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Kids and Doctor Who
chuk
Posts: 135 Forum Member
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I've just got a quick question
At what age do you let your children watch Dr. Who? I have a 4yr old, a 3 yr old and a 4 month old baby, and sometime in the future I look forward to getting my DVDs out and enjoying them with the kids.
I personally say about 8 (with care), but when I said that to my wife, she was a bit horrified. (different culture to the UK), even when I explain that I was about 8 when I started watching Jon Pertwee etc etc
Anyway, loving the new Who, loving the New Doctor Who fan threads, especially the first thread, a special journey, loving the hype
enough to bring me out of digitalspy retirement
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At what age do you let your children watch Dr. Who? I have a 4yr old, a 3 yr old and a 4 month old baby, and sometime in the future I look forward to getting my DVDs out and enjoying them with the kids.
I personally say about 8 (with care), but when I said that to my wife, she was a bit horrified. (different culture to the UK), even when I explain that I was about 8 when I started watching Jon Pertwee etc etc
Anyway, loving the new Who, loving the New Doctor Who fan threads, especially the first thread, a special journey, loving the hype
enough to bring me out of digitalspy retirement
Last Login
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Now she is nearly 8 she is watching old dvds of 3, 4 and 5 and knows them better than me. She even commented last week after making a bad choice that she would go back and change her mind but she "can't go back and change her own timeline because it would cause a paradox and rip a hole in the universe".
That said, the effects are better now and maybe the stories are scarier. I think you'd just have to play it by ear based on your knowledge of your own kids.
(one of them has a t-shirt with a Judoon on the front and loves it and I have shown him the part when the Doctor visits the Shadow Proclamation to show him where it comes from)
OK I have this to look forward to in a few years time
I feel your pain. Now she keeps calling him Mr tumble in a dress :rolleyes:
I'd vet each individual DW episode separately to confirm child-friendliness. There is bound to be a different reaction to each episode, and something that adults take for granted may freak out a child ... but another child may not even notice that "scary bit". Each child is different, after all.
I was terrified by the Melkur (Keeper of Traken, 1981), but other kids weren't. (I was terrified by Erasmus Darkening in SJA, last week, but other people in their mid-30s weren't...)
I was terrified by the concept of entropy! Still am in fact.
My daughter's almost six and all her friends watch SJA (and play it at breaktime), but only a lucky few get to watch Doctor Who and Primeval.
We used to play "Planet Of The Apes" and "Blakes 7" but sadly never "Doctor Who".
Where it is a good old fashioned monster like the Daleks chasing somebody, he's OK with those, because he knows it is just somebody in a costume pretending to be a monster.
In fact, we found the best way to introduce him to Doctor Who was to allow him to watch Confidential first. This actually shows people getting into the monster costumes for example, and shows the sets and the green screens. So he can clearly see that nothing is real. He's quite happy with just watching this rather than the full episode if that's what we say it's going to be.
Although I think RTD was incredibly clever with tone in Series 1 - fun and light for the first couple of episodes, with, at times, aliens being as lovable and as funny as they could be scary and dangerous, before a touch of horror, then back to fart gags and silliness, before the darkness really set in.
However, I know children as young as four who can't even watch it, along with Merlin and Primeval (which I have a bigger problem with for a being sold as a "family show") even if they understand it's not real.
I think you have to be sensible about how well you know your child, and what they can and can't seem to understand and how tolerant they can be of scary themes. Harry Potter has got progressively darker and kids are still fine with that, and Who is very strict; no blood, no guts, no overt distress and the good guy always wins.
That's a REALLY good idea. Bravo!
I was a wuss though.
However Doctor Who I watched from as young as I can remember - am the baby of the family so I had to watch what my sisters did and I was only ever scared of the Daleks really.
My nephews had no problem at all with The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit or Blink, but New Earth gave them nightmares.
They decide for themselves which ones are scary and which are not - when they come to my house they always want to watch my DVDs of the new series, but will tell me which ones they don't like.
When Doctor Who came back the youngest of the children chosen was 4 IIRC and it was designed as a guide for parents.
I remember being really desturbed by The Dæmons when I was 6. I had however just come out of nearly a year being educated by Nuns, which was very scary.
Her six year old friend next door has watched it since she was four, loves it and has the bedsheets and toy K9.
So it's certainly down to the child.
So really it all depends on how the child takes it. With a Dad into sci-fi she's got no choice this sunday lol
They did Fear Factor for The Next Doctor last Christmas, but didn't do one for Planet of the Dead (or if they did, I couldn't find it). A shame if they've stopped it; I always used to enjoy reading them.