Fantastic Beasts: 10 Ties To Doctor Who You Might Have Missed
7. Creepy Children And Even Creepier Rhymes
Credence’s youngest sister, eight year old Modesty, might have been an obvious red herring for the Obscurus, but nonetheless she is the stereotypical creepy child as featured in countless movies and TV series’. It is her propensity to sing chilling rhymes that creates the impression that she harbours dark secrets and intentions.
Nursery rhymes themselves can be positively creepy when they combine their simple rhythmic patterns and tone with threatening or ominous lyrics, and they have been used to similar effect in Doctor Who and Fantastic Beasts.
In the 1987 episode Remembrance of the Daleks, a young girl with possessed eyes is seen playing hopscotch in the playground of Coal Hill school, singing: “it’s a Doctor at the gate.” Not surprisingly we later discover that she is working for the Daleks.
It wasn’t to be the only occasion in Doctor Who where a creepy child sings even creepier rhymes (in 2010’s Night Terrors and The Wedding of River Song, children are singing off camera a ‘tick tock’ rhyme revealing that River kills the Doctor and will end up in prison for her crime), but it the one that most immediately comes to mind given that Modesty is also playing hopscotch.