Doctor Who can still be one of the scariest shows on TV, but it has a big audience of children nonetheless – some of whom are less likely to be hiding behind the sofa than their parents!
Now the BBC has found a new use for the Doctor: teaching children first programming skills. At least, that’s the aim of a new web game called The Doctor and the Dalek, which launched this week.
Housed on the CBBC website, it sees the Doctor setting off on a quest to save the universe (again!) with the help of a battered Dalek that he’s rescued from a band of Cybermen.
The twist is that the platform game is broken up by puzzle levels that teach and test coding skills. They’ll be using variables to alter behaviour, exploring repetition and loops, and using their logical reasoning skills in order to rebuild the Dalek.
The BBC wants the game to tie in with the programming skills and computer-thinking that children will be learning at school in England this academic year, as part of the new computing curriculum.
The game is aimed at 6-12 year-olds – a wide spread – with a completely new story from Phil Ford, who has also written for the TV show. Meanwhile, the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, has provided voice narration.
It’s a treat for young Doctor Who fans, while for older fans like me, the fact that it’s partly set on the Sontar homeworld – never seen on screen before in the TV show – adds extra appeal.
“Getting children inspired is the big thing for us around this game. When you say ‘coding and programming’ straight away it feels like a very dry topic, but our aim was to show children you can have fun,” the BBC’s Jo Pearce told me when I interviewed her for the Guardian earlier this week.
“We wanted it to be the best Dalek game there can be. It has to be addictive and fun, and the learning elements are core to that.”
Get your kids to give it a try, and let us know what you and they think by posting a comment! For now, it’s web-only, but the Beeb is working on making it play nicely with tablets, hopefully by the end of this year.