Charles James Martin

Overview

Flight Lieutenant of the Royal Australian Air Force, Charles Martin is a sniper that serves as the executive officer of Terra Nova's Wolf Pack. Open, friendly, and outgoing, Martin serves as a moral compass for the team.

Dossier

Charles Martin was a privileged child born with a silver spoon. He was born into a wealthy family, his father the owner of a pharmaceutical company and his mother a surgeon. Despite working themselves ragged, they fought tooth and nail to make time for Martin and his younger sister, Ava.

As he grew up, he came to understand and appreciate the sacrifices made by his parents. Both occupations consumed huge amounts of time but they always fought to give him and Ava.

However, Martin often faced harsh judgement from others for his status, assumed to be arrogant or spoiled. Martin took a great deal of issue with this as his family had instilled some very solid morals into him. His father was known for weeding out corrupt employees in his company and Martin felt it unfair that his family was judged for their fortune. He believed a person should be judged for who they are and not what they are, least of all things that they had no choice in. It always angered him that this belief was never applied to him.

His joining of the Australian Royal Air Force came as a shock to his family. Not only was it a massive departure from what they expected but they feared what the occupation could mean (taking a life on the battlefield or being killed).

Despite this, Martin felt this was the best thing to be to help people in a different way and serve his country. His family instilled in him a desire to help those less fortunate than him and this is how he chose to do it.

While often referred to as a sniper, Martin is technically a marksman. While he has received training to serve both roles, he is more often attached to fire teams to serve as their marksman and increase the range of the team's effectiveness.

When Australia was informed about the stargate, the government chose Martin to be part of the military contingent representing their country. Martin would do a tour of Pegasus before signing on to the Millennium Expedition and joining Wolf Pack.

Personality & Traits

Martin serves as the heart of Wolf Pack, choosing to fight tooth and nail to make the moral decision, often times ignoring the logical decision. This is mostly a result of how he was judged by others and the desire to prove he is not how society often view the rich elites. This often has him clash with the more logic-driven Chen. Martin's morals can be argued to be childish or that the world he fights for is from a child's fantasy but he chooses to fight for it nonetheless.

Martin is a very easy-going individual. Even in life threatening situations, he'll crack jokes. He is known for his pop-culture references, especially to movies and video games. Ironically, Martin despises playing the sniper class when playing video games. Martin thinks Australian stereotypes are hilarious and will occasionally adopt an exaggerated broad Australian accent or even say 'crikey' for no other reason than to have fun with the Australian stereotype (especially since he often works with those who have never spoken to an Australian before). Martin's natural accent is a cultivated Australian accent .

Martin holds more contempt than he would like to admit when it comes to societal norms. His family has always been very kind and generous yet are often judged as entitled and corrupt. In fact there are a lot of things that Martin forces to hide away. Martin has a clear idea of what a hero is and wants to be one, refusing to give into his desires. Martin also uses his humor to help hide the pain of the less heroic actions. An example is killing. He acknowledges that sometimes a bad person has to die in order to protect innocent people. However, it does not sit right with him.

His morals often clash with other aspects of his personality. Martin is proud of his marksman skills. However, he is most often forced to use this skill by killing someone. Martin is also a hunter and has a love of hunting. But he also takes issue with the killing of animals. He tries to rectify this by hunting in moderation and by selling everything (skin, meat, bone, everything) to someone who can make use of it. Martin does not believe in taking hunting trophies as he feels that is the celebration of the act of killing. As a hunter, there is an unspoken creed that the kill must be as quick and painless as possible and he detests those who relish in the suffering of their prey.

Appearance

Martin is a very tall individual standing at 1.9 m tall with a long face, square jaw, and designer stubble. His short dark hair is smooth on his head.

Development

Martin was developed from the ground up to be the moral voice of the team, the idealist. He is also meant to bring a lighter air to more serious situations and darker conditions, similar to how O'Neill or Shepard would frequently quip on missions. I also noticed how any characters often suffer some dark and tragic history. Martin was supposed to break away from that, having very little darkness in his history. In terms of appearance, the initial concept came from Team Fortress 2's sniper. In fact, for the longest time I kept referring to him as Mundy. In terms of actors, I'd go with either Tom Ellis or Chris Hemmsworth.