Has anyone else noticed the inclusion of children in Moffat written episodes of Doctor who? They seem to play a recurring role in his scripts for whatever reason. In case you've forgotten, let me guide you through the Moffat episodes which include children.

'The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances':The terrorised homeless children.
'The Girl In The Fireplace': Reinette appears as a young girl at the beginning of the episode.
'Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead': The computer CAL appears as a little girl called Charlotte through out the two episodes.
'The Eleventh Hour': We first meet Amelia Pond as a little girl with a crack in her bed room wall.
The Beast Below: The little girl crying, Mandy, and various other children.

The only episodes written by Moffat that I can see that don't have children in very specific roles are 'Blink' and the children in need mini-episode.

While sometimes it might be applicable to consider Doctor Who a family show, and therefore the children would simply be characters for younger members of the audience to relate, many of Moffat's episodes are not suitable for children. Specifically the two double parters 'The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances' and 'Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead' came with warnings to parents that they should be viewed by parents before allowing children to watch. It's almost a trademark of Moffat to have creepy, terror inducing episodes centred around adult themes and involving fairly young characters.

Let me be clear in saying that I am not suggesting anything about Moffat or the Doctor Who team. In fact it's probably rather realistic to depict children as being just a susceptible to adult themes as adults themselves, but it is worrying what kind of audience that this kind of writing might potentially attract, if even by accident. Do you guys find the use of children in Moffat episodes, and the degree to which they're used, acceptable?

Because the only people who would like child characters - aside from children - are paedophiles?

In a word...yes.
The high proportion of children in his episodes was something I'd noticed and like you suggest my feeling was that he likes to make the stories relevant to a family audience (not just the children, but to parents too), but also I suspect because showing the impact of scary situations on children allows the use of a child's non-conventional response to things to be used. For instance, the young Amy's reaction to the appearance of the Doctor was much more accepting of the strange, than her older self could show - how else could we have had the "Strange mouth/foods" scenes unless with a child - an adult wouldn't have responded so acceptingly?

btw, I agree with the other posters about the thread title, possibly won't encourage sensible discussion.....

Firstly, your thread title's rather tabloid...

Children can be seen in hundreds of TV shows so I don't think Doctor Who attracts a specific minority audience or can be viewed as unacceptable for including young actors. Sure, Moffat writes roles for younger performers but, as long as they're well-written and acted, it doesn't bother me.

I like child characters when they serve plot relevance. For instance, the latest episode, 'The Beast Below', the children come back to serve a purpose in helping Amy realise a solution. That's a good use of child characters. Contrast however, with an episode such as 'Silence in the Library' or 'Forest of the Dead' where the computer was personified as a child. Why personify the computer as a child when it would have seemed like an adult would have sufficed?

Because the computer was the consience of a child that died...

Do people on DS really need to be spoonfed?

Yeah, yeah, it was built by her grandfather who digitally uploaded her into the core so she could spend eternity with the works of humankind. Maybe I glazed over the part where you explained why only children with incurable diseases could be though compassionately enough of to be preserved for eternity? Especially considering the task that was placed upon CAL of saving the people in library from the Vashta Nerada, it didn't seem particularly necessary from a creative stand point to make the computer a child.

Because he lifted at least some of the idea from Anne McCaffreys Brainship series, where the idea was that children/young adults who would otherwise be trapped in their own bodies were integrated into starships which became part of their body, allowing them a freedom they wouldn't otherwise have. In this case the child was suffering from a fatal disease, which would and in reality did kill her. Not having an eidetic memory I can't remember how long she had been in the computer. So I can't tell you if the sting in the tale was that she was forever frozen in childhood.
Other than that, a family show that has children in it isn't that unusual. And the fact that the children were important to the resoultion, and that a parallel to how the Doctor might view humanity might be part of the message, if any.

I wasn't actually aware of that. Thank you. I can understand the creative basis for using a child as the personification of the computer for that episode now.



As I pointed out however, many of Moffat's episodes are not family friendly:

Aren't they? Blink was the only episode which scared my 6 year old sister. She thought the rest of them were cute. (Shes Weird)

Whether or not we agree is irrelevant, but Moffat has always seen Doctor Who as primarily a childrens show. So it is understandable that he would include children in his stories as he would want characters that relate to a younger audience.

Thank god this 'Paedophile Agenda' post has nothing to it. If it did, I'd cry out in disdain at Torchwood: Children of Earth!

Yeah, Blink was one of the most family unfriendly. Apparently the BBC Fear Forecasters gave it a rating of 5.5 and a warning to parents. "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" was given a similar warning. The Vashta Nerada undoubtedly scared some children too.

My sister is scared of everything, and wasn't scared.

Be that as it may, your sister is not representative of all children so we can only deduce from her not being scared that she isn't scared of the episode, not that episode itself isn't scary.

What I'm saying is that to really know if the episode is scary, you'd have to take a sample case of children, show them the episode then gauge their reaction, which has been done. Taking the reaction of one child, such as your sister, isn't enough.

In that case, on what basis do you make blanket statements that the episodes aren't suitable for children?

