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[lotesse]

Being sick-ish, I found myself rewatching odd bits of Firefly on Hulu, as one does. And I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell old Simon Tam is.

Every source I've ever seen pegs Simon at 27, which, okay I guess. Cept that puts him at a good eleven years older than River at sixteen, and that doesn't make any sense to me. The flashback we see of them at the beginning of "Safe" shows us a Simon and River who grew up together - River looks to be somewhere between eight and ten, Simon could maybe pass for fifteen, though the actor playing him is thirteen and, imo, looks it. At largest stretch, that puts seven years between them, which would make Simon at the time of the show 23.

Do we know where the canon of Simon's date of birth comes from?

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I think it's not so much that he's 27 is that Out of Gas is his 26th or 27th birthday. River's age is given as 17. The flashback in Safe is 11 years before the episode (adding the time between the flashack in the pilot and other timing cues which I've forgotten!) ; that would make River six and Simon fourteenish, which looks about right. There's some wiggle room if, for example, you say you're "four years older" than your sister, but let's say your birthday is in August and hers is in April; there will be part of the year when it seems like you're not really four years older. Also, no matter how fast Simon got through his internship, he;s a qualified surgeon and not an intern or resident, so it makes sense that he'd be somewhere in his mid-twenties at the very least.