In a little over a month’s time, Doctor Who will be returning to television screens.  Already there have been two teaser trailers released.  The first one may just be a hint of what the new Doctor will be like.  From what I’ve heard, this will be a drastic change.  This Doctor may be more abrasive than fans of the current series are used to.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the viewing figures dropped during the first few episodes.  My advice to those who find this news worrying is to be patient. Really, people just need to give this new Doctor a chance to grow on them.  New Doctors take a bit of getting used to.  There’s always a bit of a “Regeneration Hangover”, the new series will not be an exception.

The second teaser is a bit more interesting.  The prevailing theory is that not only are the Daleks coming back, but they may be bringing their creator Davros with them.  Some viewers might note that Davros was killed in ‘Journey’s End’ towards the end of series four, of course old school fans like myself know that Davros has come back from the dead many times before.  He’s like  a comic book character (or possibly a cockroach) that way.  The implications for this are still unknown, however with every record of the Doctor having been erased, it will be interesting to see how everything plays out.

On Monday, the BBC announced that there had been an accidental leak of the scripts for the first five episodes of the upcoming series.  I say accidental, but the BBC has not seen fit to tell anyone exactly how the leak happened, other than the leak came from the Miami office which was translating the scripts for broadcast to Central and South America.  I have no idea what happened, so I won’t speculate on what’s going on; but I do find it interesting that the BBC got out in front of this early, releasing a statement to the Radio Times that asked fans who had already seen the leaked scripts not to spoil what was in them to everyone else.  From one angle, it makes sense for the BBC not to try and pull the scripts off the internet, things like that spread too quickly for anyone to stop them, so they didn’t.  Of course there will always be trolls who don’t care about other people’s feelings about spoilers, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone just started posting things willy-nilly on tumblr or twitter.  It’s times like this that I’m glad that things like Tumblr Savior exist.  Still, for those trolls out there, just know that you’re a colossal douche and there is a special section of Hell waiting just for you.  Right alongside the child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

Edit:

And now it seems that the whole of the first episode has been leaked as well; apparently from the same place as the last leak.  And again there have been pleas from several fan sites and tumblrs as well as the BBC for people not to spoil everything for those of us who wish to wait for the season premier on
August 23rd.  I really am surprised at the fandom at large’s respect for people on this issue.  I’ve seen people going out of their way to not divulge spoilers if they have seen either the leaked scripts or the first episode itself (although, to be fair, I have yet to see anyone on tumblr admit that they’ve seen the leaked episode).  I’m not sure if this is a function of how beloved Doctor Who is, or if people are just plain sick and tired of having to wander around the internet metaphorically blindfolded, trying to avoid spoilers.  Either way, I’m actually pretty happy about this.  I think that spoilers and the spreading thereof are becoming a serious problem in fandom in general.  It’s one thing if you don’t care about spoilers, but for those of us who want to preserve some of the surprise of seeing something for the first time, it really does become something of a nuisance to practically avoid the internet entirely for however long it takes you to see the thing in question.  The upshot of all this is that a little common courtesy goes a long way.  And I’m glad to see people catching on to that.