Scottish Blogger Dad

Jan 24

Dear Daughter: Geek gene ACTIVATED

Posted by Craig on Monday Jan 24, 2011 Under Dear Daughter...

For once this wasn’t my fault: Junior (as I call her) went away to her Gramps the other week and stayed there along with her (older) cousins. When she came back, it was sonic screwdrivers ahoy – she’s turned into a little Dr Who geekette, but is the world ready for the crossover with the Disney Princesses?

This was a strange one. Madam (what? I can’t have more than one name for her?) has always done her own thing. Her mother has corrupted her terribly over music (I now live with two Take That fans) but I’ve kept my stuff to myself. While The Lady of the House has no qualms watching Friends or Hollyoaks (I think she’s their oldest viewer) while Madam struts about, I normally watch the likes of Doctor Who once the children are asleep, mostly for the very selfish reason that I’d rather be playing with the kids than watching TV with the kids.

But, as I say, in she comes from the sleepover and is suddenly dying to know everything about Amy Pond (and I think the Scottish accent has helped with identification – that and the fact that show had a very young Amy Pond), so we watched what there was and that was that.

Then, she went to one of her other set of grandparents (four sets in four different houses. We collect grandparents like others collect Pokemon) and discovered the BT Vision box had all of the recent stuff – and she’s devoured it and now goes through phases of “Doctor Matt’s better than Doctor David” or vice versa. I tried her on the pilot ep of Doctor Who from 1963 and while she sat through it, safe to say that was a watch too far.

But what I really didn’t expect was the crossovers with Disney and anything else lying about the room. So we now have scenarios where the Doctor, Amy, Rose, Martha and Donna are all sitting in the dolls’ house, along with the similarly sized Disney Princess figures of Belle, Cinders, Snow White, Jasmin and Ariel when their mum – Madam herself – comes in and tells them all its time to get changed for school.

Of course, on the way to school they all get kidnapped one at a time and locked up in Lego jails and this goes on until the mum herself comes in Godzilla style and saves the day.

And then off they go to school, where Amy normally gets sent home for moaning that the Princesses have changed their clothes (the wee dolls have multiple outfits) and she can’t. Of course Amy then throws a bigger strop when she gets home and the Doctor’s changed faces!

And while it’s all good fun it is frightening to see how much a child can really devour entertainment wise if you leave them unchecked – and how much they remember. I’m hoping she never asks to go to a con (unless it’s Comic Con, that could be fun) or asks to listen to the swearing-loaded Thumbcast SF/cult telly podcast.

Three other things I’ve learned from Doctor Who toys

How much for a River Song doll on eBay? Glad she doesn’t want the screwdriver…
The BBC really have no concept of what the right toys to release are so they?
Toy Tardises – just how damn hard is it to wrap something as a gift when it’s bigger on the inside than the outside?