Doctor Who - A Child's Perspective

[Paul Clement]

I've just been having a nice little chat with my 8 year old son, Kieran. I'd called him downstairs earlier, just as I was about to watch Sontaran Experiment, and asked him if he wanted to watch it with me. He said no, because he was watching something else on the television in his bedroom.
Just now, I asked him what he'd been watching and he grinned and said The Two Doctors. Now, I know that since he's had it, he's watched that particular story at least a dozen times. He's also got a few other old series stories on DVD and video and all the new series on DVD.
I asked him what his favourite stories were, and he replied that Five Doctors and Two Doctors were his favourite stories from the old series and that he likes all of the stories from the new series but his 'Favouritist Favourite' from the New Series was the 'Are you my mummy' from the Ninth Doctor and the 'Werewolf story' from the Tenth Doctor.
Now, familiarity may have something to do with it, after all, he has grown up in a house where Doctor Who has been on quite a lot, but it seems to me that Doctor Who, new series and old series alike, is still popular with kids. He's even sat through black and white stories and watched them again.

[Jeff]

Everytime I try to let Madison (who will be 4 in Feb.) watch DW one of two things happens. Either she quickly loses interest after the title music, or she gets too scared to watch. With the New Series we don't even bother anymore. We just tape it and watch after the kids go to bed. She's gotten to the point where she doesn't want me to watch it cos she knows she'll be scared. It seems when she does see bits and peices of the show, she sees the worst possible moment. Case in point: A week or so ago I decided to watch the DVD of Revelation of the Daleks. The part she happened to watch the very beginning when the defomred hand grabs the orange. That sent her into the bedroom (situated behind the tv) from which she would then sneak forward and peek around the corner of the TV. When the deformed man attacked the Doctor that was it, and we had to put a kids DVD on in the bedroom to distract her attention. Otherwise she will be having nightmares and never go to bed.

[duncan]

I could clear the living room of both adults and children by putting on a vhs of Doctor Who up to about three years ago. My two kids were aged 8 and 4 back then. Now, if I put on a DVD, all four of us are sitting in silence watching it. Well, when I say silence, there's the odd question from one of the kids asking what something means. The biggest turnaround is with my wife. She only ever "put up" with Doctor Who because I liked it so much. The other week, the kids and I were watching Remebrance of The Daleks and she came into the living room to get something just as The Dalek started to climb the cellar stairs at the end of Part One and was still there by the time the end credits rolled in part four.

[Rob McCow]

she came into the living room to get something just as The Dalek started to climb the cellar stairs at the end of Part One and was still there by the time the end credits rolled in part four.

Wow! Although I have to say I usually get a bit annoyed if I pop into a room to get something and spend 75mins there!

If Doctor Who ever does something important or worthwhile, it must surely be bringing entertaining the whole family and getting them sitting down together. Although my dad was always of the opinion that TV sci-fi was rubbish.

[Si Hunt]

I think 4 is perhaps too young for a child to enjoy the new series (and "Revealation of the Daleks"). I sort of wish I'd got to see the new series as a kid, I'm sure I would have loved it, though of course I have my own memories of watching it in the early to mid-eighties.

Watching with a son or daughter must be a great experience, to see how captivated and scared/thrilled they are. I guess that's a pleasure I will never have, however.

My favourite story is the one where the monster grabs the orange.

Si.

[duncan]

Watching with a son or daughter must be a great experience, to see how captivated and scared/thrilled they are. I guess that's a pleasure I will never have, however.

Si.

My first experience of that was last year during the pre-title sequence of The Unquiet Dead. My daughter started off sitting on the floor in front of the TV. By the time the opening theme crashed in she was cuddling up on the sofa with me. As scared as she was, she watched the whole thing.

[SiHart]

I've watched a few episodes of Doctor Who with my nephew now. When we watched Fear Her earlier this year he made it half way thorough before he suddenly got up and came and sat next to me and wanted a cuddle. We watched Father's Day on his birthday and he cuddled me all the way through! The cuddles are nice. I remember cuddling my Mum or Dad when I watched the show when I was small and scared of season 17 and 18.

Recently he came to me for an afternoon and after a lot of debate he decided he wanted to watch Earthshock. He's only 5, but he sat and watched the story, concentrating very hard on it and seemed to really enjoy the story. He took the very different style really well considering he'd only seen the new series up to that point- he did wonder if part 1 was all of the story though! He sang along with the theme music and liked seeing the Doctor's face in the titles!

I think it goes to show that if most kids have been hooked by the new series, they'll enjoy the old stuff just as much.

