while Doctor Who has had kids hiding behind the sofas in fear for six decades, Davies has shared that not all of the episodes will be appropriate for children to watch at all.
The writer behind It’s A Sin and Years and Years explained that he had thought of his eight-year-old self while creating the new episodes, and accepted that kids would be watching, even though “it’s not a children’s show”.
Of the three episodes, series opener The Star Beast, which airs on 25 November and centres on a furry creature called a Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes), is the most child-friendly, Davies explained.
“It is like a great big Pixar family film, like a bank holiday film – all the family watching, lots of laughs, a funny monster,” he said.
However, the following two episodes will not be appropriate for children, Davies warned. “The second one, Wild Blue Yonder, is darker. Not scary – it’s genuinely weird,” he said.
“We do very scary stuff. Some stuff is quite violent. It’s not for children, it’s about children.”
It can't be that scary, his paymasters will want to maximise eyeballs on this. It's likely hype as we've had some scary Doctor Who episodes before (especially in Tom Baker's run - The Brain of Morbius still haunts me. I nearly ran out of the Doctor Who exhibition when I stumbled across the suit) and, unless he starts splashing the claret around, I doubt it's going to require much more than hiding behind the couch (how I dealt with it back in the day).