I am a long time lurker here, but always enjoying reading the threads on this forum. I don't like posting much unless I have something to say but have noticed lately that some spoilers have been creeping into thread titles as well as speculation that may well turn out to be true and is just bad as a spoiler.

It was already put in a thread title who Missy was before Dark Water was aired and that ruined the surprise for me. Now we are having speculation about the Xmas episode regarding Santa and Clara in thread titles also.

I am friends via e-mail through several former posters on here who have quit the forum because of this issue. Surely people should be able to visit this forum and read/post stuff without having their enjoyment of the show ruined by the needless speculation or spoilers in thread titles? We should be encouraging people to join and not drive them away.

Surely that is what spoiler tags are for?????

It depends whether you view speculation as spoilers or not, a lot of it is ' do you think...? or 'is Missy the Rani?'...etc
I don't particularly remember threads stating things as fact before the event.

Hey Type40US, personally I don't think there have been too many real spoilers recently, certainly thee have been many speculations. The only recent examples of actual spoilers I can think of were the threads based on the leaked episodes at the start of the season and when someone talked about the new intro music. When all the leaks were being discussed I personally boycotted the forum for some time.

On that note, sorry if my recent poll about Santa is considered a spoiler, it wasn't meant to be. I have come to realise though only recently that many people don't watch the "next time" trailers so content which many of us think "is already in the open" is actually "spoilers" for a few people. Thats a bit of a tough one to deal with ...

p.s. Are you based in the US? Maybe you don't get all the trailers we get over here. So for example we have seen a trailer with Santa and the Doctor at the end of the last episode. We have already seen another trailer on the BBC showing Clara with Santa and Clara has also said in interviews here that the xmas episode is about dreaming.

I suppose it comes down to what you constitute a spoiler or not - if it's in a trailer/interview and not in the show - do you consider this a trailer?

If information / trailers / photos have been officially released into the public domain they can no longer be considered spoilers, surely?
For example, the trailer / clip shown during Children in Need last Friday may only have been broadcast in the UK but it is freely available now across the internet. And message boards and forums will certainly talk about trailers, whether or not you've seen it.

I wouldn't consider speculation - such as, Is Missy really the Master? - to be a spoiler. It's just guessing and wondering.
If someone had posted, Missy is definitely the Master and here's proof before Dark Water, then that's a spoiler, but the show itself actively encouraged speculation about who she was and that's all good fun.

Spoilers are surely only spoilers if something is revealed that hasn't been officially released or approved. Then, I agree, it is very annoying if said spoiler appears in the thread title. But fortunately this rarely happens.

Nonsense! A spoiler is anything that can spoil the surprise of anyone watching any episode for the first time. That's why they're called spoilers. The clue is in the name.

These things are best illustrated with extreme examples, so...

The Rescue was a 1960s episode with a major plot twist regarding the origin and motivation of Koquillion. Even though that information has been available in the public domain for decades now, it would still be a massive spoiler to give away what that twist is. It would spoil the surprise for anyone catching up with the classic series for the first time.

What!?! I am in the UK, and although I didn't manage to avoid seeing the trailer at the end of the last episode, I was lucky enough not to have seen the other trailer. I didn't know Clara was coming back. So now you've ruined that surprise for me!


It doesn't matter whether it's in an interview or a trailer, or even part of the show itself, what matters is whether or not it can spoil the surprise.

Yes - the point being that if the official channel producing the programme has deliberately chosen to release images and footage about the programme, then it can't have too much impact on the effectiveness of the story.

I'm disappointed that they didn't try at least a little bit harder to cover up the appearance of the Cybermen in Dark Water, though. That sounds like a big thing they wouldn't want to be too public.

The Cybermen example proves my point. You can't assume "the official channel" knows best. They make mistakes. So, in practice it doesn't make any difference if something has been officially released or not.

Going back to the example of The Rescue, even when an episode has been broadcast, released on DVD, etc. (and you can't get more "official channel" than that!) its contents can still be spoilers.

Well, yes, technically anything that spoils your viewing pleasure is a spoiler, but if you want to watch Doctor Who without any prior knowledge as to what will happen then these days you really have to avoid all media.
Official trailers, teasers and photos, released by the production team and the publicity department at the BBC are everywhere - most do not spoil major plot developments or twists, but inevitably, by their very nature, they 'spoil' some parts of the story.
For example, publicity made it clear that Cybermen and UNIT would be featured in Dark Water / Death In Heaven - for some people perhaps that was a spoiler, but the BBC chose to release that information, chose to film in public places so I really can't see that such information should be avoided on public forums just to keep things completely and utterly spoiler free for a precious few people who wish to watch the show completely fresh.

It would be brilliant if we could all watch a new episode of Doctor Who afresh; I'd love that. But that's simply not how things work these days.

As for your example of The Rescue. No, I wouldn't spoil the twist if, say, a friend was going to watch it for the first time, with no prior knowledge. That would be petty and stupid.
But I would certainly discuss crucial plot points of a 50 year old TV show on a worldwide public forum. The show has been massively analysed and pored over during the past 50 years - to try to avoid crucial plot points in such a discussion would be absurd and pointless.

If you want to avoid all spoilers, go ahead, and best of luck to you. But it's not going to be very easy, and don't expect the rest of the world not to talk about what's been out there for 50 years, or information that the BBC choose to release before an episode is shown.