Si xx

[Paul Monk]

Tabby is only 2 but will happily sit on the sofa, cuddled up with me and watch an entire episode. I think a lot of this is because we usually end up watching it quite close to bedtime and she's quite sleepy. She's far too young to actually get whats going on but it does fascinate her. Last one she watched was Ark in Space and she had no problem with Doctor Who being someone other than David Tennant.
She also got upset yesterday because her toy dalek had stopped being able to speak. She kept pointing to the battery compartment and saying "Open. Yes. "

[Arisia]

I have a 9yo Dalek-loving daughter. We watch mostly new Who, but I do have all the old Dalek stories that are out on DVD at this point. She also likes the Cushing movies. She's the one trying to get her Papa into watching with us. Unfortunately, the Dalek voices from the really old Dalek stories annoy him for some reason.

[Anthony Williams]

As many of you know, I was a Doctor Who fan from the age of 5! Lord knows what I would have made of the new series, but I loved all Doctor Who when I was little.

I did find some stories a little bit scary, but I enjoyed the terror (except for the veins on Romana's face in Full Circle, which genuinely upset 6 year old Ant!).

I don't think I ever cuddled up with my parents, though, as neither of them really watched it with me, despite my Dad being a fan!

Ant x

[Paul Clement]

I did find some stories a little bit scary, but I enjoyed the terror (except for the veins on Romana's face in Full Circle, which genuinely upset 6 year old Ant!).

I was seven when Full Circle as aired, and it unnerved me a bit too. The spiders, you see. At that age I was positively petrified of the things.

[transvamp]

I was 11 when I first saw Genesis of the Daleks, and I'd say I was at the right age to appreciate it. I was intelligent enough to recognise its scope and its scale of destruction, and for its open ended conclusion to really unnerve me, and yet I was young enough to be really terrified of the Daleks whereas if I were a few years older, I might have been desensitised to its violence or I might have joined in with the kind of people who'd mock the Daleks (they can't go up stairs, look at that cheesy laser effect).

I couldn't really say that I liked Genesis back then because it was so dark and because the hero didn't save the day like I was used to, but it probably gave me the right appetite for the fear of the Daleks that made even the weaker Dalek stories keep me on my toes.

[Pip Madeley]

Sadly I didn't become a fan until I was about eleven years old, so I never got the behind the sofa experience.

Unless UKGold were showing 'Terminus'.

[Captain Tancredi]

Just an observation, but in my three Santa sessions this year, only one child asked me for any Who-related presents.

[Si Hunt]

You were Santa?

Si.

[Jeff]

Watching with a son or daughter must be a great experience, to see how captivated and scared/thrilled they are. I guess that's a pleasure I will never have, however.

You can always adopt.

[Paul Monk]

I just like to point out that Ian isn't the real Father Christmas merely one of his many helpers.

[SiHart]

He might be the real one Paul. How do you know that for certain? Do you have proof you can share with us?

Si xx

[transvamp]

I'm coming to as a child, the most important Who episodes to me were Genesis and Remembrance.

As an adult I'm coming to believe that I'm not a fan of the show as a whole because its so erratic and inconsistent and in the 80's it went horribly neurotic. Ther current revival started well but I've now completely given up on it.

So basically my status as a fan is that I find the story arc running through the five Davros stories to be my favourite series within a series of all time.

Infact I could write pages on how unvierse building it all is, how Genesis hooks because it completely changes the rules so that the bad guys can win and a threat to the entire uiniverse can go unresolved. How Revelation of the Daleks incorporates all kinds of topical themes of third world famine, police brutality and cryogenics. How the final confrontatrion between the Doctor and Davros in Remembrance is such a perfect bookend to that in Genesis, and how the National Front subplot draws the allegory to a direct point about our own world.

[Milky Tears]

Little James prefers the older stuff. He's a big fan of Season Nine. I've caught him watching Pertwee loads of times.

[Trudi G]

Christians favourite ones mainly feature DALEKs - they do seem to have captured his imagination, as they did with me at the same age.
He definitly prefers the new ones over the old, because there's more action and the special effects make it seem more realistic.
He's told me (after watching Pertwee, Tom Baker & Ecclescakes as the Doctor) that Tennant is the best Doctor ever!

[Stephen Morgan]

One of the boys at work has told me that his little boy of four was absolutely terrified of the "Pigmen" the other week in the Dalek story, so much so that he started wetting the bed and refused to go downstairs for fear that they might be down there.
When my friend went to Prague for a few days over the weekend the boy's mother wouldn't let him watch Dr. Who in his father's absence, not realising that it wasn't on last week anyway. But the boy is now convinced that he has missed an episode and is keeping on about it. Now that my friend is back the boy is relieved that he won't have to miss this week's episode, but he remains hard to convince that he hasn't missed an episode.

[Paul Monk]

Tabby liked the pigmen.

[Rob McCow]

Tabby has nerves of steel!

Now, the Mark Gatiss Monster from The Lazarus Experiment - that struck me as something that was a bit too horrific for the kids. So much so that we didn't pass on our DVD recording to Si's nephew, who missed the episode. What was the verdict from the children on that one?

[Paul Monk]

Tabby didn't see that one. She was bored by 42 though. There was no monster.
William sat and watched half of 42 with me before he had to go to bed.
Both now dance to the theme tune.