Doctor Who: spoiler-free meta-theorycraft

[cassandrasimplx]

So etcet and I just watched the entire last season of Doctor Who in a single weekend, which was deeply satisfying and made it far more comprehensible than when I originally saw the episodes roughly one per week with a two-month gap in the middle. The marathon was sparked in part by my getting caught up by a completely spoilerless "spoiler" officially

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[cassandrasimplx]

Given how many friends I have who want to watch Doctor Who without spoilers, and how careful I've historically tried to be about spoilers, I decided the best thing by far would be to open a new venue in which to do my spoiler-talk. Those discussions will now live at Spoilers, Sweetie!. I will keep doing my best to keep my LJ spoiler-free. But don't worry; if you've seen "The Wedding of River Song", that means you've only missed "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" -- the 2011 Christmas special -- and a couple of charity shorts.

My main concern with spoilering isn't so much that I will mention something that takes place in an episode people haven't seen yet; although I'd hate to do that, it's been a year since the last regular episodes aired and I tend to think anyone with an interest in discussing the show to date will have caught up by now. BBC America is now showing them a day -- or a week, I forget which -- behind instead of nearly a year, so international asynchronies shouldn't be the issue they once were. I'm not going to jump on here and talk about the things that happened in the episode that aired in the UK last night, or last week, or even last month without a spoiler warning, but I think I do draw a soft, fuzzy line at a year's passage. My honest worry is this: I've followed this show for so long, in so many media, and have such a pattern-predicting brainlump, that I can completely inadvertently spoil something that hasn't happened yet. Jaymes had to ask me to stop explaining my gasps and squeals when we watched together, because I've correctly predicted (out loud, and thus spoiled) so much in the past. So I desperately want to sit around and speculate with other fans, but I'm self-conscious about my ability to ruin surprises for them if I do. For myself, I only want to see amateur speculation, not industry-bog-standard "Look at this photo from the shooting of next year's episode: here's what we think is going to happen!" guessing games. I don't want speculation based on meta, but I do want to know what theories my friends have come up with from details within the show. Best to do all that in an area specifically designated for surprise-ruination, I think. I have a post-in-progress taking "The Eleventh Hour" to pieces and sifting the pieces; it should be up soon.