Oh, to be a fly on the wall down at the BBC: first John Hurt possibly speaks out of turn about his role in the 50th anniversary special, then The Sun has a set spy divulging 50th anniversary plot details, and now an entire batch of Doctor Who series 7 DVDs have shipped early.
There is sure to be an awful lot of finger pointing going on as to whom is to blame. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that Doctor Who DVDs have shipped early to a number of people who pre-ordered.
Users on Tumblr and at the Gallifrey Base forums are reporting that they received their pre-orderd copies of the second half of Doctor Who season 7 early. Untempered Schism on Tumblr seems to have ordered her copy via BBC America whereas others are reporting Amazon.com as the culprit. There have certainly been “set leaks” before, notably by The Sun, but usually there are only half truths in those rumors. This is the first time in recent memory actual, finished footage is leaking an entire week early.
Spoiler-phobes are probably going to want to avoid looking at Tumblr for the next week, as screen caps are cropping up left and right. For that matter, staying off social media in general might not be a bad idea since you never know where a link is going to lead when one of your mates says, “Have you seen this?” It’s going to become increasingly difficult not to run into anything even by sheer accident.
So far users who have gotten the DVDs early seem pleased by the episode content, and seem to indicate that, as Moffat has hinted, “The Name of the Doctor” sets up the 50th anniversary special beautifully. It has also been verified, as you could surmise from the promos that aired last night, Clara has met the Doctor before and in various time periods.
As if the early release of DVDs wasn’t going to be troubling enough, The Sun apparently has a set spy who has leaked some MAJOR spoilers for the 50th anniversary. Granted, The Sun does have a track record of making up information, but they have also gotten things correct, such as stating the existence of the River Song tombstone that was seen in yesterday’s promo. If you want to learn more, and don’t mind getting possibly, horridly spoiled, you can find information here
Below are non-spoilery screen caps from the early released materials via Untempered Schism on Tumblr.
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The new executive producer for Doctor Who, Edward Russell, has addressed the DVD situation on his Twitter account.
