was eight when he died. Either I'm hallucinating, or Jack at some point mentions his age.

Okay. Next dirge.

Officers marry to advance. If Jack wanted to nail down a brisk series of promotions, he'd marry, probably as soon as he made Captain. We know he was a captain in 1982, since that's his rank for Operation East Fly. We also know that in 1997 he tells General Hammond that "most of my work for the last fifteen years is classified", which means since 1982, making East Fly one of his first covert missions, if not the very first [regardless of which it is, it is a memory more vivid and tragic than the events of Charlie's death, since it's the memory the Gamekeeper pulled out of his psyche]. We have canon for the fact he was married to Sara in 1988, but I'm going to say it's more likely he married her in '81 or '82. [It's also worth noting that he has the "Southeast Asia War Games" campaign ribbon, indicating that he saw service in Vietnam, and we have prop canon showing him as a paratrooper. I'm still figuring that one out.]

Now. If Charlie was eight in 1995, he would have to have been born sometime around 1987, which is (probably) several years after the marriage. More to the point, he has no younger brothers or sisters.

Military families tend to run (on average) larger than civilian ones (only children are rarer than in the general population), and for an ambitious young officer (and remember that making General was on Jack's bucket list), producing a child to round out a "perfect marriage" and indicate his intense heterosexual stability is also pretty common. Yet if Jack marries Sara in 1981, its six years before Charlie is born. A marriage closer to 1988 puts Charlie's birthdate in a more reasonable range, though it leaves Jack marrying very late for his career track, but it doesn't explain the lack of younger siblings. We know Jack loves kids. He's making good money, since his rank at Charlie's death is Colonel. We have no indication that Sara doesn't like children (the novelization of the movie, if memory serves, indicated she was a schoolteacher).

So where the hell are the other little O'Neills?

1. If Jack marries Sara in the late 80s, and Charlie comes along right on schedule (ie, within the next 24 months), then the only reason he doesn't have younger siblings is that one or the other of his parents was unable to do their bit. It is alleged that Jack later fathers a child with Laira, which, while not conclusive, leaves Sara.

2. If Jack marries Sara in the early 80s (more likely in the real world of the military), there's an awfully long gap. It could be fanwaved by earlier miscarriages and/or domestic stress on their marriage, but according to canon, the worst time for their marriage was in the late 80s, when Jack returned from a stint as a POW, and that's when Charlie is conceived.

Either way, it's entirely puzzling to me...