Encouraging little geek flags to fly

Several years ago, Nick came home from jr high, and was a little upset.  The chess club wouldn't let him hang out with them at lunch because he didn't know who Spock was, and did I happen to know who he was?

Naturally I held up my hand in the traditional Vulcan greeting and said, "Live long and prosper."

To which he responded, "Yeah!  That guy!  How do you know about him?"

I shook my head and said, "Oh Nick.  You've got this whole nerdy/geek thing going on here, but if you're ever going to be a real geek you've got to learn some things.  It's time we get started."

"For starters, you need to watch all the Star Wars, but know that the best ones are the originals.  Then there's Lord of the Rings. And then we have Star Trek.  Everybody has their favorites, and that's up to you, but you should at least watch a few episodes of each series.  Just enough so that you will get random jokes and cultural references."
 
Maybe I should have just stopped there.  But I didn't.  I went on to say,

"Oh, and when you get done with all that and want some extra geek credit, there's this one show, Doctor Who.  It's not very mainstream, so most people haven't heard of it. It's an old BBC show I used to watch with my dad when I was a kid.  Mostly the 4th doctor though.  I think they've brought it back from the dead and remade it or updated it or something.  I haven't bothered to find out if it's any good, but if your homework is done, and you're bored sometime feel free to check it out."   (My dad is a big giant geek, and sci-fi was one of the few things we bonded over when I was young, which is how I know this stuff. Which I realize is a shock to most people that I have any geek in me at all. Ü)

And that folks, is how it all started.  And it's all my fault.

First it started with Nick.  He liked bow ties before.  But now he loves them.  "Bow ties are cool." (11th Doctor) 

He watched every episode on Netflix in a ridiculously short period of time.   He has all sorts of quotes from the show memorized.

And it turned out to be contagious.  He slowly infected the rest of the kids with his love of all things Doctor Who.  Maddie went to a movie night at a friend's house and the mother had to relate to me the story of how Maddie very unsuccessfully tried to convince all her friends to watch Doctor Who that night.  "Awww.  That's my little geek girl!"  "I'm NOT a geek!"  "Yeah, you are sweetie.  Sorry.  Doctor Who is science fiction and you being a fan of sci fi show makes you a geek."  It took awhile, but she has come to terms with the fact that she's a geek too.

Even Christopher.  Nick got a Doctor Who lunchbox for school this year.  Christopher claimed it.  Maddie was worried what some of the kids at school would say to her, but she got over it quickly.  Then Zach informed me that "if I wanted them all to have matching lunchboxes, I could buy him one too."  Not that I am overly concerned as to whether ANY of their school supplies match, but we ended up with 4 of the EXACT SAME lunch box at the beginning of this year.

I was actually one of the last hold-outs.  Sure, I watched it as a kid, but I hadn't watched it in years, and well, sci-fi hasn't actually been my genre of choice for awhile now.  Those crime dramas like Bones or Castle, sure, but a show about an alien who travels through time and space? meh. You would have thought Christmas had come early when Nick busted me watching an episode on my ipad in my room one evening.

And slowly but surely, Doctor Who has invaded our lives.  Nick was "The Doctor" for the last two Halloweens. (11th and 4th respectively, although this last year most people thought he was Ron Weasley ).  Half of the Christmas presents this past year had some sort of Doctor Who theme.  Maddie and I saw a particular musical in New York City just to meet a former actor from the show, and random sketches of Tardises can be found laying around the house on any given day,

and we still have a Tardis taped to our front door that Maddie put there to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show. (The 50th was in November)  

Speaking of the 50th, I found out that they were showing it in 3-D in some movie theaters in the valley, so I took the three older kids.  (who wore their favorite DW themed apparel)

But the thing is, (as long as I can keep the actual TV viewing time to a minimum) I think that there are definitely worse things for the kids to be watching.   For starters, it's practically the tamest thing on TV.  The language is fairly clean, and there is pretty much no sex to speak of.  Well, a little bit of kissing.  That's it.  Seriously.  For instance, there's one scene where a married couple who travels with the Doctor were complaining about having to have bunk beds.  The Doctor's response was somewhere in the neighborhood of "Bunkbeds are cool!  It's a bed with a ladder!" 

For reals, in this day and age, a show on TV about someone who travels the universe, helping others, showing compassion, with humor and wit, and without bad language, sex, nudity, and minimal violence, (there are bad monsters/aliens to be defeated, and violence is always the last resort) is definitely a show that I don't mind my kids watching.  At the end of the day, it's just fun.  Even if I have to have a ridiculous looking paper police box taped to my front door.