Spoiler warnings

I've been thinking lately about how I watched my favourite sci-fi shows in my youth and how I see them now. Things are a bit different. For a start there was no internet back then (not as a common household fixture at least). Also, as a child, I had much less awareness of news articles. The upshot is that I was happily watching my favourite shows with little to no idea what might be coming up.

As an example, when I first started watching Doctor Who it was in the 80's. When Sylvester McCoy became the Doctor, the first time I saw what his outfit was like was when I watched the show. Now I don't know if this was due to a lower amount of coverage of the show at that point in it's history or my own general ignorance of the media. I suspect the latter. But that doesn't happen now. It's almost impossible to have missed the shots of Matt Smith in his bow tie. It's similarly impossible to have missed the media follow up to the announcment of his casting. Or David Tennant's announcment he'd be leaving.

With the recent Star Trek movie, I'd had a informal policy of not letting myself get too excited by it, to avoid possible disappointment. (So not an issue in the end!) As such I'd not sought out any information about it really. However, despite this, I went into that movie knowing that it involved Kirk going to the acadamy, a Romulan enemy, a time travel element and the appearence of the older Spock. Those are fairly key points to the story and they were really widely known. But I remember the days when each episode of The Next Generation was a complete surprise to me, I never had any idea what could be happening.

I'm basically missing the times when I could watch a tv show or film that I'd love and be in complete ignorance of what awaited me. I'm probably being a bit unrealistic in thinking this could ever really be re-captured though. Nor am I placing any real blame on anyone. After all, I could avoid this information. Though in fairness, to properly avoid all information, I would have to forgo the internet, newspapers and tv news to be completely safe, and I'd end up cutting myself off from a lot of information.

And it's not just spoilers. Though those are the worst parts of it. To really be able to enjoy a production in complete ignorance of upcoming plot twists or character appearences, I'd have to avoid reviews. General news of upcoming releases. Cast and creator interviews. Even trailers. And in a lot of cases I enjoy these things. If I see of an interview with Leonard Nimoy, I'm probably going to find it interesting and wouldn't want to deprive myself of it purely because he might let something, although minor, slip about the Star Trek movie.

The main reason this has been on my mind is the realisation of how much we already know about the Doctor Who specials coming over christmas. I won't list all the things that I've heard about in case you are forunate enough not to have heard them. And what I have heard are many things that just make me more excited about seeing it. There's some awesome stuff in there and I can't wait to see how it all comes together. And that's why a lot of this information comes out. It's to promote the show/movie. Give a preview, get people excited, bring in the fans, have a success.

But there's a little part of me that has a wistful longing for ignorance. It wonders how awesome would that episode be if I were to watch it knowing absolutely nothing that was happening? Imagine if I didn't even know it was to be David Tennant's last show? Imagine! How mindblowing a climax would that be??

But all shows need some promotion. After all, a mindblowing episode of Doctor Who with constant surprises would be useless if I didn't know it was on.

I do think sometimes it would be fun to have that childlike ignorance of the media and internet reports and enjoy everything as completely new and surprising.

Though I suspect todays youth probably have a lot more exposure to this information.