LET'S STOP SPOILING STARGATE
An Open Letter to Stargate Fans
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to visit the set of Stargate and talk with the show's producers. Boy, it was a good time! Everyone was complementary and very supportive of GateWorld, but as you might expect, there was one concern raised: episode spoilers.
It wasn't that they shouldn't exist at all, necessarily, but that a lot of information that shows up on the Internet is based on a writer's work-in-progress script draft, and that a lot of late-act revelations are found out months in advance.
When the day was done, I packed up my pens and pencils and went home -- still thinking about the sheer quantity of spoilers now available on the Internet at places like GateWorld, and just what our spoiler policy is, and just what affect it's having on Stargate and its fans.
Online fandom -- be it for Stargate, Smallville, ER, or any one of a hundred other shows -- has made the television viewing experience something wholly new from what it was a decade ago. Television viewing is now an interactive experience for many fans. And just as the Internet has opened up a world of community, of episode discussion and speculation, so too have we shaped for ourselves a world in which we, the humble viewers, are able to unbury all the guarded secrets of the busy writers. Thanks to spoilers, fans today have infinitely more knowledge about what's to come than our predecessors -- even down to the very lines of dialogue yet unfilmed.
Sites like GateWorld have been built in part on these bricks and mortar. Quite simply, for many of us spoilers are fun! We love to be teased, to have insight into what's coming up, and to anticipate how the show's writers will shape our favorite fictional universe. It gets the imagination flowing. It gets us excited about our favorite show. It helps to promote the series by spreading word-of-mouth, and by generating new enthusiasm throughout the week, every week -- instead of just once per week, 22 times per year, when a new episode airs.
Spoilers, in other words, help to build the show's fan community by making Stargate a week-long, 'round the clock form of entertainment.
Spoilers are not inherently bad. But, as the saying goes, too much of anything isn't a good thing.
As the moniker clearly indicates, too many spoilers are not a good thing. They spoil! They ruin! Too many spoilers are not good for the individual viewing experience, they're not good for the collective fan community, and thus they're not good for the show. Because of this, sites like GateWorld must walk a fine line between providing enough information on upcoming episodes and storylines to tantalize our fellow fans and get us excited about what's to come -- but without rendering the viewing experience to be little more than an observation of how the cast and crew executed a story we already know intimately.
"Too many" spoilers leave you knowing virtually the entire episode. You know the premise and the set-up, you've already met all the guest characters in your mind, you know how the story unfolds and what each character's involvement is, and you know how the problem will be resolved. "Good spoilers," on the other hand, set you up with detailed information about the story -- but without giving away the ending.
GateWorld has maintained a strict spoiler policy over the last couple of years, though it's not something we've ever announced. Now we'd like to tell you how we decide what gets published and what does not -- and, most importantly, call on other spoiler sites and forums to sign on to this policy, for the good of the show and the good of fandom.
The spoiler policy goes like this: We will not publish explicit details from the final 15 minutes (approximately Acts Four and Five) of an episode, when it can be deduced from our various sources that the revelation comes so late in the episode. (In a 45- to 50-page script, that's everything past about page 35.) We may allude to a late-episode twist in vague terms, with turns of phrase like "But all may not be as it seems," but we won't blow what isn't actually as it seems.
Here's an example of how that plays out -- and don't worry, we'll take an older episode to demonstrate the rule. How would we have written a spoiler report on Season One's "Solitudes?"
"Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter find themselves stranded in an ice cave, with no apparent way of returning home. Despite Carter's best efforts, she can't get the ice-encrusted DHD to dial Earth. The gate won't connect, and Carter can't explain it. And O'Neill is slowly dying." That's a pretty good spoiler summary. It includes details you wouldn't find in the 1-sentence TV Guide blurb, but it doesn't give away the ending. A bad spoiler report would look like this:
"Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter find themselves stranded in an ice cave, with no apparent way of returning home. Despite Carter's best efforts, she can't get the ice-encrusted DHD to dial Earth. O'Neill is slowly dying, but the reason they can't dial Earth is because they are actually on Earth. Back at the S.G.C. Daniel figures this out, and they track an earthquake caused by the attempted dial ... to Antarctica. They rescue Sam and Jack, discovering that there is a second Stargate on Earth!" In short: too much information. The first report gives plenty of plot information to build anticipation, without blowing a fifth-act reveal that made this story worth telling. "Solitudes" is a terrific episode because Sam and Jack are actually on Earth, and because we, right along with the characters, didn't realize it.
Without access to a complete script, of course, this is an imperfect science for sites like GateWorld. Some of it is guess-work, as to when a particular revelation will most likely fall in the hour. And in some rare cases, such as an actor's departure from the show, we will report that as a major news item despite the fact that the character's final fate isn't revealed until late in an episode. ("Meridian" and "Heroes, Part 2" are the examples.)
When you read spoilers at GateWorld, you can trust that we do our best to keep Stargate an entertaining and surprising show to watch. If you read spoilers elsewhere, you may not get that guarantee. That's what we want to change with this letter, for the good of the show and the good of the community to which it has given birth.
Let's stop spoiling Stargate. We hope that other spoiler sites, and all fans who come across that "top secret" insider information on the Web and elsewhere, will join us in this aim by not spilling the beans, and by not perpetuating the bean-spilling by repeating fourth-and fifth-act spoilers online.
If you think this is a good idea or a bad idea, we'd love to hear it. Send us an e-mail, or write a Letter to the Editor if you'd like to see your opinion published.
See you on the other side!
Darren Sumner
Managing Editor, GateWorld
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