If what we post is illustrative of how we think the OP has some strange ideas. I've always been rather disturbed by those who see paedophilia everywhere as one wonders exactly what is going through their minds every day

Moffatt is a long-time Who fanboy who recalls with relish the childhood terrors of Saturday teatime. He has also regularly commented on how he sees Who as a Fairy Tale and writes for the show in that vein. His episodes often reference the wonder, terror and often loneliness of being a little kid. The Empty Child (it's in the title FGS), Girl in the Fireplace, Silence in the Library and The Eleventh Hour all feature children living isolated, somewhat lonely lives, whilst Blink is based upon the well-known childhood fear of strange, inanimate objects like statues and shadows (see also the little boy in Poltergeist terrorised by the tree outside his bedroom window).

It's not being mean or nasty to them, it's how little kids view the world around them sometimes - fear and wonder (or "Shock and Awe" for the grown-ups )

Those familiar with Dahl (Roald, not Sophie) and the Grimm tales in their un-Disneyfied, unsanitised form will be aware that such tales frequently revolve around much cruelty, nastyness and low-level terror involving children. These tales have a very strong narrative in which cruelty, deceit and consequences are clearly delineated, and even young children appreciate and respond positively to tales of jeopardy when the ending is upbeat and positive and the bad guys get their just desserts (we all love to see a villain get a pasting, no matter how young or old we are )

Who, iconic for it's decades of "scaring small children" (notably with the evergreen Daleks) is a modern successor to these tales of 'comfortable jeopardy'. Moffat is simply trying to bring back 'the sofa'

You are aware that the BBC Fear Forecasters were all under 16?

On that basis. If you don't know what that is, google it. 'The Empty Child' got a rating of 5, 'The Doctor Dances' got a 5 too, 'The Girl in the Fireplace' got 3, 'Blink' got 5.5, and both 'Silence in the Library' and 'Forest of the Dead' got 4. Note that this is out of 5 (thus why 'Blink' is off the scale').

No, they aren't the only episodes to get 5, but they are all very highly rated, so it can be said that Moffat episodes are more consistently scary and potentially not suitable for children. Therefore they are not family friendly.


That would be the point of me mentioning a sample group of children.

That is very different from your assertions in the original post. I would also argue that it should also be clarified as "potentially not suitable for some, sensitive children". The BBC obviously feel they are not completely unsuitable for children, otherwise they wouldn't have let the fear forecasters see them, or broadcast them before 9 o'clock.

This thread is ridiculous, and I'm not getting drawn in any further.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJaG1d7B9xo (02:15)

The problem goes back further than the OP thought.

How so? I noted in the original post that the episodes were scary and not child friendly, and thus the episodes were directed towards adults. The fear factor of the episodes were called into question, so I defended the suggestion. My conclusion was that, since these are adult episodes with adult themes, at what point does Moffat's use of children become excessive, because, as I've already illustrated, the vast majority of his episodes do involve children. This could be seen as realistic sometimes, but is the recurring use acceptable?


What exactly are you offended by?

Ah, the thread title's been changed.
Everything's all right now then.

Actually it just seems like some people do not know what paedophile means.

-Phile: From the Greek word for love: philia, which specifically refers to brotherly love. In English it is used as a suffix to refer to the love, or attraction, not necessarily sexual.

For instance: Bibliophilia is the love of books, not the sexual attraction to books.

Therefore, paedophilia does not always refer to a sexual attraction to children. This however is besides the point, because as I noted in the very first post, that I am not suggesting anything about Moffat himself, but rather the potential audience that the excess use of children in episodes with adult themes might attract. It is for this reason I brought up an episode such 'Silence in the Library' where I felt the use of a child was unnecessary, and in that case someone had the decency to explain the creative basis for using a child in that episode.

So actually I'm not being attention seeking and ridiculous to further the thread, but I digress.

-breathe-

Anyway, how about the inclusion of children in Doctor Who?

In your post first mentioning the Fear Forecasters there was no acknowledged awareness that they were in fact children.

In any event I would argue that neither epsiode cited was advised as family unfriendly or "not suitable for children" per se in fact to the contrary, the advice was simply that the episodes should be considered by parents beforehand and/or watched as a family rather than the (far more common these days) "plonk the kid down and use the boob tube as an unpaid babysitter" approach, i.e responsible, involved parenting rather than lazy indifference to what ones children are seeing.

You may, for personal reasons, have a particular sensitivity to what you perceive as cruelty or mean-spiritedness towards children in Who (and which you completely incorrectly, and with little apparent understanding of the term you originally used, characterized in a grossly inappropriate and outrageous fashion), however I would contend that for all but a few families with children, no danger nor long-term damage was divined or experienced in the viewing, by their kids, of the episodes you cite.

Most kids enjoy a good, safe, scare. I think you're being misguidedly overprotective. Parental Paranoia can be more hazardous to childrens development than real life or fiction.

In case anybody is wondering this thread originally had a different title which prompted some of the replies above.

Don't see the point of changing the title and leaving the thread personally, given that the original title was a cheap shot, evidently designed to provoke attention.