Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Martha and Jonathan's parents

Cookiesmom's thread asking about Perry's family reminded me to ask what do we know about M and J's parents and/or family? It seems a little odd, unless they had no relatives, that no one really inquired/took interest in Clark growing up.

Thanks!

Mona

I don't recall any relatives of M or J being mentioned on the show.

I've read fanfic which explained that each side of the family was told that Clark was the illegitimate child of a relative on the other side of the family, and that J & M raised him because the mother was too young to be a responsible parent and wished to give her son up for adoption. If the two sides of the family never got together, that explanation would work to explain his sudden appearance on the scene.

cheers,
Lynn

An aunt (Martha's? Clark's great aunt?) is mentioned in "Through A Glass, Darkly," but I can't recall her name.

Aunt Opal? Does that sound right?

ETA: Found it. It's actually in BGDF:

Martha: Dad's fine. But your Aunt Opal broke her hip, so I flew in to help out.

Clark: A broken hip on top of a ruptured gall bladder? She fall out of her hospital bed?

The fact that Martha flew into Metropolis to help out, would suggest, of course, that Aunt Opal lives there.

LabRat

Lois' Aunt Esther is mentioned in "'Twas the Night Before Mxymas," but Clark never mentioned having an aunt. (I downloaded the transcripts and used Vista to do a search of them on the word "aunt".) Well, Clark did mention that the hypothetical "loved one" whose funeral he and Lois were allegedly planning was his uncle; but since that was just a cover story, I hardly think that that counts.

cheers,
Lynn

Good catch, Labby! I just checked to see why Vista failed me in this; it appears that the one episode which does NOT have a text transcript listed is BGDF. (Only JPEGs of the transcript are given there, and they aren't searchable by text.) Murphy strikes...

Actually, it wasn't really Martha who said that line, but the would-be assassin who was posing as her. Still, the fact that Clark didn't respond with, "Who's Aunt Opal?" indicates that he really does have such a relative. Of course, she might be there because Smallville's medical facilities weren't up to treating a ruptured gall bladder, and not because she lived in Metropolis. I guess there's still plenty of leeway here for fanfic.

Cheers,
Lynn

Wasn't there a mention in ATAI, when M&J were locked up as hostages, about Jonathan telling Martha's mother to "stick a sock in it", or something? Or was I hallucinating that part?

WHALTTA would also be a good one to check, with all that reminiscing about how many times Jonathan proposed before Martha said yes.

PJ

LOL - tell me about it. I had to go through practically every darn jpeg till I hit the right bit of script.

The BGDF script alone is like that because it's an annotated copy, complete with scribblings and notes from one of the cast/crew. (Can't remember which now.)

Wouldn't there be another large hospital closer to Smallville than Metropolis? Course, this is where my inability to figure out distances between the two could come into play. I may be imagining that Metropolis is much further away from Smallville in LNC than it truly is.

LabRat

As an FYI... There is a transcript of BGDF in L/C so that's a good place to check first .

Clark also mentions his uncle Enos? in the ep with Lois' dad and the boxers. Though it was an excuse, it seems like a random name to make up. Why not Uncle Bob if he's not a real person?

Carol

Thank you everyone. Lol to all the probable made up relatives. I didn't think there were many (if any) "real" ones, just was curious. I'll just have to invent one sometime for a fic.

Mona

Ah. That explains it. I'll have to read it some time, after I have finished reading the Kerth nominated stories.

That all depends on where, precisely, Metropolis is (there's another thread in the MB about this). But even if it is in the general region of RL NYC (which was the general consensus) one could still argue that she was not necessarily a resident of metropolis...She could have needed emergency hospitalization while visiting the city to see her nephew, for example. That would explain why Clark never mentioned her to Lois -- one would think that if he had a relative living locally, the topic would have come up between them, even if we never actually got to see her.

BTW, I realized that I never explicitly apologized for being inaccurate with regards to the existence of Clark's aunt. Sorry about steering you wrong, Mona. I'm glad Labby caught my misstep.

cheers,
Lynn

Thanks, Carol. I've downloaded that transcript, too, so I'll be able to do a search of all the documents.

Uncle Ian, according to the transcript available at http://www.lcficmbs.com/scripts/txt/106.txt.

Since it is an excuse, I would consider it to be fairly weak evidence, to be used or ignored as the necessities of the fanfic demand.

cheers,
Lynn

That makes a lot of sense, now that you mention it. I've been pretty much wondering why she would never have come up before then, if she was living close by to Clark. Other than 'it was(n't) in the script' of course.

LabRat

Something Labby said has been bothering me.

The consensus in the Where is Metropolis? thread seemed to be that Metropolis is somewhere on the east coast of the U.S. If it was in Delaware, as some speculated, it would be at least 1150 miles from any town in Kansas. If it was located about the same place as New York City, it would be at least 1200 miles. There would definitely be large hospitals that are closer to Smallville.

I am assuming Clark did not say anything about his aunt visiting Metropolis. So two explanations (besides the visiting aunt scenario) occur to me:

1. Metropolis is not actually on the ocean, it is on the Great Lakes, about where Chicago is located. Then it might be reasonable to take someone to Chicago for specialized treatment. That would also account for the frequency with which his parents are able to visit him. I just checked flights from Kansas City or Wichita to NYC and with connections the trip is about 6 or 7 hours. But the time to fly to Chicago would be much less.

However, the Chicago location is probably inconsistent with canon; I'm not enough of an expert to know.