What? That's nonsense. I'm no slavish supporter of the production team and I sometimes think they make mistakes, but I'm afraid that if the official line is to release information / pictures / trailers etc then that's what we must accept. You can choose to avoid them if you wish, but you can't stop people talking about them.
The official channel does know best, regardless of your personal opinion of what they do; but until you are running the show you have to accept that their decisions are surely made in the best interests of the show.

Not too often, thankfully; but you're quite right.
This was one of their biggest in recent years.

Leaving aside the question of trailers, just for the moment, so what about the actual contents of broadcast episodes? Do they somehow magically stop being spoilers when the episode is broadcast?

I've already mentioned sixties episodes, but let's have a more recent example:

Take what happens to Osgood in the most recent episode. Now do you agree that is a major spoiler, and discussing it openly (even putting it in thread titles, as some people here have done) is going to spoil the surprise for anyone who hasn't seen that episode yet? Just because you've seen it, it doesn't mean that everyone else has.

And if official canon episodes can still be spoilers for people who haven't seen the episode yet, then so can other official material like trailers, interviews, etc.

Just because something just happens to be official doesn't make any difference to the end result.

And as for the idea that the production team always knows what's best for the show: if they did, they wouldn't have created Danny Pink!

If an episode has aired then of course people are allowed to discuss it openly. Not much point for a discussion forum if they can't.


As to Thread titles, what to you expect people to put?

If they put something like "Osgood's fate" that's pretty much the same thing and "A Thread about a character that may or may not have had something happen to them in an episode" is a tad vague don't you think?



I didn't get to watch Death in Heaven live, I stayed away from the Forum till I had watched it.

This.

Spoilers can be open to interpretation. Personally, I say it’s more to do with things being known before shown, but if someone is talking specifics about a series I’m catching second time round, it could be considered spoiling it. But I can’t expect everyone to go around in silence because I’m only on series 3 of Homeland.
If an episode of DW has aired and I’ve not managed to watch it “live”, the last place I’d come to is here. Everyone will be talking about specifics.

A spoiler is Spock dies at the end of Star Trek 2. Leonard Nimoy appearing in Star Trek 2is not a spoiler. It's casting.

Only when its a major thing like Karen Gillan in Time of the Doctor, Tom Baker in Day and Paul McGann in Night. Clara coming back is not major, she hasn't been absent at all yet. She's the current companion and been in every single episode so far. Now if this was series 10 and she wasn't in series 9 perhaps that would be a major thing!

I have to say I agree a little bit with the OP.

I too had my surprise about Missy spoiled by the thread below:

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2021364

You will notice that this thread was first posted on the 30th Oct, 2 days before Dark Water was aired.

Yes, it is a speculation thread but it was for me still a spoiler because upto until that point I had never even considered Missy to be The Master until I saw this thread title and that's the danger of speculation threads.

Let's take another example. If I started a thread saying 'The Fifth Doctor to return in the Xmas special?', it isn't actually saying that he is but it's planting a seed in people's head that he may be and therefore if he actually does, your surprise has gone because you saw someone suggest it even as speculation.

I absolutely agree if the BBC then come out and say the Fifth Doctor is going to be in the Xmas Special, then yes, we can discuss it quite openly. Because it's out there and confirmed.

I've been avoiding this forum a lot lately because of these threads and even popping back on here today, I can still see a couple of threads that the OP has mentioned that won't be a surprise at Xmas.

So from now until Xmas I shall be doing exactly what I did before the week before the last episode. Avoiding this forum to avoid more potential surprises being ruined.

Shouldn't be like that but that's the way it is unfortunately.

Oh, and just to clarify, as far as I know, the Fifth Doctor isn't actually in the Xmas Special....(unfortunately......)

Hey, I am sorry, I can kinda see I should have used spoiler tags - but this is what I meant above that when its been shown on television already, surely its public knowledge. It doesn't matter whether its been said in an interview, on another TV show, the fact is its been said already. And, with regards to Clara - no one at all said that Clara has left the show - the Santa scene at the end of the show deliberately included lines to indicate something along these lines.

My point is, even if you didn't see it here on this forum, you will see it somewhere, newspaper, tv news, internet news etc, no doubt it will come up in conversation too. Every time I go onto youtube now it suggests Doctor Who videos because the site has obviously been tracking my behaviour. As many have mentioned - a spoiler would have been if I said something like Benedict Cumberbatch is appearing in the xmas episode as Casper the Ghost.

The youtube video featuring Clara already has 0.5 million viewers, no doubt many more
millions saw it on Children In Need.In fact, there have been pictures from the Christmas episode released already which have Clara in it as well.

But then that could be taken to ridiculous levels where nothing can be discussed just on the off chance that someone doesn't know this/hasn't seen a 40 year old episode etc etc.

Missy was guessed to be a time lady or the rani or Romana or the master or a new character or Clara so someone has to guess it right so it can't be a spoiler only a guess.

Like me starting a thread saying Santa is also the master it's a guess not a spoiler.

Absolute twaddle.

The Fourth Doctor fell off a tel.....no, better not.

Fell off a what?? Put it in spoiler tags, Michael. I'm dying to know...

The trouble is that if you cast the definition of "spoiler" too broadly, you end up with a situation where episode titles are considered spoilers, as with uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5 of years gone by (think I got the name right! Memories fade...)

By definition, spoilers can only occur before an episode is aired; anything after that is just what went on in it

That's the joke in 'The Angels Take Manhatten" where they use the chapter titles... But one is a bit spoilery.