I chuckle. He looks at me and raises an inquisitorial eyebrow. "The Doctor is channelling Frodo", I tell him.
He has no idea what I'm talking about, so I have to explain. I gesture at the laptop and the headphones. "I'm watching Doctor Who", I explain. I pull the headphone plug out of the laptop, and from its little tinny speakers we hear Arbitan say to the Doctor "yes, yes! You must find the keys for me!"
"There can't be any episodes of Doctor Who that you haven't seen", the Stepson claims. But yes, there are; There are many that I have yet to see.
I've started working on that now. I keep reminding myself that the clichés are only clichés because others have copied from here, and not the other way around.
Ah well. Back to Arbitan. "For the sake of all my people, I hope you succeed."
What? Generic quest fantasies pre-date the Doctor?
