Behind the Sofa

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I have a feeling Steven Moffat might get a kick out of this.

So, it’s after bedtime. Vivian is asleep, but Nora has woken up and is putting up a big fight about being put back to bed. So we let her come downstairs in a bid to tire her out.

We have Doctor Who on. Specifically, we have Steven Moffat’s Flesh and Stone, the second part of his Weeping Angels two-parter from the current season. Normally we don’t allow the children to watch Doctor Who, because we don’t believe that Vivian’s old enough to handle the scary plots. However, our thinking is that Nora is young enough not to really register what’s going on with the television, and besides she’s up when she isn’t supposed to be, and we’re not interested in changing the channel.

So Nora is on our couch when Father Octavian’s Clerics, River Song, Amy and the Doctor jump to the Byzantium and scramble to get inside before the Weeping Angels attack. It’s a tense moment as we see the statues come after them.

And Nora takes one look at the action going on the screen, says “uh, oh!” and immediately puts her pink blanket over her head. She proceeds to sit there, quietly and calmly, like a little pink lump, while Erin and I laugh hysterically.

I have mixed feelings about introducing our daughters to Doctor Who. Nora’s quickly going to reach a stage where she’ll understand enough of things that it might be better to keep her away. Vivian has about three years before I feel comfortable with the idea of her watching an episode. On the other hand, she has recently been asking for us to play the Doctor Who music on the iPod when in the car. What’s more, she provides commentary on the various parts of the soundtrack.

“This is where the Doctor is thinking.” “This is where the Doctor saves the world!” “This is the boring part with the kissing.”

She’s actually built a pretty accurate picture of what Doctor Who is about. I’ve only ever shown her a trailer. She seems to have pieced it together from the music. Which tells me that composer Murray Gold is very good at what he does.


A Quick Question to Stockwell Day

Despite plenty of evidence to suggest that crime in Canada is on the decline, the president of the Treasury Board, Stockwell Day, says that the government needs to spend more money on prisons (which aren’t needed and do little, if anything, to actually prevent crime) because of an alleged (and questionable) rise in “unreported” crime.

A quick question, Mr. Day: how do you intend to fill those prisons if more crimes go unreported? How are police supposed to arrest unreported criminals?

Or, by chance, was the G20 harassment of innocent bystanders a hint of how you’ll approach this question in the future?

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