OPINION: SPOILERS AND MORE SPOILERS!

How to spoil a series secret the BBC way! Image: BBC/RADIO TIMES.

Writer/producer and all round clever so and so Steven Moffat has not had a very good start to the week so far, what with his ramblings and disappointed mumblings about a fan writing and spoiling several episodes of his new DOCTOR WHO series plots online (and in apparently poor English, too! My word!), and before many overseas fans of the Matt Smith starring series have gotten to see them. I share some of his annoyance: I'm personally not a great fan of too many major league spoilers on any films and TV that I like to watch, either, and I do try to avoid them where I can (I even hate giving away too much info in synopsis of old series on the KOOL TV site: for the benefit of those people discovering such classic shows for the first time), but with a series as popular as the modern DOCTOR WHO, airing in an entertainment and communications world now bigger, faster and more sophisticated than ever, plot leaks just cannot be avoided these days. And I'm actually surprised at how much info hasn't come out on the series secrets, either printed or online, since its re-launch....

I'd also like to remind Mister Moffat just how poor the BBC themselves have been with regards to letting out major spoilers which have hurt their own flagship show. Take this little beauty on the cover of the RADIO TIMES listings magazine which went on stands the week before the David Tennant DALEKS IN MANHATTAN two parter. The revelation of the half human/half Dalek was probably the most important part of writer Helen Raynor's story and, as well as being an iconic new moment for the series (both old and new), was carefully structured as the cliff-hanger to part one, where, if it hadn't been leaked appearance-wise, it should have provided audiences with a surprising, wicked, look at that moment that would have hooked viewers into watching next weeks finale, and hopefully attracting even more new viewers alongside them, keen to find out what all the fuss was about (and it desperately needed that hook, too, being, as it was, a sadly disappointing story overall). Having this epic proportions spoiler and the accompanying inside feature in the RADIO TIMES absolutely killed that story stone dead in my opinion, and robbed it of any opportunity of surprise (just so as to sell more copies of the magazine (and no other rival TV publications were sent any images of the creature) instead of thinking about the actual harm it could do to the series itself). That incident, to me, was probably just as bad, if not worse, than one fans online spoilers, and is something Auntie Beeb shouldn't do again....