My daughter, who is, as I’ve said before, four and a half, is a big Doctor Who fan. This is entirely my fault and I’m incredibly proud of it. She carries a TARDIS lunchbox. She wants Doctor Who toys. She wants a sonic screwdriver and has told me, on more than one occasion, that she wants to dress up either as The Doctor or Rose for Halloween (I think Rose is the companion she mentioned only because that’s the companion with blonde hair). She loves her man that keeps people safe and, of them all, her favorite is definitely, without a doubt, Eleven, or, as she calls him, “the man with the bow tie”.
Now part of this is because Eleven is the one she’s seen the most often. She watches all the new episodes as they are and those, of course, are Eleven. I have made sure she’s seen some of Nine and Ten (I don’t have access to older episodes, but I will make sure she gets exposure to those too) and, sometimes, when she asks to watch The Doctor and I say “which one?” she’ll want one of those (the one in the leather jacket or the one in the long coat) but, usually (I’d say nine times out of ten), she wants Eleven.
This weekend, one of her (already favorite) youths at church wore suspenders and a bow tie to church on Sunday. The moment she saw him, her face lit up and she just couldn’t help herself: “You look like my Doctor!!!”
This. This is her Doctor.
I knew she loved Eleven. I just didn’t realize just how much.
So I mentioned this on a Facebook post and I think on my Twitter feed, but I got a bit of a shock (that I found adorable and, yes, admittedly, a bit funny) the Friday before the Twelve reveal.
I said something to my mother about watching the show on Sunday afternoon (I’m in the U.S., it aired at 2:00 pm here) and Punky automatically came running to me, “There’s a new Doctor show?”
“Not exactly, sweetie.”
“Then what are we watching Sunday? You said there was Doctor.”
“Well, the man in the bow tie is retiring from the show, sweetie. There’s going to be someone else playing The Doctor after Christmas. They’re going to tell us who that’s going to be on Sunday.”
Now, let me explain something: My daughter knows that Nine, Ten, and Eleven are all the same character. She knows they are all “The Doctor”. She realizes that this is supposed to be the same person with different faces. While we haven’t actually discussed the specifics of regeneration and, at that point, she hadn’t yet seen a regeneration episode, the concept of someone else playing the Doctor was NOT new to her.
However, I realized, upon her reaction, that I hadn’t actually told her Eleven would be leaving yet and, maybe, the thought that he might had never crossed her mind.
Because, as soon as I said that someone else would be playing the Doctor my little four year old burst into tears. “But I like the man in the bow tie!!!!!!”
Yeah…..I wasn’t expecting that.
I’ll admit it. I was probably a bit of a bad Mommy because it was literally all I could do not to burst out laughing because it was so adorable. She was sobbing because she loved the Doctor and didn’t want him to go away!
I got down on her level and hugged her and we talked about how Nine and Ten and Eleven were all the same character but played by different people. We talked about how she liked Nine and Ten and, while I know she really likes Eleven, I’m sure the next one will be good. I told her that The Doctor doesn’t change, just his face does, and he would still be the man she adores, keeping everyone safe. We also talked about how she still gets two more new shows with Eleven (the 50th and the Christmas special) before he’s going to regenerate into someone new.
It calmed her down. And we discussed it more over the weekend (while running errands, we saw the set of toys with all eleven Doctors, so we discussed it then, and we watched some of Nine and Ten and discussed the differences.) And then, Sunday afternoon, they were replaying The End of Time on BBCA before the announcement, so we watched the “companion tour” and discussed a bit about regeneration (how Ten was really sick and was going to die but that his body could make him look different in order to heal him, and he was going to see all his friends and oh isn’t that so fun? (Because good-ness The End of Time is depressing with that tour and I didn’t want her totally falling apart).) And then she got to watch Ten’s regeneration and then Eleven was there (which, of course, made her insanely happy) and then we watched the show and she saw Peter Capaldi.
“Is that the new Doctor, Mommy?”
“Yes, baby.” She looks at him for a few minutes, then smiles.
“I like him. He’s good.”
Then she just went back to playing.
Rolling with the punches, that one. I don’t know if I can take credit for her ability to do that, but she certainly can. The shows she loves and watches help with that, of course. Doctor Who is all about rolling with what’s there (it’s another reason I love Rose. “Are you an alien?” “Yep.” “Okay.” and “He’s blue.” “Yep.” “Okay.” and “Who’s your friend?” “Charles Dickens.” “Okay.” Every time there’s something weird or odd she just confirms it and then just goes on. I love it. I think it’s a great lesson.) And superheroes, most of the recent Disney’s – all of them, you can totally take what you have and make it work. It’s an amazingly awesome lesson, one that children need to learn.
But I like how she just took one look at him, not knowing anything else (not his background, never having seen him act, nothing) and just thought “Yeah, I’d buy him being the Doctor. He’s good.” No questioning. No waivering. No craziness of us fandom adults. Just, yep, I like him.
From the mouth of babes.
(And then she comes out and looks at me, totally straight faced, and says “I hope he has a bow tie. I like bow ties. Bow ties are cool.” I didn’t realize she had ever watched that episode. From the mouth of babes indeed).
RAISED GEEKY 