The rush to get more viewers and attention as quickly as possible means Marvel and Doctor Who fans have a tiny window to be spoiler-free. Thoughts.
This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who season 2, and Thunderbolts.
As you likely noticed, the current run of Doctor Who came to an end over the weekend. A co-production between the BBC and Disney, the final episode of the season run – The Reality War – was held back from reviewers, meaning no advance copies were available, as a firm lock was held on spoilers.
This isn’t a fresh tactic. I was covering Doctor Who right through the late 2000s and 2010s, and when it came to a season finale, the general idea was either the episode is held back, or certain elements aren’t included. All good. The thinking was that everybody gets to watch the episode at the same time – be it at home, on streaming, or on a cinema screen – and have the right to watch it unspoilt.
Right up until 8pm on Saturday night it worked as well. At 8.01pm? Well, it all became a very different matter.
Up front, I want to acknowledge that BBC News is a different side of the organisation from the one that co-produced Doctor Who. But right there, in prominent view on the aforementioned site? A headline telling you that Ncuti Gatwa had departed the role of the Doctor. Click on that headline, and you got taken to an article warning you about a spoiler that had already been given away in the title of the article. And the subhead. And the lead image. And the caption for the lead image.60 seconds after the end credits. No surprise was held back.
The BBC then, within minutes, had uploaded onto the official Doctor Who YouTube channel a video from Ncuti Gatwa saying goodbye to the role. Subscribe to that channel and any alert would have given the game away.
The message was clear: if you didn’t watch Doctor Who in the exact slot it was broadcast, spoilers were now fair game.
I found this absolutely baffling, and know that anecdotally, it let the cat out of the metaphorical bag for a lot of people who have long been schooled in watching the episode on iPlayer instead. Understandably, the BBC would have appreciated that the spoilers would be out there the second the episode finished. But it’s jarring for us on our side to be asked to protect spoilers, and then on the BBC’s own outlets, it’s absolutely fair game.
Sure, the episode had aired, but there wasn’t even an hour or two before it became a headline. Seconds, in fact.
Again, the BBC is an enormous organisation, and I remain a fan of it. But it’s incredibly frustrating that in an era when people rarely watch a show at the moment it’s broadcast, a huge spoiler was released in this way with so little courtesy. There are major outlets I unfollowed on social media who liberally gave away spoilers on their feeds the second an episode finished. I didn’t expect the BBC to do the same.
But the BBC isn’t alone.
Adjacent, another project with Disney financing involved pulled a similar trick last month. The Marvel movie Thunderbolts* is a solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one with an impressive final third to it as well. But also, the asterisk in its title had drawn attention. Fans of the source comic book material knew what it meant, but the majority of people who went along for the film’s opening weekend I’d reckon were less certain, At the end of the film, a secret that had been reasonably well guarded was revealed.
But! If you didn’t see the film on its opening weekend, then all bets were off.
Considering that films build audiences over years, Disney and Marvel nonetheless took three days before they gave the game away. With a firm eye on second weekend box office – with some success as well – the marketing for Thunderbolts* saw it rebranded as The New Avengers. Social media was flooded with the new promo material, and while not impossible to avoid spoilers, giving away a major moment from the end of the film has just become marketing collateral.
And it worked. While Thunderbolts hasn’t gone stratospheric at the box office, its second weekend drop was modest, as a fresh wave of people were lured in by this New Avengers lark.
But still: I can’t shake the feeling that it’d be nice if we all got a sporting chance to learn these key spoilers in the films for ourselves, rather than on a poster or news website.
However, that’s not the modern ecosystem in which both the Whoniverse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe now operate.
In the case of both Thunderbolts* and Doctor Who, there are bigger stakes involved, which mean courtesies towards the audience are reduced. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s cinema fortunes have been bumpy for a good half decade or so now, with only a few bright sparks amid a bunch of movies that commercially fell short of expectations. And then in the case of Doctor Who, showrunner Russell T Davies has been open for some time that a renewal of the show depended on response and ratings for the season just gone. In the case of Who, it’s not looking hopeful.
But the parent companies making the decisions behind these productions work on quarterly reports. The idea that a film or show has months to find an audience doesn’t tally now that big entertainment companies demand instant judgement. For Disney, if a Marvel film doesn’t perform, it may have to consider a quarterly write-down on its earnings, and that damages the share price. For the BBC, the army of people lining up against Doctor Who is as depressing as always. Noise, social media spikes, the programme being talked about: that’s all part of what’s required to keep the investment coming in.
Corporate governance and ownership hasn’t, I’d suggest, been to the benefit of movies and TV over the last couple of decades. It’s added an immediacy to the requirement for success, and I do wonder if that’s what’s led us to the need to pump out a spoiler, in the aim of trading off fairness to fans against maximising interest.
It’s frustrating, and I do wonder if there’s a better way to balance the needs of big business and those of a viewer.
But for Doctor Who and Thunderbolts*? It’s a little too late.
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