It's official Dr Who scares children

I am no sci-fi geek (as anybody who knows me will testify). I agree that given my chosen degree subject I should be a geek. Most of the people in my lectures look like they could have been extras in the film Hackers. I even discovered the other day that my best mate from my course (until I wrote this), Kat is a quasi-geek, as she is going to the midnight premiere of the new Star Wars movie and will (despite her claims to the contrary) be dressing up in some nerdy costume to help blend in with the other computer science students who will make up the audience.

Sorry, this post is not about geeks, I just wanted to clarify that I am not one! It is about Dr. Who (which is very geeky). I promise this will be the last Dr. Who post for a long while but I just had to share this article I read in the Times today. Quote:

CENSORS have banned young children from buying the new series of Doctor Who on video or DVD on the grounds of “excessive cruelty” towards a Dalek.

This BBC article has a more detailed account.

The Times had another article on the subject; Quote:

THE censors watched The Lord of the Rings half a dozen times before they agreed to give the film a tame PG certificate.

Members of the British Board of Film Classification conceded that there was a huge amount of violence, but as “fantasy beasts” were on the receiving end and not human beings children of any age could see it if their parents allowed. In their rule book, mutilating Orcs was all right. Clearly the censors feel more protective about Daleks.

Torturing Daleks now joins racism, suicide and explicit sex on the board’s list of things that pre-adolescent children should not see.

Madness!