Doctor Who

An enterprising vicar down in Emsworth plans to teach the Bible to kids by dressing up as Doctor Who.

The Rev Tom Kennar says, “Any child who watches Doctor Who will be familiar with the idea of time travel, so they’ll understand going back in time to meet biblical characters. I can’t promise there’ll be any Daleks or Cybermen but we will be meeting some of God’s heroes of the Bible, and some genuine villains.”

About 120 children will get to watch daily episodes of Doctor Who alongside water play, cooking and craft activities at the club, which runs from July 25 to 28 in St James’s School in Emsworth. How fun does that sound?

Russell T Davies has been around for a while and Doctor Who was not his first kids’ drama series. That honour belongs to Dark Season, which amongst other things (almost) introduced Kate Winslet to the world. It, and his follow-up series Century Falls, are coming to DVD later this month (wow, what with A for Andromeda and Adam Adamant Lives! coming out too, it’s like classic TV DVD month or something).

I only caught the second half of Dark Season when it aired back in 91, being at university and all and therefore not watching CBBC with any degree of regularity. But I do remember it had a cracking theme, a good plot and was reasonably creepy and fun – better, in fact, than most of RTD’s Who scripts. General thing is that it was essentially a story of two halves, set in a school, with a gang of three school kids foiling the evil villain(s). But better than it sounds.

Century Falls was a whole different matter. That I tuned in for especially. It was utterly incomprehensible mind – basically a village of psychic old people with no kids try to use two psychic twins who move to the village to recapture their halcyon days. But I guarantee that by the end you won’t understand more than about 50% of what was going on. Makes you realise how times have changed… Very creepy though and very well done.

If you’re curious, here are some Amazon links for you

• Dark Season
• Century Falls
• The Andromeda Anthology
• Adam Adamant Lives!