2. We are never told where Martha is from, and many fanfic writers have given her an origin "back east." If Martha's family lives on the east coast, Opal could live in a semi-rural area 60 to 70 miles from the city of Metropolis. If Clark was not particularly close to her and she did not know his secret, he probably would not see her often. But it would be reasonable for her to travel to Metropolis for hospitalization, and his mother would probably keep him informed if this happened.

IIRC, Superman canon [not L/C] has Martha from Boston. Wouldn't be TOO far from Metropolis in either Delaware or NYC. She could have been visiting a friend in that area with no plans to see her nephew for some reason.

IIRC, both from my research and friends, it's not too hard to get a direct flight from KC to NYC. Much easier than from Wichita and given the distance between Smallville and KC given in TF [3 days rides], it's probably about 3-3.5 hour drive so not too unreasonable. [I live in moderately rural Missouri and it's not uncommon at all for people to drive to KC, STL or Tulsa [2.5-3.5 hours] to catch flights though we FINALLY have some reasonably priced options from our fairly small airport to a few locations.]

Carol

I don't have any of the names, but you might want to rewatch "Soul Mates" since they go back to 1800's Kansas and meet up with relatives of both Martha and Jonathan.

I admit, Carol, I was surprised yesterday when I checked Travelocity for KC-NYC flight times to see NO nonstop flights--there was one listed as direct but it still had a stopover. That is where I got the 6-7 hour estimate. I am sure there have been nonstop flights in the past.

But it still bothers me sometimes the way that writers have farmers from Kansas "dropping in" to an east coast city. I spent ages 8-31 living in Missouri and only made it to NYC once in all that time. Then one Christmas after my husband and I moved east, we drove home to St. Louis and it took us 15 hours; add travel time to the middle of Kansas to that and you'd have another 8 hours at least.

OK, I'm getting a little OT. But if Martha's aunt is in Boston, they probably don't see her that much.

Yeah - it's about a 20h drive from SE KS [where I put Smallville] to NYC.

An Expedia search found a bunch of nonstops from KC to various airports in the NYC area [like Newark] as low as about $400. A couple trips a year wouldn't be too out of the question if they planned for it, I'd think.

Sue - I don't think there's any evidence that anyone from SoulMates was related to anyone in the L/C universe once everything was back to normal. In TF, there's Miss Martha who runs the saloon. I forget if they gave the sheriff's name [Jonathan].

Carol

Edit: Marshall Kent. No first name given.

At least they did mention that M & J often had private flights so to speak, compliments of their son. How often did they fly in using more conventional methods? I seem to recall them doing so on a couple of occasions -- once at Christmas time and once when J suspected M of cheating on him. Were there others?

cheers,
Lynn

Yeah, they did seem to do it quite a bit. IIRC, there were quite a few occasions when they turned up to help Clark when he got into trouble of some sort or another. I remember one incidence of him turning up at his apartment to find them waiting for him. Was that...Chip Off The Old Clark? Think it might have been. There were others, I know that.

LabRat (who really needs to start watching eps more...)

Off the top of my head eps they took planes:

ASU
Toy Story [the ep at the end of S4 where they show up and M/J want to go to a hotel and Lois tries to tell Clark why and he's like 'but they're my *parents*!/whine/'
Ides of Metropolis


Other eps they were there but I don't remember specific travel info include:
ATAI
Whatever the ep is where Jonathan does everything Martha does and Martha plays chess and takes naps and Jonathan orders Chinese and tries to pretend he makes it and they call Lois family - S2

Ugh - that's all I'm coming up with off the top of my head.

So amongst the episodes that Labby, Carol, and I have recalled, we have averaged a bit over a flight a year; that might still be doable in terms of expenses and the wear-and-tear of travel. (In those pre-9/11 days, travel was a lot easier, after all.)

What I find a bit less plausible is that *farmers* could drop whatever they are doing and take off at a moments' notice so often. I am sure that in a pinch the Kents could ask the Irigs or other neighbors to help out, but I would guess that that request would start to get real old real fast -- after all, their neighbors surely are busy with their own farms.

But then again, if I were really concerned with things like plausibility, there are a lot more obvious nits to pick on LnC. I enjoy the show as much as the next FoLC, but I'll freely admit that it takes a huge amount of suspension of disbelief to do so. But the quality of the writing, acting, etc. is so high on the show, that I am willing to overlook the myriad scientific impossibilities and just sit back and have fun watching.

cheers,
Lynn

I always thought that "Marshal" was his title (a federal marshal, sort of like a sheriff, and definitely in law enforcement).

Yes, in COTOC and also Whine Whine Whine, they show up unexpectedly to help him out. They also quickly fly out when he needs their help in Top Copy.

In addition to the eps Carol mentioned, J&M also visited Clark in The Source and Season's Greedings (the chore-switch ep is Chi Of Steel.) So unless I'm forgetting one, they visited Metropolis on six different occasions in S2. Yikes!

I always just assumed they hired a farmhand after Clark graduated HS, but where in the world they keep him, I couldn't say.

They were there for the wedding/nonwedding fiasco as well as some of the clone argh in S3. Dunno if that was on trip or several short ones though. For Christmas too. And for Christmas in S4 as well as the real wedding.

Aren't they in Metropolis during All Shook Up? Has that one already been mentioned?

Course, we get back to how many of those were flights by airline and how many were Clark fetching them.


LabRat